appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-21, 08:54:
386SX wrote on 2021-12-21, 08:53:
It's impressive more or less like the Wolfeinstein 3D demo port that was done for the Genesis/Mega Drive game console. Game concepts that probably could have sold a lot if released in their times.
How many people had 256K RAM expansions for the C64? How could it have sold "a lot"?
The GEOS people / power users used RAM expansions (256KB, 512KB, etc) quite often. Some GEOS packages for C64/C128 even shipped with them.
However, these were GEORAM modules, not REUs.
REUs from mighty Commodore itself did support DMA and High/Low addressing schemes.
Memory could be accessed without CPU interaction, thus.
The NeoRAM or GEORAM expansion modules were much simpler, by comparison.
They merely did blend in fragments of a few hundred Bytes or so.
Anyway, it worked fine for GEOS, a real OS.
There also used to be other memory extensions, like the fine Pagefox DTP module (program+32KB RAM)..
Unfortunately, they weren't as well known as the official stuff from mighty CBM..
*Personally*, I think, that it is difficult to judge here.
The C64 was a popular computer that was meant to be affordable by all kinds of people.
And in 1982, its specs were acceptable for home users.
So it wasn't necessarily intended to be "good" but was cheaply made, rushed through production, got many revisions etc.
That's also why the C16 failed, btw. It was aimed by Commodore at the low-end market and was made possible thanks to the advancements in IC miniaturization, which reduced chip count and production costs (=profit maximizing).
Unfortunately, the users, at the time, wanted a more, not a less capable machine.
Or in other words, in its time, it (the C64) had the same status in pop culture as Windows 95 would have had ten years later.
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In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
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