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For $595, you get what nobody else can give you for twice the price (1982) [pdf]

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Re: For $595, you get what nobody else can give you for twice the price (1982) [pdf]

#21

Post by pryelluw »

usefulcat wrote: post #17
pryelluw wrote: post #3

That is some hard hitting copy. I wonder how it performed …

It was a great little machine. I had one and used it for many years. Played many a game on it, dabbled a bit in programming, and also used it to write pretty much every paper I wrote in high school. Back then, the alternatives were a typewriter or hand writing everything. Since I could touch type, hand writing was slower and neither alternative allowed for the kind of easy editing that is enabled by even a primitive…

I had a C64. I meant how the copy itself performed. :)

Re: For $595, you get what nobody else can give you for twice the price (1982) [pdf]

#23

Post by brudgers »

neilv wrote: post #19

I was just a little kid then, and the C64 was a neat micro, but today I can see some questionable things about their comparison matrix in the ad. Obviously, they are comparing to only the high-end competitors (e.g., Atari 800 but not the 400, and no TI 99/4A which also used their own chips like Commodore touted as a selling point, nor the TRS-80 Color Computer that was intended for home use unlike the Model III busin…

I don't know what "'Smart' Peripherals" are.

They are computers…for example the C64’s floppy drive had its own CPU. This was also typical for printers…in fact it still is.

Re: For $595, you get what nobody else can give you for twice the price (1982) [pdf]

#24

Post by jdietrich »

LPisGood wrote: post #14

The copy and the features remind me a lot of modern Apple. This was the first I’ve heard that Commodore made their own hardware.

They bought MOS Technology in 1976, which was critical to their success.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/commodore-64

Re: For $595, you get what nobody else can give you for twice the price (1982) [pdf]

#25

Post by frutiger »

djaychela wrote: post #8
bluemoola wrote: post #6

Interesting that the M4 Mac Mini is the same price

And that's without taking interest rates into account -I think that's about $2500 in today's money.

> without taking interest rates into account

I’m sure you know — but you mean inflation.

Re: For $595, you get what nobody else can give you for twice the price (1982) [pdf]

#26

Post by wmf »

neuroelectron wrote: post #9

I always wondered what it would be like if Commodore had serious co processors, but the base Commodore is really too slow for anything like that. Could you imagine a Voodoo 2? I think the SNES was only about 10mhz as well and used the FX math co-processor for 3d.

IMO in those days money would have been better spend on a faster CPU than coprocessors. That's assuming you're using the computer as a computer not as a game console.

Re: For $595, you get what nobody else can give you for twice the price (1982) [pdf]

#27

Post by neilv »

brudgers wrote: post #23
neilv wrote: post #19

I was just a little kid then, and the C64 was a neat micro, but today I can see some questionable things about their comparison matrix in the ad. Obviously, they are comparing to only the high-end competitors (e.g., Atari 800 but not the 400, and no TI 99/4A which also used their own chips like Commodore touted as a selling point, nor the TRS-80 Color Computer that was intended for home use unlike the Model III busin…

I don't know what "'Smart' Peripherals" are. They are computers…for example the C64’s floppy drive had its own CPU. This was also typical for printers…in fact it still is.

That just means they didn't have a Woz. :)

Re: For $595, you get what nobody else can give you for twice the price (1982) [pdf]

#28

Post by neuroelectron »

wmf wrote: post #26
neuroelectron wrote: post #9

I always wondered what it would be like if Commodore had serious co processors, but the base Commodore is really too slow for anything like that. Could you imagine a Voodoo 2? I think the SNES was only about 10mhz as well and used the FX math co-processor for 3d.

IMO in those days money would have been better spend on a faster CPU than coprocessors. That's assuming you're using the computer as a computer not as a game console.

Yes but think of the Commodore of the trusted, known and completely grokable system that orchestrates the co-processors. Then you can run LLMs or whatever data-intensive task you like. Still, all that data has to go through the CPU bus.

Re: For $595, you get what nobody else can give you for twice the price (1982) [pdf]

#29

Post by arthurcolle »

brudgers wrote: post #23
neilv wrote: post #19

I was just a little kid then, and the C64 was a neat micro, but today I can see some questionable things about their comparison matrix in the ad. Obviously, they are comparing to only the high-end competitors (e.g., Atari 800 but not the 400, and no TI 99/4A which also used their own chips like Commodore touted as a selling point, nor the TRS-80 Color Computer that was intended for home use unlike the Model III busin…

I don't know what "'Smart' Peripherals" are. They are computers…for example the C64’s floppy drive had its own CPU. This was also typical for printers…in fact it still is.

In 2035 every process with have a 0.1B LLM running at 60x human capacity, with half the overhead and twice the work! ;)

Re: For $595, you get what nobody else can give you for twice the price (1982) [pdf]

#30

Post by juancn »

brudgers wrote: post #23
neilv wrote: post #19

I was just a little kid then, and the C64 was a neat micro, but today I can see some questionable things about their comparison matrix in the ad. Obviously, they are comparing to only the high-end competitors (e.g., Atari 800 but not the 400, and no TI 99/4A which also used their own chips like Commodore touted as a selling point, nor the TRS-80 Color Computer that was intended for home use unlike the Model III busin…

I don't know what "'Smart' Peripherals" are. They are computers…for example the C64’s floppy drive had its own CPU. This was also typical for printers…in fact it still is.

The disk drive uses a serial protocol and it actually has 8k of RAM and a 6502 CPU.

There's no drive controller in the C64, you send serial commands to the drive and it answers.

Due to a hardware bug on the CIA on the 64, the protocol is much slower than it should, which was corrected in later computers, but they messed up with the graphics and a bunch of stuff.

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