Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

s3data.computerhistory.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 152 posts

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

#91

Post by K0balt »

classichasclass wrote: post #69
K0balt wrote: post #67

Wow. I got a c64 as soon as I could get one, a huge upgrade from my Ohio scientific C28P. But I had no idea it could run CP/M? I totally would have been all over that. Is there a port to the 6502, or did they run a computer in a cartridge to do that?

It's a Z80 in a cartridge and was capable of booting CP/M 2.2. But don't get too excited: the 1541 was still the 1541, so it could only run software that had been copied to a GCR disk (no directly reading MFM floppies). CP/M Plus on the 128 was much more useful because the 1571 could read MFM disks, though it was hobbled by its architecture and ran slower than it should have.

Thanks for the info!

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

#92

Post by Bud »

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…

Atari 400 couldn't really compete. I had one as a kid. Neighbor kid had a C64. That membrane keyboard was a big handicap.

The Atari sure had some nice games, though!

The full IBM PC wasn't really a competitor; it was 3x the price and very few families were willing to shell out that kind of money at that point.

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

#93

Post by PlunderBunny »

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.

The BBC Micro (6502B at 2MHz I think) had an interface for adding second processors. I don’t know much about them. I wonder how much the interface added to the cost?

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

#94

Post by leptons »

ryandrake wrote: post #90
leptons wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought C64 BASIC was just as good as any other BASIC at the time. BASIC is, well... "basic", and even with POKEs and everything else, we still did quite a bit with C64 BASIC. I started on Atari BASIC and that BASIC was pretty bad, too, but even so I made use of it and did all kinds of graphics stuff, and wrote games, etc. I did all kinds of stuff in BASIC on the C64 between 1986 and into the 90's. But, after a few…

I had a C64 as a kid (~13 years old), and like you, after doing as much as I could do in BASIC, I knew I had to learn machine language. I saved up money and bought the C64 Programmer's Reference Guide, learned the opcodes, the memory map, how to work with peripherals, and so on, but had no way to actually input and assemble programs, so I was stuck. The book referred to the 64MON cartridge, but as a little kid I had…

My first experiments with machine code were using POKE statements too. Once I knew that I knew what I was doing, I got deeper into it. Fortunately around the same time I got a 300baud modem and found some assembley language tools on BBSs. The modem was key, it opened up a much wider world to me. I learned all kinds of programming tricks from others, like how to disassemble and read other's programs.

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

#95

Post by CamperBob2 »

TMWNN wrote: post #65
fmajid wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of Woz's major accomplishments with the Apple II was driving a floppy drive entirely in software from the host computer's CPU, which made the floppy drive and its controller much cheaper.

... and much faster. Like *30 times* faster. Even had the hardware bug juancn and classichasclass discuss not existed with the C64, the Disk II is still much faster. It's flabbergasting how good Woz's designs were. Almost on a whim, he with the Disk II did something no one anywhere in Silicon Valley—anywhere in the world —was doing. Forget about IBM, HP, Shugart, Tandon. Just within Commodore and Tandy, Apple's direc…

Need to give credit to the Apple's cassette port interface, too, which not only ran as fast as the 1541 disk drive, but could be pressed into service as a rudimentary half-duplex 1200bps modem with the addition of a few inexpensive off-the-shelf parts to interface with the phone line.

I've always been surprised that nobody else seems to have experimented with that. 1200 bps modems were nothing to be sneezed at in 1980.

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

#96

Post by utopcell »

Funny how the ad compares the C64 only with machines that actually cost more than twice back in '82, and conveniently neglects to compare it with the ZX Spectrum, a clearly better machine, which was released earlier and cost less than a third of the C64.

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

#97

Post by CamperBob2 »

classichasclass wrote: post #48
brudgers wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And Atari, though this is acknowledged in the matrix. Bob Russell once observed the 1541 was the best computer Commodore ever made.

Jeez, really? I would pay a blackmailer handsomely to keep a POS design like that off of my public resume.

"What did you do back in the 1980s, Grandpa?" "I designed a floppy disk drive that could barely keep up with the Apple ]['s cassette port." "... Oh."

Post reply on HN