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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]

#121

Post by AStonesThrow »

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…

I was about your age with the same interest in the system internals. I wonder if I owned the Programmer's Reference Guide. However, I decided that my programming directly in assembly wouldn't be productive or possible. I subscribed to Compute!'s Gazette, and there were plenty of type-in BASIC programs, as well as the crazy machine-language data-entry bonanzas that yielded arcade games and a word processor.

I did my own BASIC programming, and I was satisifed with experimenting at that level. It was the systems architecture that enthralled me, though. Just to peruse the diagrams of how RAM and ROM were laid out; the bank switching; registers and I/O routines; programming the SID chip; sprites and colors and fonts.

By the time I went into college I was quite well-primed for subjects like systems architecture, and the upgrade path at home from 286 to Windows PCs was bittersweet, as I left behind those raw system internals for more opacity and high-level sysadmin tasks. But I never forgot the 6502 and 6510 that started it all for me.

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

#122

Post by Nate75Sanders »

echoangle wrote: post #40
Nate75Sanders wrote: post #37

It's a 1982 brochure, but they show Ace of Aces in the games section. The Accolade Ace of Aces (WW2 combat flight sim) wasn't released until 1986. It seems that this may have been a different Ace of Aces -- perhaps a version of the Nova tabletop game that never got released. Anybody know anything about this?

Does it say 1982 anywhere except the pricing table and the submission title here? Is it possible that the brochure is actually newer?

I had considered that, but noticed the price and as classichasclass points out in a reply to me (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43949843), $595 was the intro price. They're also comparing against the Atari 800 instead of the 800XL, so that's another piece of evidence. The 800XL was released in 1983.

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

#123

Post by UncleSlacky »

utopcell wrote: post #96

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.

It was a US-only ad (hence the dollar pricing), the Spectrum was (AFAIK) never sold in the US, only the sort-of-compatible Timex-Sinclair 2068:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_2068

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

#124

Post by Nate75Sanders »

Nate75Sanders wrote: post #37

It's a 1982 brochure, but they show Ace of Aces in the games section. The Accolade Ace of Aces (WW2 combat flight sim) wasn't released until 1986. It seems that this may have been a different Ace of Aces -- perhaps a version of the Nova tabletop game that never got released. Anybody know anything about this?

OK, here's something:

https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/ace-of-aces/

Jim Rothwell (see the gallery image and enlarge it) was supposed to release something called Ace of Aces for the Ultimax, it seems, IIUC.

I didn't know about the Ultimax until 5 minutes ago.

EDIT: Here's the image link:

https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/wp-content/uploads/gtw64/a/a...

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

#125

Post by chgs »

utopcell wrote: post #96

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.

American only buys things with American flags on (usually made in China).

A non American operation breaking into the American market is far harder than the other way round, and relays on a lot of experience with how to market to Americans.

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

#126

Post by TacticalCoder »

utopcell wrote: post #96

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.

[dead]

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

#127

Post by buescher »

aardvark179 wrote: post #109
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…

C64 BASIC was bad compared to BASIC on the Spectrum, and terrible compared to BBC BASIC on the Acorn machines. Sure, you could POKE your way to doing everything, but compared to having OS routines for most things, and an assembler accessible from BASIC it was hard work.

Commodore BASIC was pretty bad because Tramiel had bought a permanent license to Microsoft BASIC back in 1977, for the PET, and saw no reason to upgrade for the VIC or 64.

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

#128

Post by Tuna-Fish »

II2II wrote: post #113
TMWNN wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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…

I am not dismissing Wozniak's designs here, but it is important to not a couple of major differences between the Disk II and it's competitors: - Many of the design constraints that other companies faced were removed. Apple designed their own drive electronics and drive interface card. Yes, it takes a talented engineer to handle both the analog and digital side of things. On the other hand, there were compromises. The…

> I recall a colleague demoing a drive-to-drive copy between two 1541 drives

This is simply because the 1541 was not just a drive, it was a full computer with a 6502 CPU, 2kB RAM and 16kB ROM. You could load software into the RAM through the serial interface, and replace the firmware with any program that you could fit in the 2kB.

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

#129

Post by brudgers »

sizzle wrote: post #115
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and in 1986 I had just interned at a NASA lab where they were investigating multiprocessors, which at the time was a wild and crazy idea. I had the epiphany that I could bit-bang a driver between a C64 and one or more 1541s and make my own little multiprocessor, so I did. I made it all the way to the International Science Fair and ended up getting a college scholarship. I've written a lot of code but I'm probabl…

With your decades of experience in tech, is AI really the next frontier?

AI is ideology not technology. It has lived on the frontier since the 1950’s.
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