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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]

#141

Post by usefulcat »

d332 wrote: post #86
usefulcat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How would you print back then? Did you also own a printer?

Yes, a dot matrix printer.

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

#142

Post by usefulcat »

heironimus wrote: post #46
usefulcat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You could touch type on that horrible keyboard? I learned to type on typewriters at school, but never could very well on my C64 with its elevated, mushy keyboard.

I too learned on a typewriter (IBM Selectric, if memory serves). Yes, the C64 keyboard was pretty crap, but still better than not being able to rearrange text.

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

#143

Post by utopcell »

UncleSlacky wrote: post #123
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

The 2068 was also a sub-$200 machine, though it was only released in '83 [1].

[1] https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1983-12/page/n281

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

#144

Post by sizzle »

brudgers wrote: post #129
sizzle wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean breakthroughs like ChatGPT, etc. that were not possible back then computationally w.r.t. mass adoption and upending real industries. Are we entering a new age of ubiquitous AI computing?

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

#145

Post by K0balt »

ethan_smith wrote: post #106
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?

The C64 CP/M implementation required the Z-80 cartridge which contained an actual Zilog Z80 processor that took over when CP/M was running - the 6502 would essentially go idle while the Z80 accessed the C64's memory and peripherals.

That makes sense, a sort of replacement cpu architecture.

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

#146

Post by hulitu »

sizzle wrote: post #144
brudgers wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I mean breakthroughs like ChatGPT, etc. that were not possible back then computationally w.r.t. mass adoption and upending real industries. Are we entering a new age of ubiquitous AI computing?

> breakthroughs like ChatGPT

A glass of cold water usually helps.

30 years ago, hallucinating AI was considered a problem. I guess times might have changed.

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

#147

Post by themadturk »

Bud wrote: post #92
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.

The IBM PC wasn't really a family computer like the C64 was. It was a business machine that could be fun for the family when dad or mom were done with work.

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

#148

Post by themadturk »

criddell wrote: post #120
Lerc wrote: post #35

It's interesting to see with the benefit of hindsight, combined with the features that they chose to highlight. The First table clearly pitches the computer as a workhorse more than a game machine. When it came down to it, the thing that really mattered for most work cases was simply how much readable text can you display at once. Colour, and sound were nice, but couldn't compete with just the ability to show informa…

I had no idea about the CP/M option. I’ve never heard of anybody actually running CP/M on a C64.

I tried. Didn't work very well.

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

#149

Post by themadturk »

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 also didn't support 80 characters on the screen (or even the 52-or-however-many characters of the Osborne).

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

#150

Post by TMWNN »

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.

>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).

This by itself is no great obstacle; even aside from the nonstandardization of CP/M 5.25" disk formats, CP/M on Apple II has the same GCR/MFM issue but the SoftCard and its many clones were among the most popular accessories, and consequently no shortage of software available on the Apple II disk format.

No, the issue with the C64 CP/M cartridge is that it sucked, like almost everything else Commodore designed. Even assuming that someone in 1985 or 1986 wanted to run Turbo Pascal or WordStar on the 128 as opposed to buying an inexpensive PC clone or a used Kaypro or Osborne, the 128 implementation is so slow that it is more or less unusable for regular use.

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