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Building the Commodore computer that should have existed

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Re: Building the Commodore computer that should have existed

#21

Post by LeoPanthera »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #19
egypturnash wrote: post #6

I wonder if Ms. Allaire knows about the C65[1]. Her initial sketch of specs[2] is not too far off from that. IMHO Commodore was right to kill the C65 when they were already making the Amiga 1000. The end of all the 8-bit systems was pretty obvious by '89, when rumors of the c65 started going around - the Mac had been out for five years, the Amiga and Atari ST for four. It would have suffered a fate almost as ignomini…

I was programming the Acorn Archimedes with its 32 bit CPU in 1988. Took a while for everyone else to get on board tho.

There was a brief discussion on an Acorn forum semi-recently about "If there had been another BBC Micro, what would it have looked like?"

And the consensus was, probably it would have looked like the Acorn Archimedes. Acorn really got it right, and they got it right shockingly early.

Re: Building the Commodore computer that should have existed

#22

Post by lowbloodsugar »

Lio wrote: post #17
_lbaq wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Likewise, I think Tramiel could have done something similar instead of diving down the 68000 path with the Atari ST. The Atari ST was built from scratch in less than 8 months after the deal to license the Amiga chipset fell trouhg. The ST is an amazing engineering feat considering the insane schedule. I agree on you that the 68k is a terrible CPU for gaming, but it got better when there was some cache added to it, s…

I always wonder if considering the processor and the “chunky pixels” of the Archimedes if had had something like a Wolfenstein or Doom back in 1987 if it would have driven sales enough to change. Ofcourse that was probably pretty unlikely considering the Acorn/Olivetti bet so heavily on the education market.

Chunky pixels? =) [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACb0h7mmcQ8

Re: Building the Commodore computer that should have existed

#23

Post by reaperducer »

teddyh wrote: post #7

I would hope it runs something other than BASIC. BASIC is a terrible language, and the only reason it became popular is that there was a book published with a lot of games written in that language. People buying a home computer wanted games, and the commercial game market was initially nonexistent, so people wanted a computer with BASIC, since then they assumed they could play those games. The designers of this new c…

BASIC is a terrible language, and the only reason it became popular is that there was a book published with a lot of games written in that language.

Not even close.

BASIC was a very powerful language. Not "powerful" in the way we think of languages today with OOP and all that, but powerful in its flexibility. Each machine had its own version of BASIC that made the most of each machine's unique capabilities.

Games were probably the minority of BASIC programs. BASIC was a serious language for serious business programs, especially in sales and accounting.

If your needs were scientific, you went with FORTRAN. If you were needs were hardcore business, you went with COBOL. If your needs were academic, there was Lisp and a bunch of others. But BASIC was the common language that almost every computer had available.

Huge companies managed inventory with BASIC. Transit timetables were calculated in BASIC. Machine control, non-mainframe astronomy, specialized journalism applications, record-keeping, and dozens of other needs were handled well by programs written in BASIC.

The first program I ever sold commercially was essentially a single-user Salesforce for the Commodore 64 tailored for limousine companies. I wrote it in BASIC.

If you think BASIC was only used for games, that's a reflection of your limited experience, not of the limitations of BASIC.

Re: Building the Commodore computer that should have existed

#24

Post by _lbaq »

pwg wrote: post #14
egypturnash wrote: post #6

I wonder if Ms. Allaire knows about the C65[1]. Her initial sketch of specs[2] is not too far off from that. IMHO Commodore was right to kill the C65 when they were already making the Amiga 1000. The end of all the 8-bit systems was pretty obvious by '89, when rumors of the c65 started going around - the Mac had been out for five years, the Amiga and Atari ST for four. It would have suffered a fate almost as ignomini…

> The end of all the 8-bit systems was pretty obvious by '89 While it might not have been as easy to see /in/ '89 in hindsight the seeds for the rise (and crowding out of other architectures) of the Intel x86 chips were already well sown and growing rapidly by then: i386: released Oct 1985 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80386 ) i486: released April 1989 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80486 )

We all knew where it was going back in the late 80's, there was no question about that, Motorola had a hard time getting traction where it matter, the PC.

Re: Building the Commodore computer that should have existed

#25

Post by _lbaq »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #22
Lio wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wonder if considering the processor and the “chunky pixels” of the Archimedes if had had something like a Wolfenstein or Doom back in 1987 if it would have driven sales enough to change. Ofcourse that was probably pretty unlikely considering the Acorn/Olivetti bet so heavily on the education market.

Chunky pixels? =) [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACb0h7mmcQ8

Chuncky pixels refers to the "1 byte = 1 pixel" in this case, both the Atari and the Amiga had bitplanes, where the separate planes where interleaved into the bytes, this was a product of hardware limitations at times, for example using bitplanes you could do foreground graphics without the need to redraw the background graphics when the foreground moved, something that was valuable since the slow hardware (CPU and memory) could hardly keep up with the racing raster beam otherwise.

Re: Building the Commodore computer that should have existed

#26

Post by _lbaq »

teddyh wrote: post #7

I would hope it runs something other than BASIC. BASIC is a terrible language, and the only reason it became popular is that there was a book published with a lot of games written in that language. People buying a home computer wanted games, and the commercial game market was initially nonexistent, so people wanted a computer with BASIC, since then they assumed they could play those games. The designers of this new c…

Basic was a fantastic choice for a computer back in the day, it was very straight forward for people that never used a computer before and pretty easy to fit into the ridiculous size constraints, most Basic interpreters had a few thousand bytes carved out for it, since many computers of the time had around 64 Kb in RAM and less in ROM.

Re: Building the Commodore computer that should have existed

#27

Post by abecedarius »

DanBC wrote: post #13
teddyh wrote: post #7

I would hope it runs something other than BASIC. BASIC is a terrible language, and the only reason it became popular is that there was a book published with a lot of games written in that language. People buying a home computer wanted games, and the commercial game market was initially nonexistent, so people wanted a computer with BASIC, since then they assumed they could play those games. The designers of this new c…

What's the best introduction to Forth or Occam for complete beginners to programming. (I didn't downvote you, and I have upvoted your post.)

Starting FORTH was aimed at beginners. I wasn't one when I read it, so I couldn't really say. Certainly you wouldn't find a lot of games in Forth in the magazines.

Re: Building the Commodore computer that should have existed

#28

Post by lstodd »

the-dude wrote: post #20
Lio wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wonder if considering the processor and the “chunky pixels” of the Archimedes if had had something like a Wolfenstein or Doom back in 1987 if it would have driven sales enough to change. Ofcourse that was probably pretty unlikely considering the Acorn/Olivetti bet so heavily on the education market.

That was Zarch : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNXypBxNGMo This was the gold standard at the time.

Very much like the Zeewolf https://youtu.be/tVwScInZfP8?t=159

I wonder what the connection is.

Re: Building the Commodore computer that should have existed

#29

Post by kyberias »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #9
egypturnash wrote: post #6

I wonder if Ms. Allaire knows about the C65[1]. Her initial sketch of specs[2] is not too far off from that. IMHO Commodore was right to kill the C65 when they were already making the Amiga 1000. The end of all the 8-bit systems was pretty obvious by '89, when rumors of the c65 started going around - the Mac had been out for five years, the Amiga and Atari ST for four. It would have suffered a fate almost as ignomini…

Yes, the death of 8-bit systems was obvious by 89, but so was the death of the 68000. Motorola was already pushing the failed 88000 by the late 80s. And the 68000 itself was killed off only a couple years later. So I don't really agree with you here. The 68000 was as big of a dead end, and IMHO was a terrible CPU for home computers and gaming machines. It was fast for 16 and 32 bit integer arithmetic, so basically go…

> The Amiga would have been more responsive

What was the problem with Amiga responsiveness? Never heard about this. Interrupt response? What?

For several years, it had the best games. The bitplane-based graphics system became a hindrance with FPS-games but that was never about the CPU.

Re: Building the Commodore computer that should have existed

#30

Post by pjc50 »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #21
lowbloodsugar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was programming the Acorn Archimedes with its 32 bit CPU in 1988. Took a while for everyone else to get on board tho.

There was a brief discussion on an Acorn forum semi-recently about "If there had been another BBC Micro, what would it have looked like?" And the consensus was, probably it would have looked like the Acorn Archimedes. Acorn really got it right, and they got it right shockingly early.

The BBC successor was the Acorn Archimedes, really - the only thing it lacked was the branding. Fit the same educational niche, spoke Econet, it even ran BBC basic.
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