classic battle atari 8bit vs commodore 64

[Tickled_Pink]

My approach to this debate has long been - which was the easiest to program? I have to admit that I've never owned a C64 but one of the things I've always liked about Atari computers is just how easy they were to program. The 8-bits, once you have their memory map to hand, are a doddle to write code for in whichever language you choose. They carried that philosophy on with the ST, which was much easier to develop for than the Amiga - which is why it initially trumped the more powerful machine (I remember Jeff Minter saying the same thing).

[Rybags]

Agreed there - I bought the ST first because it was a little cheaper and had more software, plus I used it to learn 68K.

 

But, any decent game written before DirectX became available and "usable" (ie about 12 years ago) would forego the OS completely and talk to the hardware itself.

 

About the only thing you want to use the OS for is to access the disk drive.

[Bryan]

My approach to this debate has long been - which was the easiest to program? I have to admit that I've never owned a C64 but one of the things I've always liked about Atari computers is just how easy they were to program. The 8-bits, once you have their memory map to hand, are a doddle to write code for in whichever language you choose. They carried that philosophy on with the ST, which was much easier to develop for than the Amiga - which is why it initially trumped the more powerful machine (I remember Jeff Minter saying the same thing).

That just shows you the importance of good development tools. I think the easiest programming tool I've ever seen was GFA BASIC.

[carmel_andrews]

Let's put it this way...there were games proggies on a c64 that looked cack on the A8 and games proggies on an A8 that looked cack on a c64...like i said previously...both machines are pretty much sameness

 

What realy get's me is why we're having all this hardware/software development NOW for the A8 (and the c64) when we should have been doing these things (h/w and software wise) 20+ years ago...not only that but they might have had half a chance of been endorsed by the very Hardware Manuf. these h/w or s/w company were designing/developing products for

 

Tell you what, let's stick all the current h/w and s/w development for all retro'puting and gaming systems into a time machine and lets go back 20+ years and see how the product would have faired then (where's HG Wells when you need him)

[Heaven/TQA]

most of the new developments weren't able at that time... now we have powerful hardare and software to design such hardware, same goes to software tools for developing... emulators for dev etc... so only few people had access to that 20 years ago....(f.e. lucasfilm) and due to internet the knowledge is spread around the world... a lot of experience is done since...(techniques used on other machines, mobile devices consoles etc...)

 

why are so many stuff done on c64? simply because at that time there was a big userbase and therefore the probability that someone tries something new and the amount of talent was higher than maybe on a8...

 

just my 2 cents.

[JamesD]

My approach to this debate has long been - which was the easiest to program? I have to admit that I've never owned a C64 but one of the things I've always liked about Atari computers is just how easy they were to program. The 8-bits, once you have their memory map to hand, are a doddle to write code for in whichever language you choose. They carried that philosophy on with the ST, which was much easier to develop for than the Amiga - which is why it initially trumped the more powerful machine (I remember Jeff Minter saying the same thing).

I'm trying to figure out how the Atari was unique in this manner. That describes almost every 8 bit computer I've owned and I'm sure it applies to the C64 as well from the magazines and newsletters I've read.

 

ST easier than Amiga? Oh please... the Amiga wasn't difficult to program at all. It took a little time to learn the library calls which gave it a steeper learning curve than 8 bits but you could bypass that with assembly and Basic was very easy... just like the ST. But then maybe you think it was easier to program the sound chip in the ST since it was something left over from the 8 bit world? The only significant difference was that the ST used the GEM desktop which had been available on the PC for some time which meant many programmers were already familiar with it.

As for the memory map in hand... Amiga published EVERYTHING about the Amiga. The Amiga was one of the widest open machines ever created from the time it was released. Just try and say that about the Atari 800.

 

The real reason the ST initially outsold the Amiga was because it was cheaper! Funny how things changed once the Amiga 500 was released.

[Fröhn]

One thing that amazed to me at the time, is that most US releases are not compressed. The very first thing you'll try to implement with something as slow as the tape is compression. And you don't need the ultimate packers we have today, even a simpler RLE compression is useful most of the time (that can easily decompress on the fly).

Yeps, I always found it amusing that C64 crackers always did way better versions of the games than the companies themselves. For example, Katakis comes on 2 disksides as an original, but the cracked version has only 1 diskside. Same for Hawkeye, Knight Games and a number of other games. And ofcourse the large amount of games which came on multiple uncompressed files as original even though the game would perfectly make a single load game. Crackers also added highscore save routines, fixed bugs and fixed for the different video standards (NTSC/PAL). There have been cases where US companies took the cracked version of a game and made an original from it for the european market.

[carmel_andrews]

James D...Just to refresh your memory, back when warners Atari first released the 400/800 they also released various manuals/schematics with it

 

obviously you've not seen or heard of the technical reference manual (Atari inc.), Hardware Manunal (Atari Inc.) and the OS users manual incl dissassembled list of the o/s (Atari inc.), and not forgetting the most famous text 'De Re Atari' (which had various revisions during it's print run)

 

Not forgetting the various 3rd party Atari texts that were fully endorsed and supported by Atari, namely inside Atari dos and Inside Atari basic (both forwarded by Bill Wilkinson, one of the orig. team behind Atari dos/basic) published by Compute! with Atari's endorsement

 

Just to further the point, Atari were the first company to endorse/support the use of emulators in emulating Atari hardware, when it allowed Branch Always Software (now emulators inc.) the rights to use Atari o/s and basic rom images within the scope of X-former (the St version of pc former) which allowed an St to replicate some of the functions/features of the Atari 800

[Rybags]

Atari were not forthcoming with information early on.

 

I have an original OS Manual and Hardware Manual. The OS Manual is ©1980.

 

So, they missed the early boat. If they had done things right, they could have crushed the Apple II, and could have vastly reduced the success of the VIC-20.

 

Also, the C-64 Programmers Manual (which was/is a great source of reference) was available to the general public on the machines debut.

 

To me, the VIC-20 is the greatest undeserved success story of the early 80's. But, then again, people could say the same of Atari with the 2600 and ST.

[carmel_andrews]

Only reason why the c64 was so successful initially was because, the c64 was priced lower then the equiv. Atari machines, even when tramiel jumped ship and came to Atari and took a sledgehammer to Atari's product pricing policy, the battle had already been lost as by then ('86) most of the big software publishers (UK) like USG, Ocean, Activision, Gremlin etc etc had already made up their minds what machines/formats they were supporting and unfortunately the Atari 8bit wasn't one of them

 

I mention Activision mostly in relation the their UK operation and also in respect to original UK software releases, i only remember one, Spindizzy and even then it was on activisions sister label 'electric dreams', most of Activision UK's output was basically duplicates of what was originally released in the US, i.e, the lucasfilm stuff, activision game carts like pitfall2, hero etc and such like..USG were just as bad, most of their A8 stuff was basically imported rebaged software orig. from the US, i only remember 2 original UK A8 games by USG namely ixiom and gauntlet, you can't count leaderboard as that was orignally from the US

 

The MSX went pretty much the same way as the A8 (even though the MSX had better support then the A8 did from UK software co's)

 

Lastly, in respect to Ijor/Froehn (sorry i dont have a german or euro keyboard so i can't type in the accents/umlaut) in respect to the cracking/hacking thing

 

The thing that always got me about software companies complaining of people hacking or copying their programs is that they nearly always cited Atari users/owners as being the major culprits

 

If they (the software companies) had bothered to get of their fat behinds and do some indepth research into the whole cracking/hacking illegal copying thing, they would have found that the problem WASNT JUST LIMITED OR RESTRICTED TO ATARI USERS/OWNERS, c64 users were at it, spectrum users were at it, msx, bbc, amstrad, apple, ibm, amiga and st users were at it

 

And given that more c64's were sold then a8's, surely that translates to more piracy capable copying or hacking products (software or hardware) been available for that machine (excl. PD products)

 

So i would guess that more hacking/cracking and illegal copying was going on on the c64 then on the A8, i'm not denying that there wasn't anything like that going on on the A8 (otherwise, peeps like Rob C, Ian K, John Williams, Aura, Mr Bacardi, AHT, Homesoft, Gumi and Krawco etc wouldn't be as infamous or famous as they are now), but things must be put into perspective/proper context, there was probably as much cracking/hacking and illegal copying on the c64 (if not more) then on the A8 and that applies to the other formats as well

Edited August 7, 2007 by carmel_andrews

[Michael_]

USG were just as bad, most of their A8 stuff was basically imported rebaged software orig. from the US, i only remember 2 original UK A8 games by USG namely ixiom and gauntlet, you can't count leaderboard as that was orignally from the US

 

In all fairness they were called US Gold. I believe the whole idea of the setup was to take the best from across the Atlantic and have it released in Europe. They got off to a pretty good start with Beach Head but somewhere along the road they certainly compromised a lot on the "Gold" criteria.

[Paul Humbug]

I had an Atari 800XL. While I had access to tons of games, many I also really enjoyed, it was the time, when nothing new appeared anymore for the Atari and tons of good stuff for the other system was out of reach, which made me wish for the C64.

 

But I skipped thr C64 and got the Amiga 500 instead. The Atari was given to a friend.

Edited August 7, 2007 by Paul Humbug

[JamesD]

James D...Just to refresh your memory, back when warners Atari first released the 400/800 they also released various manuals/schematics with it

 

obviously you've not seen or heard of the technical reference manual (Atari inc.), Hardware Manunal (Atari Inc.) and the OS users manual incl dissassembled list of the o/s (Atari inc.), and not forgetting the most famous text 'De Re Atari' (which had various revisions during it's print run)

 

Not forgetting the various 3rd party Atari texts that were fully endorsed and supported by Atari, namely inside Atari dos and Inside Atari basic (both forwarded by Bill Wilkinson, one of the orig. team behind Atari dos/basic) published by Compute! with Atari's endorsement

 

Just to further the point, Atari were the first company to endorse/support the use of emulators in emulating Atari hardware, when it allowed Branch Always Software (now emulators inc.) the rights to use Atari o/s and basic rom images within the scope of X-former (the St version of pc former) which allowed an St to replicate some of the functions/features of the Atari 800

My memory is fine thanks... I wonder about yours. Check what years that stuff come out vs what year the machine came out. When the computers first hit Atari was pretty protective of technical info. Just because that stuff eventually became available doesn't mean it was always around.

 

The Amiga documentation was available to developers *before* the machine was even released. Then the developer docs were available for purchase by anybody shortly after it's release. My former partner sold the machines from as soon as he could get them. He had signed up to be a dealer when they first showed up at a computer show.

[Bryan]

My memory is fine thanks... I wonder about yours. Check what years that stuff come out vs what year the machine came out. When the computers first hit Atari was pretty protective of technical info. Just because that stuff eventually became available doesn't mean it was always around.

 

The Amiga documentation was available to developers *before* the machine was even released. Then the developer docs were available for purchase by anybody shortly after it's release. My former partner sold the machines from as soon as he could get them. He had signed up to be a dealer when they first showed up at a computer show.

 

I remember reading about how early developers had to disassemble existing games to try and figure out the system. Atari made you sign all kinds of non-disclosure agreements if you wanted a peek at anything. I guess they figured they'd make all the software themselves.

 

Eventually they started selling technical manuals for those who were willing to pay for the information, but they'd lost a couple years of potential development.

[thomasholzer]

I'm just running 'The Big Demo', Pokey could match Sid easily.

Uhm if one thing is certain, it's that SID produces far nicer music than POKEY. And what "The Big Demo"? I only found "The B.I.G Demo" for Atari ST, but none like that for A8.

 

In Germany, the Atari 8-bit line was the second best selling 8-bit computer, after C-64. Not bad.

 

In UK A8 came third (or second, the Spectrum was a mere calculator).

You forgot the Amstrad CPC which outsold the A8 in both countries.

 

You don't know the A8 Big Demo? Shame on you :-)

 

The Amstrad CPC was maybe on sales-par with A8 in UK, but in Germany the Schneider equivalent was not a big seller, not as big as A8 by a long shot (as for Spectrum in Germany, not even worth mentioning).

Edited August 8, 2007 by thomasholzer

[Gury]

The similar A8 vs C64 topic on http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php...1&start=120

 

I have to find best photo realistic pictures for A8

[FastRobPlus]

James D...Just to refresh your memory, back when warners Atari first released the 400/800 they also released various manuals/schematics with it

 

obviously you've not seen or heard of the technical reference manual (Atari inc.), Hardware Manunal (Atari Inc.) and the OS users manual incl disassembled list of the o/s (Atari inc.), and not forgetting the most famous text 'De Re Atari' (which had various revisions during it's print run)

 

A little late to this thread, but it probably can't be stressed enough how damaging it was that Atari DID NOT support 3rd party development early on. Until internal employees smuggled out some of the information that was eventually made into the docs you describe above, most Atari software was written in BASIC. A friend who used to be a developer for Sierra On-Line once told me that Atari was considered to be completely inferior to Apple II for the first few years of the Atari's life because it "could not run games like the Apple could." This obviously changed after those docs began leaking and programmers began to understand the system.

 

The book Hackers has a whole chapter devoted to the good design philosophy of the Apple versus the bad design philosophy of the Atari, and the courageous programmers who liberated the Atari from an evil company.

[emkay]

The similar A8 vs C64 topic on http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php...1&start=120

 

I have to find best photo realistic pictures for A8

 

 

That "Oswald" Guy treats my nerves. All that the C64 can do is a rule and all that a C64 can not do "is not needed".

He compares apples with pears and defines it as a rule...

[emkay]

@Allas

 

I would stop talking to any C64 nerd there.

Particular to that Oswald guy.

 

Didn't you notice?

 

"C64 is best because of the IFLI".... PC tools mix new colours in it and the pictures look better than on the real thing.

When you show real good pictures on the A8 in Interlace, they blame Interlace on the A8 and show again some farce interlace pics from the C64. Short: You cannot argue with idi.... ahm.... with "them".

 

Oswald really compares my "Nilma" conversion with some real "off / like scan" C64 piccys.

Showing the skin with real 6 colours look like a "cartoon" to them, but the full "off" colours look great... what a heavy crap.

 

I'm writing it here, because I'm not going into this scum of disease there...

[Allas]

Take quiet, that is the consequences of posting in a C64 forum. The most important thing is a lot of C64 people look Atari TIP pictures for the first time. They are only trying to defend, but the real thing is that a fast 5 minute digitized picture from Atari looks very nice and can't compete with pictures did it with detail handwork of an artist for weeks/months.

 

Maybe in the future Atari elaborate new interlaced hi-res format modes in color. Some sort of 2 G2F pictures interlaced.

 

In 2006 I tried to do some work in hi-res but as NTSC user I have some problems with artifact colors. And after all I need to study more about conversions. Some little simple example I could get on Gr.8: (only one frame screen GR.8 8K, not flickering, not sprites)

 

Edited August 8, 2007 by Allas

[carmel_andrews]

Rybags, couple of points, firstly the c64 programmers guide wasn’t published by commodore, it was published independently with Commodores endorsement by Howard Sams (of Sams Comuputerfacts fame), so it rather fits in the category of 3rd party publishing (like the Atari dos/basic books by Compute!)

 

Also if you know anything about publishing, you’ll now that publishers do reprints and additional revisions (esp. in the computer technology field) after all, my technical reference, hardware manual and o/s user’s manual dates from ’82, all that tells me is that Atari did various revisions at different times, I am sure if you look hard enough (or ask Curt, Mr Atarihistory himself) you’ll find that Atari might have done a revision of these texts the same year the 400/800 were released (1979)

 

To further extend the point, I’ve got an Atari ST book at home called ‘Atari ST Internals’ (Abacus/Data Becker), third revision, dated 1988, which also contains a fully dissassembler listing for ST's ROM based Tos, according to the book details, the first revision was published in 1985 (the same year the ST was released)

 

In reference to James D and the Amiga text’s, again if he looks hard enough he will find that these text’s/books were published independently of Commodore, if memory serves me right, Addison Wesley published the Amiga texts referred to by James D, which isn’t the same as having the hardware manufacturer publishing the text’s/books themselves (albeit rather fits in the category of 3rd party publishing like the Atari dos/basic books by Compute!)

 

Going back to the point that people were making about Atari been less then forthcoming regarding the technical specs etc of its products, Atari weren’t the only ones playing that game, Commodore were, Apple were and even IBM were

 

If memory recalls, IBM didn’t officially allow companies to manuf. and market 3rd party PC compatibles till after the ST was released, also, I am sure your remember the slew of 3rd party versions of the Apple 2 hardware, what you didn’t notice is that they disappeared from the marketplace almost as fast as they were being released (might be something to do with potential lawsuits from Apple Perhaps), and not forgetting the well known legal spat betw. Atari/Commodore over their respective 16bit machines, from what I was told, Commodore initiated the spat by claiming that Atari (or TTL to be more precise) stole both trade secrets and commodore patented technology that enabled TTl, later Atari to producing the ST, Atari countersued commodore over the Amiga

 

The only reason why Atari had this supposed ‘closed systems’ mentality towards releasing technical details of it’s products into the PD, is simply because the very people charged with making those decisions, didn’t understand either the product or the technology the product possessed (i.e. the then management were computer/technology ignorant/illiterate)

 

If Atari were even ‘half arsed’ interested in the product/technology they were making/selling etc, instead of opening up all these R&D offshoots and splashing them out with money to develop product that Atari knew full well they wouldn’t bring to the marketplace

 

What Atari should have done is invested that money which was going on irrelevant R&D offshoots, created 3 small R&D teams to work within the coin op division, video gaming division and computer hardware division, Given each division and R&D/design team x ‘00s of millions of pounds and basically told them to bring Atari the market for their particular division’s market sector, we don’t care how you do it and what you do, just do it and keep on doing it, allow the relevant R&D and design teams to come up with the technology/products, once that was ready for mass production/manufacturing, for the design/R&D team concerned to tell the sales/marketing boys and girls ‘right, there’s a product/technology’ like the boss person said, go get Atari the market and don’t come back until you’ve done so’

[Rybags]

I'm quite sure that Atari probably had the OS and HW manuals available internally before the first A8 computers even hit the shelves.

 

But, that's about as useful as owning a fishing boat and leaving the life jackets at home in the garage.

 

Any self-respecting machine since the mid 1980s has had pre-release dev-kits for 3rd party software and hardware developers. Atari didn't for the 8-bit machines.

 

Fair enough - about the only competition around at the time was Apple 2, TRS-80 and the PET. But, looking back, it was a costly mistake to withold information in the early couple of years.

 

 

R&D - sure, they did plenty of that. The term "vapourware" was probably invented because of Atari. We all remember the Transputer, the Atari Labs stuff, and (one of the biggest mistakes) Atari being the first major company to demonstrate CD-ROM, yet do absolutely nothing about it.

Edited August 9, 2007 by Rybags

[Garak]

Rybags, couple of points, firstly the c64 programmers guide wasn’t published by commodore, it was published independently with Commodores endorsement by Howard Sams (of Sams Comuputerfacts fame), so it rather fits in the category of 3rd party publishing (like the Atari dos/basic books by Compute!)

 

Gee, that's odd. My Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide from 1982 has no mention of "Howard Sams" publishing to be found anywhere within it's pages or on the covers. In fact the very first page of the guide states "Published by Commodore Business Machines, Inc."

 

So, it wasn't published 3rd party ("Howard Sams") till much later and does not fit into the category of the "Compute!" published books.

 

Garak

[Fröhn]

Rybags, couple of points, firstly the c64 programmers guide wasn’t published by commodore, it was published independently with Commodores endorsement by Howard Sams (of Sams Comuputerfacts fame), so it rather fits in the category of 3rd party publishing (like the Atari dos/basic books by Compute!)

 

Gee, that's odd. My Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide from 1982 has no mention of "Howard Sams" publishing to be found anywhere within it's pages or on the covers. In fact the very first page of the guide states "Published by Commodore Business Machines, Inc."

I have the Howard W. Sams & Company version of the book, and it still says "published by CBM" and "copyright 1982 CBM", so it's definitely not 3rd party.

[Bryan]

When you're discussing the actions of Warner Communications in the late 70's, it makes no sense to use evidence from the Tramiel era (and beyond) as evidence of Atari policy. It also makes no sense to compare Atari to Apple since Jobs was known early on for his active promotion of Apple computers among developers.

 

(Warner) Atari's unusual approach to the computer market has been documented by many industry insiders of that time.