classic battle atari 8bit vs commodore 64

[flashjazzcat]

NO, I did not report it (ever)… because SI224 runs just fine, and I could never see or detect any difference with SI225.

I don't understand: you said previously there was a regression in version 2.25 which resulted in the AXLON 1MB expansion not being properly detected.

[JamesD]

Some useful stuff in XBASIC, though a lot of syntactic sugar that probably slows down more than you gain simplicity. I mean a command to set the border colour while you still need to know the colour numbers, only makes you memorize BRDR instead of 53280. The command to define a sprite still requires you to find a suitable memory block, POKE your data in whichever way you come up with and then call the command to direct it to that pattern. If you don't know how to convert a pattern of 24x21 pixels into data and the order to store the bytes, you're lost anyway.

I looked around for the XBASIC user manual, and couldn't even find the page I originally found it on.

Stupid search engines.

 

Just a wild guess, but they probably abbreviated BoRDeR because they were trying to fit everything into the least amount of space possible.

 

[carlsson]

This is the link you're looking for: http://www.jbrain.com/pub/cbm/mags/cg/1985/10oct/

[Tickled_Pink]

That was because people in the Not So Great Britain were expected to want to pay as little as possible for a computer. You get what you pay for, in principle. Basically the TED is all your fault! :-P

 

I hope you're not comparing a $400 Atari 800XL to a $79 Commodore 116?

 

That's like blaming Brits for the cheapo build quality of the C64, despite being a relatively small market at that time.

 

In the early 80s, most Brits couldn't afford an American computer. Part of that was the ridiculous exchange rates. A $600 Atari 400 should have cost £250 + whatever the VAT rate was at the time, given that £1 in 1979 was worth around $2.40 (how times have changed). Instead, we were expected to pay over-inflated prices where, by the time American machines hit the shelves, the exchange rate was suddenly deemed to be £1 = $1. So a sub-£300 Atari cost twice what it should. In 1979, an Atari 400 would have cost my dad almost two months' wages. Given that most machines by that time were built in Taiwan or Hong Kong, a British territory at the time, those prices can't be put down to shipping costs either. It was just a massive rip-off.

 

That's why Sinclair found a niche and effectively kick started the UK computing industry at a time where we were lagging years behind the US.

[_The Doctor__]

fun VAT tax fact...stolen from some page somewhere

VAT is a continental invention. French tax authority apparatchik Maurice Lauré fathered the tax in 1954, although a tax that touched on every stage of the production process was first theorised in Germany a century earlier. VAT took its bow in the UK in November 1974, as part of the price the UK paid for joining the Common Market.

 

you would think items produced in those territories would have enjoyed prices brakes but it wasn't the case... I wonder why...

this form of double or multiple taxation should be illegal, but some argue that certain exemptions aimed at helping the poor make it a progressive tax.. most poor folks aren't even aware of the exemptions so that's a bunch of b.s.

Edited January 28, 2019 by _The Doctor__

[RAM]

That was because people in the Not So Great Britain were expected to want to pay as little as possible for a computer. You get what you pay for, in principle. Basically the TED is all your fault! :-P

 

I hope you're not comparing a $400 Atari 800XL to a $79 Commodore 116?

What a dumb comment.

[carlsson]

Can you elaborate instead of just calling my comment dumb?

 

Perhaps it is not the entire truth about the TED line of computers, but a major reason why it came to be was to face the UK and rest of the European market, the same one where Tickled_Pink mentioned the UK prices on imported computers were raised by far more than they should've been, which gave room for domestic competitors like Slnclair and to a lesser extent others.

 

It is true that the C116 has a rubber keyboard, weird DIN connectors to save space (?), a DC barrel jack for power (while the Plus/4 has this odd four pin square power connector), and these computers are infamous for possibly overheating and thus bringing both the custom CPU and the TED chip down. As the user 256 colors (who has filled his location as "Not So Great Britain any more") so nicely put it: "All in the name of cheapskate cost cutting".

 

If pricing and in particular the competition from the ZX Spectrum were not any issues, those who wanted a Commodore computer would've gotten a C64 irregardless what it cost. Commodore would never had to try to compete on extreme cost cutting, which in the end didn't work out anyway because the TED suffered from feature creep and became a full fledged computer roughly at the same price of the C64 anyway.

 

And no, I wouldn't blame the Brits for the C64's pros and cons because it never was as obviously targeted towards one particular market.

[Mclaneinc]

I think "you get what you pay for" isn't quite correct for UK folks on many occasions, its more like "you get what its priced at"....That's been one of the most common annoyances for us "Not so Great" Brits...

 

To be honest "you get what you pay for" is rarely even true...I accept the usage concept though..

 

PS Just saw while reading a bit of back history of the thread that PeteyM is banned, I truly cannot understand what was going on between his ears sometimes, very odd way to do stuff....

Edited January 28, 2019 by Mclaneinc

[kiwilove]

In the battle between the C-64 and the Atari 8-bits - I think it is somewhat the same kind of thing that happened with the VHS vs Betamax situation.

 

That it's all to do with market share and that was what it was really about - when the market share turned towards the C-64 - the fate was sealed for the Atari 8-bits. Companies were less and less likely to support the Atari 8-bit because it simply wasn't profitable to do so.

It was all about business. Tramiel should have known about all this - when he brought out the XL line, then XE then XEGS - but where were the new software to convince buyers that this hardware was worth buying? He was willing to get the new hardware made, money for advertising, etc - but he wouldn't commit any funds towards encouraging new games development? How mad a strategy was that? He could have carried on with the APX scheme - or something like this?

 

Of course the appearance of new 16-bit computers didn't help one bit. They really didn't deliver first rate arcade type games - but did deliver on computer videogames as such - games which were much more suitable for the hardware to show what that hardware could do well. I think the 16-bit videogame consoles delivered arcade games for the home - ie. the Genesis vs SNES market.

 

There are certain types of arcade type games which haven't been done well - yet - on the Atari 8-bit hardware. Say the platform jumping Mario game - of which Crownland is the best example of - in terms of delivering first rate graphics. Gameplay wise - it just misses out. Maybe a few more tweaks here and there - it could be more playable?

The C-64 undoubtedly has the edge with more multi-coloured independent hardware sprites - and it would be working around this - that could show that they are more even? A technique could be found around this if it is simply the case of putting in enough resources to find a solution.

 

Harvey

[JamesD]

It's not so much wasn't profitable as wasn't as profitable IMHO.
Companies moved away from supporting every machine towards supporting what would give the greatest return on their investment.
That seems to go along with the shift from small software companies to large corporations.

[kiwilove]

Yes - it was a business - the videogame industry. But for us consumers - it was our entertainment.

 

The movie industry falls into the same kind of trap - in that they want to produce successful profitable movies. But in the end they often fail to entertain us because they stick to a conventional formula - and rarely go out on a limb and be 'creative' with their work.

 

Harvey

[JamesD]

Ran across a C64 demo that uses the REU (Ram Expansion Unit)
It shows what video can be done with such a setup, though they really don't have a long video segment.

[flashjazzcat]

Avery's SIDE video player chews through 400-500KB per second, so if the whole video had to fit in 16MB of RAM, that would only allow thirty seconds of video. Fortunately it doesn't (file size is limited only by available storage).

[Sugarland]

Ran across a C64 demo that uses the REU (Ram Expansion Unit)

It shows what video can be done with such a setup, though they really don't have a long video segment.

 

 

Watching this and reading the comments leads me to realize how the C64 was much more limited into 64KB than A8. They really had nothing beyond 64K, or so it seems. And forget about having VIC2 access different banks than CPU, unlike the XE cpu and antic. XEGS has carts utilize this iirc. They benefited from a high base of 64K, but no more.

Edited February 13, 2019 by Sugarland

[JamesD]

Avery's SIDE video player chews through 400-500KB per second, so if the whole video had to fit in 16MB of RAM, that would only allow thirty seconds of video. Fortunately it doesn't (file size is limited only by available storage).

Yeah, it would take an IDE controller with DMA to be able to have the equivalent of the Atari+SIDE.

This would probably be good enough for something like Dragon's Lair where the sequences are short and often repeat frames.

You'd still need an IDE controller and a brief pause between sequences though.

But it does show the quality of video that the C64 could do. The palette limitation isn't totally horrible, but... being able to change the palette to match the source material will definitely yield better results.

 

 

Watching this and reading the comments leads me to realize how the C64 was much more limited into 64KB than A8. They really had nothing beyond 64K, or so it seems. And forget about having VIC2 access different banks than CPU, unlike the XE cpu and antic. XEGS has carts utilize this iirc. They benefited from a high base of 64K, but no more.

Well, I don't know that they were totally limited to 64K, but this was really the only thing commodore offered to add on to C64.

For more than that required the Commodore 128, and I have no idea how that uses expanded memory.

 

There have been 256K boards for the Plus/4 series that date way back.

What it really needs is a DMA IDE or CF interface to produce decent video.

 

[flashjazzcat]

I know little about the C64's architecture, but why is it not possible to make the VIC-II perform the same feat of DMA'ing data out of an IDE register in the C64's address space?

[Rybags]

VIC accesses are always to RAM except for 2 banks of 16K where a 4K range is always redirected to the character ROM (which can be annoying as sprites, bitmap, attribute can also be redirected there).

 

With the REU, I do believe it can do memory block moves, and C64's architecture also allows proper DMA writes to system Ram which would be a good deal faster than having to use the CPU.

[JamesD]

I know little about the C64's architecture, but why is it not possible to make the VIC-II perform the same feat of DMA'ing data out of an IDE register in the C64's address space?

 

It is possible. It's just a more difficult design.

Since I don't really know anything about the C64 IDE's actual design... for all I know it could use DMA, but I doubt it.

 

 

VIC accesses are always to RAM except for 2 banks of 16K where a 4K range is always redirected to the character ROM (which can be annoying as sprites, bitmap, attribute can also be redirected there).

 

With the REU, I do believe it can do memory block moves, and C64's architecture also allows proper DMA writes to system Ram which would be a good deal faster than having to use the CPU.

From what I've read, it is STRICTLY DMA block memory moves too or from the device.

This makes it great as a temporary storage device, but totally worthless at holding a really large program that you can just switch RAM banks and jump to a new address.

Keep in mind that you can use a 65816 with expanded memory, since it's RAM above 64K would not interfere with built in memory.

You could add paged internal RAM, but it would be a more difficult circuit since it would have to know which accesses were the CPU and which were the VIC II.

Really, it shouldn't be more difficult than how the Atari 130XE circuit decides whether the 6502 or Antic is accessing memory.

I'm just not aware of anyone designing such a setup, where the SuperCPU (65816), has been around for ages, and provides a 65816 as well as more RAM.

[_The Doctor__]

well with an ultimate 2+ 16mb reu that's all you get, I think those hens teeth combined with NTSC issues and it's needed modification to do so really show how much better the Atari is when it comes to real VIDEO and SOUND being streamed

[flashjazzcat]

Any device (such as Rapidus, which has a currently unused DMA port) which implements IDE DMA on the Atari will be a complete game-changer when it comes to displaying video. The attainment of the SIDE video player is that it uses ANTIC's existing character fetch DMA on a stock 64K machine to stream the data from what is essentially nothing more than a compact flash card hooked up to the cart bus. I'm seeing a lot of stuff about the REU, but am getting the impression that the same inherent DMA abuse is not possible on the C64 by simply mapping IDE registers some place the VIC chip can see them.

[Sugarland]

In the battle between the C-64 and the Atari 8-bits - I think it is somewhat the same kind of thing that happened with the VHS vs Betamax situation.

 

That it's all to do with market share and that was what it was really about - when the market share turned towards the C-64 - the fate was sealed for the Atari 8-bits. Companies were less and less likely to support the Atari 8-bit because it simply wasn't profitable to do so.

It was all about business. Tramiel should have known about all this - when he brought out the XL line, then XE then XEGS - but where were the new software to convince buyers that this hardware was worth buying? He was willing to get the new hardware made, money for advertising, etc - but he wouldn't commit any funds towards encouraging new games development? How mad a strategy was that? He could have carried on with the APX scheme - or something like this?

 

Of course the appearance of new 16-bit computers didn't help one bit. They really didn't deliver first rate arcade type games - but did deliver on computer videogames as such - games which were much more suitable for the hardware to show what that hardware could do well. I think the 16-bit videogame consoles delivered arcade games for the home - ie. the Genesis vs SNES market.

 

There are certain types of arcade type games which haven't been done well - yet - on the Atari 8-bit hardware. Say the platform jumping Mario game - of which Crownland is the best example of - in terms of delivering first rate graphics. Gameplay wise - it just misses out. Maybe a few more tweaks here and there - it could be more playable?

The C-64 undoubtedly has the edge with more multi-coloured independent hardware sprites - and it would be working around this - that could show that they are more even? A technique could be found around this if it is simply the case of putting in enough resources to find a solution.

 

Harvey

 

It wasn't as profitable to develop for A8 because the user base was smaller. It had to do with the fact that C= churned out huge numbers of machines at cheap prices where Atari could not. THAT is why market share went to C= and not Atari. The C64 for its day seemed to be the perfect balance between features, cost and availability. It wasn't as good as A8 in many ways but it was very capable. Consumers of the day were not informed about the cheap build or what was under the hood of either machine. Also Atari had mud in their eye from bad press with so many bad 2600 games flooding the market. By xmas '82 things started going bad for Atari.

 

There were other mistakes Atari made as well, as I understand it. The SIO bus added cost, the additional cart slot added cost, the high FCC requirements added cost to the early machines, the high component/board count added cost, etc.. Then Atari did not reveal full programing documentation for the first two years which limited things. It was a series of miscalculations and happenstance.

 

The 1200XL released at a very high price, poor reviews and added nothing significant new. It failed in the market. By the time the 600/800xl's released after delays it was too late for /|\ gaining a big market share. Atari was losing *huge* amounts of money on the 2600 and could not challenge C= or TI. It is a great machine but bigger factors were at play.

 

Tramiel didn't want to focus on A8 because the ST line was his focus. He didn't care about A8 except that it was profitable (it was afaik). He canceled many projects and fired a lot of R&D staff and brought in his C= people to develop the ST to destroy C= in order to service his personal vendetta. He didn't care about a 16bit game machine. He developed a Jackintosh where low price was the focus, not gaming. Or rather, when Amiga went to C= he must have panicked to release 'a cheap 16 bit computer' unlike the Amiga 1000 that cost 2X what the market wanted but was very capable and visionary.

 

Agree with you on Crownland.

 

Sure the C64 has more hardware sprites but it can't re-use the same sprites in the same frame like A8. C64 is a little more capable up front but less capable in the hands of a good programmer. See the 60 sprites demo. This was solved back in the very early 80's.

[JamesD]

well with an ultimate 2+ 16mb reu that's all you get, I think those hens teeth combined with NTSC issues and it's needed modification to do so really show how much better the Atari is when it comes to real VIDEO and SOUND being streamed

IMHO, the REU isn't the answer for playing video on the C64. It looks more like a RAM disk, or disk cache type of device.

An IDE board with DMA makes a lot more sense.

I shared it so people could get an idea of what video playback looks like on the C64 when driven by DMA.

As for rare, there are people working on REU compatible devices, so that may not hold true in the future.

 

*edit* dumb idea removed.

 

 

Any device (such as Rapidus, which has a currently unused DMA port) which implements IDE DMA on the Atari will be a complete game-changer when it comes to displaying video. The attainment of the SIDE video player is that it uses ANTIC's existing character fetch DMA on a stock 64K machine to stream the data from what is essentially nothing more than a compact flash card hooked up to the cart bus. I'm seeing a lot of stuff about the REU, but am getting the impression that the same inherent DMA abuse is not possible on the C64 by simply mapping IDE registers some place the VIC chip can see them.

The VIC II DMA isn't programmable like the Anic, it just reads from fixed addresses. To accomplish the same thing, it would require new hardware.

The CPU would still have enough time each frame to output sound data to the SID, and set up the next DMA transfer.

Edited February 14, 2019 by JamesD

[flashjazzcat]

The VIC II DMA isn't programmable like the Anic, it just reads from fixed addresses.

OK: so I can understand better, when the letter 'A' is placed on the C64 screen, does the VIC II not DMA eight bytes of character data, before moving on to the next character, and so on? That's the only mundane facility of DMA which the SIDE player is exploiting (notwithstanding the trick of compressing the cell from eight lines down to one, thus avoiding an awkward interleave in the incoming data stream).

 

[JamesD]

<snip>

Sure the C64 has more hardware sprites but it can't re-use the same sprites in the same frame like A8. C64 is a little more capable up front but less capable in the hands of a good programmer. See the 60 sprites demo. This was solved back in the very early 80's.

Just remember that C64 sprites are multi-color, and you have to overlay PM graphics over each other for the same result, so some of that sprite re-use you are talking about would deal with that rather than separate sprites. It's going to come down to what are you doing with it.

It's really easy to have animated multi-color sprites on the C64, but you can't use sprites to add more colors to a graphic like you can on the Atari, which has more colors to choose from in the first place.

 

[JamesD]

OK: so I can understand better, when the letter 'A' is placed on the C64 screen, does the VIC II not DMA eight bytes of character data, before moving on to the next character, and so on? That's the only mundane facility of DMA which the SIDE player is exploiting (notwithstanding the trick of compressing the cell from eight lines down to one, thus avoiding an awkward interleave in the incoming data stream).

 

Technically, the VIC II uses DMA for all RAM reads. It just means it reads from RAM directly instead of the CPU having to feed it data (like a Sinclair ZX-80).

The VIC II reads the character # of the font to display, then it reads the corresponding byte of the font, and foreground/background attribute for that character.

It doesn't need to read the entire 8 bytes from the character font, but you have the right idea.

In order to make DMA take place direct from an IDE interface, a piece of hardware would need to sit between the VIC II and the system... which would be complicated.

 

The REU video playback uses DMA to transfer the video data to video RAM during the CPU bus cycles. Piece of cake.

Just have the CPU tell the REU to dump data to the screen before it's needed by the VIC II.

A DMA driven IDE controller would work the same way, but the data would come from the next blocks in the file.