Atari Vs C64 --- 80s Computer scene etc chat...

[thomasholzer]

Anyway, programmers were talking about the machine itself, not just the soundchip.

 

And as i pointed out previously and was demonstrating through the magical power of sarcasm with "Thomas' Rule", just because a couple of programmers say something it doesn't mean they're right and certainly doesn't mean they're objective in any way, especially if one is a Spectrum programmer who'd never touched either the C64 or A8 to write code.

 

If all you can find is two programmers out of the thousands of 8-bit coders out there to back up a theory, it's a rubbish theory.

 

Sarcasm you cannot do, so you fell flat on your bum there, but you're right in the second half, Oswald probably never touched or even used an Atari 8-bit in his life.

Edited April 24, 2008 by thomasholzer

[Oswald]

Yeah.... really... The C64 that came out in 1982 really has some advantages. But, what ATARI build in 1978/79 was unbelievable technically high stuff.

 

yeah it was unbelievable technically for its time, in contrast the c64 come out with an unbelievable price:

 

The C64 made an impressive debut at the 1982 Winter Consumer Electronics Show, as recalled by Production Engineer David A. Ziembicki: "All we saw at our booth were Atari people with their mouths dropping open, saying, 'How can you do that for $595?'"

[TMR]

And as i pointed out previously and was demonstrating through the magical power of sarcasm with "Thomas' Rule", just because a couple of programmers say something it doesn't mean they're right and certainly doesn't mean they're objective in any way, especially if one is a Spectrum programmer who'd never touched either the C64 or A8 to write code.

 

If all you can find is two programmers out of the thousands of 8-bit coders out there to back up a theory, it's a rubbish theory.

 

Sarcasm you cannot do, so you fell flat on your bum there

 

i do it rather well according to most people... and if two programmers saying the Atari is better than the C64 makes it right, lots of people calling me a "sarcastic git" or words to that effect means i must be brilliant at it.

 

but you're right in the second half, Oswald probably never touched or even used an Atari 8-bit in his life.

 

Ah, so the problem is that you missed the point of the sarcasm it seems... okay, i'll explain again - i wasn't talking about Oswald, i was talking about the quotes that you brought up. You said of Archer McLean and Matthew Smith's comments in your signature the following; "Why did the programmers say the A8 is the better machine? I mean, they should know". One of these programmers is an Atari 8-bit programmer so it would be quite a surprise if he didn't say that whilst the other was a Spectrum coder who didn't know 6502 or either the C64 or Atari 8-bit to really be able to comment. That's the important bit, if you can use a quote from an unqualified source in the way you're doing and saying "[he] should know", you simply can't dismiss the comments from another source because you consider it unqualified.

 

Come to think of it, i'm not entirely sure what Oswald has said that is incorrect as such; he seems to be disagreeing with you over if you're qualified to comment on SID versus POKEY and, since you rather arrogantly seem to think that your personal collection of thousands of tunes is enough to give you a qualified opinion when there are 35,000 tunes in the HVSC and you've all but said you're ignoring sixteen years of SID tune development, i'm inclined to agree with him to be honest.

[GameEngine]

I dunno.. I had a 1040ST, MegaSTE & Falcon030 in my quest to radically support Atari. Today I think they're all crap compared to the Amiga and I've never personally owned one.

 

-Bry

 

Agreed. I went from A8 to ST and was later exposed to some friends Amiga's in the early 90s. I thought the OS, games, and the whole package in general was *incredible*. For the sake of fairness, I've never seen a Falcon but from what I've read they played catchup to A500s at best.

 

Sure, I saw a few "guru meditations" but that business of sliding screens around was slick and there was something bad wrong with who ever came up with "Orc Attack". That was good sick fun.

 

Atari ST bough me instantly with its perfect 12" (640x400, 70Hz) monochrome monitor. All I needed.

I perceived Amiga as only good for gaming. I was not interested . I am not able to tell if multitasking was any good (especially if paired with little RAM and no HDD). Hardware was powerful but complete system seems chaotic.

[Allas]

Finally I found, I didn't want to write again:

 

This is a list of features than Atari have in his own stock hardware:

 

- International Character support built in (not all the people speak english)

- 3 sizes of workscreen: narrow (32 bytes per row, save the memory), standard (40 bytes per row) and widescreen (48 bytes per row, ideal for scrollings).

- Work screen cover all TV screen at the left/right/top/bottom borders.

- Hardware scroll is more flexible and faster. Every row in the screen have his own attribute to scroll. Memory screen mapping is dynamic, ideal for some scroll techniques.

- Cold Reset, Warm Reset and a programable warm reset.

- More Graphic modes. Can be mixing in best flexible way.

- Extra sound audio channel for tape software. Left channel used for data and right channel for audio that is reproduced on the TV. This increase the quality of educative software.

- A palette of 128/256 colors.

- Best designed internal BIOS, OS.

- Autobooteable feature, fast loading, easy to load software.

- Dynamic Memory pointers for programming on Screens, Fonts, extra memory banking....

- Faster CPU

- 128K memory

- POKEY gets better quality sound effects.

- Screen saver

- Internal test program

- Better and fast Basic built-in

- Compatibility since 1979 models.

- High quality SIO designed by the same of USB tech

 

This is a list of features than C64 have:

 

- Better handle of 320x200 res

- 8 multicolor Sprites with Y axis

- Better sound chip for music

- Keys can be read individually

- Color map feature.

- Real font of 256 chars.

 

Still an old design like Atari can do great software at the same level of C64 or better still (Yoomp! for example

) or Space Harrier (

).

I really love that intense work to get extra CPU speed and extra colors on Atari to get an awesome game. If Atari should be more popular in his time (at least as 2nd seller) i'm sure we could see today impressive games on screen.

[TMR]

I am not able to tell if multitasking was any good (especially if paired with little RAM and no HDD). Hardware was powerful but complete system seems chaotic.

 

Considering the low RAM, it was pretty decent actually; things really came into their own with Workbench 2 and the addition of hard disks and my work machine for several years (by which i mean it was used for text editing, desktop publishing, doing graphics for various 8-bit machines, gaming, bulletin board and then internet connectivity) was my A1200 '030.

[TMR]

- Hardware scroll is more flexible and faster. Every row in the screen have his own attribute to scroll. Memory screen mapping is dynamic, ideal for some scroll techniques.

 

On the C64 list you need to mention that the hardware scroll has twice the horizontal resolution... actually, the sprites should really mention that too.

 

- More Graphic modes. Can be mixing in best flexible way.

 

Again, the C64 list needs to mention that it can mix high res and multicolour modes on the same scanline without CPU intervention.

 

- 128K memory

- Compatibility since 1979 models.

 

Erm, these two are mutually exclusive; either software uses 128K or it's compatible with the 1979 model of the machine. =-)

 

- Better and fast Basic built-in

 

Didn't someone in the Atari camp say the BASIC was slower earlier in the thread...?

[thomasholzer]

>>>>>TMR said: i do it rather well according to most people... and if two programmers saying the Atari is better than the C64 makes it right, lots of people calling me a "sarcastic git" or words to that effect means i must be brilliant at it.<<<<<

 

Those people were emphasizing on the 'git' bit, trust me on that one.

 

 

>>>>>TMR said: Ah, so the problem is that you missed the point of the sarcasm it seems... okay, i'll explain again - i wasn't talking about Oswald<<<<<

 

No point missed here, as I was talking about Oswald, get it? (I was already one step ahead of you, maybe even two)

 

 

>>>>>TMR said: That's the important bit, if you can use a quote from an unqualified source in the way you're doing and saying "[he] should know", you simply can't dismiss the comments from another source because you consider it unqualified.<<<<<

 

Yes, I can and I will.

 

 

>>>>>TMR said: Come to think of it, i'm not entirely sure what Oswald has said that is incorrect as such; he seems to be disagreeing with you over if you're qualified to comment on SID versus POKEY and, since you rather arrogantly seem to think that your personal collection of thousands of tunes is enough to give you a qualified opinion <<<<<

 

Yes.

Edited April 25, 2008 by thomasholzer

[Oswald]

Come to think of it, i'm not entirely sure what Oswald has said that is incorrect as such; he seems to be disagreeing with you over if you're qualified to comment on SID versus POKEY and, since you rather arrogantly seem to think that your personal collection of thousands of tunes is enough to give you a qualified opinion when there are 35,000 tunes in the HVSC and you've all but said you're ignoring sixteen years of SID tune development, i'm inclined to agree with him to be honest.

 

you got me right. anyhow at the retrogamer thread I have checked every pokey sound example I was pointed too, and then this guy just ignores sixteen years hillarious. but its even more hillarious when he brings up an atari demo as an example of good pokey sound, and then dismisses non gaming SID sounds saying he is only interested in games. I dont think you should either arguing with him there's no point. he's changing his own rules from post to post to his own advantage. very low and primitive I'd say.

 

(btw did you know there was 2 rtypos (haha I mean rtypes :D ) on 64? check gtw, I'm shocked

Edited April 25, 2008 by Oswald

[Oswald]

Atari ST bough me instantly with its perfect 12" (640x400, 70Hz) monochrome monitor. All I needed.

I perceived Amiga as only good for gaming. I was not interested . I am not able to tell if multitasking was any good (especially if paired with little RAM and no HDD). Hardware was powerful but complete system seems chaotic.

 

the amiga OS was the first 32 bit Object Oriented Operating system with preemptive multitasking OS. Microsoft needed 10 years (85-95) to match it. as you were not interested and are not even able to tell how it could multitask I dont think you have any experience to tell wether it was chaotic or not. anyways if the Workbench is chaotic, then XP is chaos hell on earth

[Oswald]

This is a list of features than Atari have in his own stock hardware:

 

you are comparing the whole A8bit line family against the c64 . you will not come out too good from such a comparison. I can take the colors from plus4, sprites from c64, sound from c64, basic from plus4, 1581 drive, 128k from c128, 640x400 screen from c128, 2mhz from c128, or I can take 256k REU (c= brand memory expansion) oh the irony )) I can get much better in all aspects playing your way )

[Allas]

This is a list of features than Atari have in his own stock hardware:

 

you are comparing the whole A8bit line family against the c64 . you will not come out too good from such a comparison. I can take the colors from plus4, sprites from c64, sound from c64, basic from plus4, 1581 drive, 128k from c128, 640x400 screen from c128, 2mhz from c128, or I can take 256k REU (c= brand memory expansion) oh the irony )) I can get much better in all aspects playing your way )

 

No, actually is a 130Xe Vs C64

[thomasholzer]

Come to think of it, i'm not entirely sure what Oswald has said that is incorrect as such; he seems to be disagreeing with you over if you're qualified to comment on SID versus POKEY and, since you rather arrogantly seem to think that your personal collection of thousands of tunes is enough to give you a qualified opinion when there are 35,000 tunes in the HVSC and you've all but said you're ignoring sixteen years of SID tune development, i'm inclined to agree with him to be honest.

 

you got me right. anyhow at the retrogamer thread I have checked every pokey sound example I was pointed too, and then this guy just ignores sixteen years hillarious. but its even more hillarious when he brings up an atari demo as an example of good pokey sound, and then dismisses non gaming SID sounds saying he is only interested in games. I dont think you should either arguing with him there's no point. he's changing his own rules from post to post to his own advantage. very low and primitive I'd say.

 

I am very glad that you finally get it, I AM IN THE LEAST INTERESTED IN YOUR 16 YEARS of SID, AS I HAVE 150 YEARS OF SID TUNES MYSELF (caps, in case you are 15 again).

 

So you never even owned or used an Atari 8 bit, clear sign of your school kid mentality (My C64 is the best). Actually, that's all you said since this whole thread is going, nothing more.

Edited April 25, 2008 by thomasholzer

[thomasholzer]

This is a list of features than Atari have in his own stock hardware:

 

you are comparing the whole A8bit line family against the c64 . you will not come out too good from such a comparison. I can take the colors from plus4, sprites from c64, sound from c64, basic from plus4, 1581 drive, 128k from c128, 640x400 screen from c128, 2mhz from c128, or I can take 256k REU (c= brand memory expansion) oh the irony )) I can get much better in all aspects playing your way )

 

No, actually is a 130Xe Vs C64

 

 

Don't bother trying to explain anything to Oswald, he never actually owned an Atari 8-bit, so he hasn't got a clue.

[Oswald]

This is a list of features than Atari have in his own stock hardware:

 

you are comparing the whole A8bit line family against the c64 . you will not come out too good from such a comparison. I can take the colors from plus4, sprites from c64, sound from c64, basic from plus4, 1581 drive, 128k from c128, 640x400 screen from c128, 2mhz from c128, or I can take 256k REU (c= brand memory expansion) oh the irony )) I can get much better in all aspects playing your way )

 

No, actually is a 130Xe Vs C64

 

ok then take the c128 which came out in 85 aswell. faster cpu, 128k ram + 64k ram on the 80 column gfx chip(vdc), faster disk drive, autoboot, 640x400 screen without borders and dma memory copy on the vdc, can show two different pictures on two monitors at the same time, has two cpu z80 and 8580, faster better basic, better gfxmodes&sprites, autoboot, reset button, turn on off switch, keyboard, and whatever shit you listed there which every machine has since the 80s (like relocatable screen, charset, bitmap, warm/cold reset, etc)

 

oh, and no the pokey is not better for sfx. if it could do better sfx then it could do better music aswell this is obvious if you know the basics of the logics.

[Allas]

This is a list of features than Atari have in his own stock hardware:

 

you are comparing the whole A8bit line family against the c64 . you will not come out too good from such a comparison. I can take the colors from plus4, sprites from c64, sound from c64, basic from plus4, 1581 drive, 128k from c128, 640x400 screen from c128, 2mhz from c128, or I can take 256k REU (c= brand memory expansion) oh the irony )) I can get much better in all aspects playing your way )

 

No, actually is a 130Xe Vs C64

 

 

Don't bother trying to explain anything to Oswald, he never actually owned an Atari 8-bit, so he hasn't got a clue.

 

 

I'm sure Oswald could fall sick if take an Atari on his own hands. lol He prefer a Vic20 or PET before than Atari. This reminder me how is the scene on 1985.

 

I loved a battle between C128 vs 130Xe, but it seems there is no interest on commodore users. Although, I'm sure a C128 is superior so far to the 130XE, 3 computer vs 1 is too much for any hardware. That's why I buy a C128 on 88's and still I use.

Edited April 25, 2008 by Allas

[Oswald]

allas,

 

simply just like I dont want code demos on pc, I dont want code demos neither on a8, cpc, ps2 or whatever else its as simple as that.

 

but this discussion clearly showed something, even die hard terminator fans like you and thomas was forced to get a c= 8bit in the 2nd half of the 80s simply because the a8 line was commercially dead. while I have enjoyed fresh software support with my c64 into the early nineties....

[supercat]

On the C64 list you need to mention that the hardware scroll has twice the horizontal resolution... actually, the sprites should really mention that too.

 

BTW, I've sometimes wished the sprites had stored bits 1-8 of the horizontal position in individual registers and grouped bit 0 into the 'extra' register, instead of storing 0-7 separately and grouping bit 8. That would have allowed games that didn't need the precise horizontal positioning to simply use 8-bit positions.

[Allas]

allas,

 

simply just like I dont want code demos on pc, I dont want code demos neither on a8, cpc, ps2 or whatever else its as simple as that.

 

but this discussion clearly showed something, even die hard terminator fans like you and thomas was forced to get a c= 8bit in the 2nd half of the 80s simply because the a8 line was commercially dead. while I have enjoyed fresh software support with my c64 into the early nineties....

 

Well, but I have computers since 1978. And you don't expected we ignore the most selled 8bit computer of all time. In 1989 PRINCE OF PERSIA appears on PC and that was the start of another era on the "home computing".

[Oswald]

On the C64 list you need to mention that the hardware scroll has twice the horizontal resolution... actually, the sprites should really mention that too.

 

BTW, I've sometimes wished the sprites had stored bits 1-8 of the horizontal position in individual registers and grouped bit 0 into the 'extra' register, instead of storing 0-7 separately and grouping bit 8. That would have allowed games that didn't need the precise horizontal positioning to simply use 8-bit positions.

 

thats a good idea indeed, never thought of it myself, but it would come very handy. a lot of games in fact use sprites at half X resolution simply because getting the 8th bit is easyer that way, and then one byte is enough to represent the x coord.

 

the code then would look like this inside a multipexer:

 

lda xcoord
asl 
sta $d000  
bcc nohigh

lda $d010
ora mask
sta $d010
bcs skip

nohigh

lda $d010
and mask
sta $d010

skip

Edited April 25, 2008 by Oswald

[supercat]

Yes, the C-64 has the advantage that it can use all 64K, although swapping in the $D000-DFFF area means you can't access the memory-mapped I/O there.

Although as pointed out, the main use for that area would be for graphics or stuff that you don't need constant access to.

 

BTW, I wonder why Commodore decided to map the 64K of RAM to the 64K of address space, with each byte of RAM only being available at one spot. Bank switching can be handy sometimes.

 

Also, I'm curious: did anyone produce a assembler back in the day that could produce code that was relocatable to any 256-byte boundary? It's shouldn't hard in most cases. Just assemble the code as though it should start at address $0000 and append to the end of it a list of all the addresses that depend upon the starting page (add a pad byte if necessary so the list starts on an even address). The code would be slightly machine-specific, since it would require the availability of eight consecutive bytes of RAM that could be trashed (fixed addresses) as well as two zero-page pointers (if the eight bytes of RAM are in ZP, they could be re-used for the pointers).

start:
; Retrieve execution address in X:Y
 lda #$68; PLA
 sta temp
 sta temp+2
 lda #$A8; TAY
 sta temp+1
 lda #$AA; TAX
 sta temp+3
 lda #$48; PHA
 sta temp+4
 sta temp+6
 lda #$98; TYA
 sta temp+5
 lda #$60; RTS
 sta temp+7
 jsr temp
; Relocate to page X
 lda #<patch_list
 sta ptr1
 txa
 clc
 adc #>patch_list; should not set carry
 sta ptr1+1
 lda #0
 sta ptr2
patch_lp:
 ldy #1
 txa
 adc (ptr1),y
 bcs patch_done
 sta ptr2+1
 dey
 lda (ptr1),y
 tay
 txa
 adc (ptr2),y; should not set carry
 sta (ptr2),y
 inc $FB
 inc $FB
 bne patch_lp
 inc $FC
 bne patch_lp
patch_done:

A little clunky, and an operating-system routine could help things a lot (does the Atari have any such thing?) but being able to relocate code to arbitrary addresses would have been very nice.

[supercat]

the code then would look like this inside a multipexer:

 

Nah.

  ldx #14; Assume X,Y stored alternately
lp:
 lda xypos,x
 asl
 sta $D000,x
 lda xypos+1,x
 sta $D001,x
 ror temp
 dex
 dex
 bpl lp
 lda temp
 sta $D010

BTW, if $D010 held the LSBits, then $D010 should be handled by a separate loop from $D000-$D00F:

  lda #128
 ldx #14; Assume LSB's stored every other byte
lp:
 cmp pos_l,x
 ror temp
 dex
 dex
 cmp pos_l,x
 ror temp
 dex
 dex
 bpl lp
 lda temp
 sta $D010

[atariksi]

...

A little clunky, and an operating-system routine could help things a lot (does the Atari have any such thing?) but being able to relocate code to arbitrary addresses would have been very nice.

 

MPDOS for Atari comes with a loader (KDOS) that is relocateable on any page boundary and loader itself is one page. I was using the following method of finding out which page the program is loaded:

 

Lda #186 ;TSX instr

Sta AsmBuf

Lda #189

Sta AsmBuf+1 ;Lda 258,X instr

Ldx #2

Stx AsmBuf+2

Dex

Stx AsmBuf+3

Lda #96 ;Rts instr

Sta AsmBuf+4

Jsr AsmBuf ;Get PageNumber of our program in A

 

Here AsmBuf I used was location 203 and routine is only 5 bytes. You can read location via the stack set with JSR.

[TMR]

Those people were emphasizing on the 'git' bit, trust me on that one.

 

i know they were, but it's never bothered me in the past and i can't see it making a difference now. i'm sure you've been called far worse if the way you're acting here is anything to go by.

 

>>>>>TMR said: That's the important bit, if you can use a quote from an unqualified source in the way you're doing and saying "[he] should know", you simply can't dismiss the comments from another source because you consider it unqualified.<<<<<

 

Yes, I can and I will.

 

That just means that not only are you wrong but you've got a far more closed mind than you're accusing Oswald of and aren't worth anyone's attention - so this is the point where i start skipping what you write because quite frankly it's not worth the effort. And learn to use the quoting properly, you're making a mess of the board.

[drac030]

...

A little clunky, and an operating-system routine could help things a lot (does the Atari have any such thing?) but being able to relocate code to arbitrary addresses would have been very nice.

 

MPDOS for Atari comes with a loader (KDOS) that is relocateable on any page boundary and loader itself is one page.

 

SpartaDOS X defines a relocatable binary format for its utilities, and the binary loader can load the file and fixup it at any byte-boundary. But that's nothing, when we know, that every XL/XE computer contains a relocatable binary loader in ROM. However (and this is the point where it becomes stupid), the loader is not accessible legally. A JMP to it was planned in the jumptable, but it was removed, rumour says, due to "changes requested by marketing".