Atari v Commodore

[Bryan]

Actually the 400/800 was already in dev when jobs proposed it to Atari. They didn't need it.

Jobs does not impress me but I suppose in the heady early days of computers it worked.

This excerpt from Wikipedia agrees with everything I've heard on the subject:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_8-bit

 

Design of the 8-bit series of machines started at Atari Inc. as soon as the Atari 2600 games console was released in late 1977. The engineering team from Atari Grass Valley Research Center (originally "Cyan Engineering")[2] felt that the 2600 would have about a three year lifespan before becoming obsolete. They started "blue sky" designs for a new console that would be ready to replace it around 1980, three years after the 2600's introduction. What they ended up with was essentially a "corrected" version of the 2600, fixing its more obvious flaws.[3] The newer design would be faster than the 2600, have better graphics, and would include much better sound hardware. Work on the chips for the new system continued throughout 1978 and primarily focused on much-improved video hardware known as the Color Television Interface Adapter, or CTIA.

 

During this gestation the home computer era began in earnest in the form of the Apple II family, Commodore PET and TRS-80—what Byte Magazine would later dub the "1977 Trinity".[4] Ray Kassar, the then-new CEO of Atari from Warner Communications, wanted the new chips to be used in a home computer to challenge Apple. In order to adapt the machine to this role, it would need to support character graphics, include some form of expansion for peripherals, and run the then-universal BASIC programming language.

[atarian63]

Actually the 400/800 was already in dev when jobs proposed it to Atari. They didn't need it.

Jobs does not impress me but I suppose in the heady early days of computers it worked.

This excerpt from Wikipedia agrees with everything I've heard on the subject:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_8-bit

 

Design of the 8-bit series of machines started at Atari Inc. as soon as the Atari 2600 games console was released in late 1977. The engineering team from Atari Grass Valley Research Center (originally "Cyan Engineering")[2] felt that the 2600 would have about a three year lifespan before becoming obsolete. They started "blue sky" designs for a new console that would be ready to replace it around 1980, three years after the 2600's introduction. What they ended up with was essentially a "corrected" version of the 2600, fixing its more obvious flaws.[3] The newer design would be faster than the 2600, have better graphics, and would include much better sound hardware. Work on the chips for the new system continued throughout 1978 and primarily focused on much-improved video hardware known as the Color Television Interface Adapter, or CTIA.

 

During this gestation the home computer era began in earnest in the form of the Apple II family, Commodore PET and TRS-80—what Byte Magazine would later dub the "1977 Trinity".[4] Ray Kassar, the then-new CEO of Atari from Warner Communications, wanted the new chips to be used in a home computer to challenge Apple. In order to adapt the machine to this role, it would need to support character graphics, include some form of expansion for peripherals, and run the then-universal BASIC programming language.

You know Wiki, generally right but often wrong, I'll have to dig through some of my books and get it for you.

Job's is still a lucky idiot

[Oswald]

So now we're comparing C64 to Amiga?

 

(Waits for the Altair 8800 vs. P4 discussion.......)

Thats what oswald means about Turrican on C64 being 16bit graphics...

 

sorry you're mixing me up with emkay. I've never said the c64 can do 16bit gfx. or feel free to prove me wrong with a quote and url to the post.

please reread your posts :roll:

 

I've never said the c64 can do 16bit gfx. feel free to prove me wrong with a quote and url to the post.

Re Read your posts... Oswalds are lazy..

 

I've never said the c64 can do 16bit gfx. feel free to prove me wrong with a quote and url to the post.

[atarian63]

Actually the 400/800 was already in dev when jobs proposed it to Atari. They didn't need it.

Jobs does not impress me but I suppose in the heady early days of computers it worked.

This excerpt from Wikipedia agrees with everything I've heard on the subject:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_8-bit

 

Design of the 8-bit series of machines started at Atari Inc. as soon as the Atari 2600 games console was released in late 1977. The engineering team from Atari Grass Valley Research Center (originally "Cyan Engineering")[2] felt that the 2600 would have about a three year lifespan before becoming obsolete. They started "blue sky" designs for a new console that would be ready to replace it around 1980, three years after the 2600's introduction. What they ended up with was essentially a "corrected" version of the 2600, fixing its more obvious flaws.[3] The newer design would be faster than the 2600, have better graphics, and would include much better sound hardware. Work on the chips for the new system continued throughout 1978 and primarily focused on much-improved video hardware known as the Color Television Interface Adapter, or CTIA.

 

During this gestation the home computer era began in earnest in the form of the Apple II family, Commodore PET and TRS-80—what Byte Magazine would later dub the "1977 Trinity".[4] Ray Kassar, the then-new CEO of Atari from Warner Communications, wanted the new chips to be used in a home computer to challenge Apple. In order to adapt the machine to this role, it would need to support character graphics, include some form of expansion for peripherals, and run the then-universal BASIC programming language.

Here you go, right from Nolan Bushnell..

Question: You've had a lot of great ideas in your life, but you've also had to pass on some good ideas. Any regrets?

 

Answer: Any of the ones that proved to be foolish, sure. Passing up on a third of Apple, that was really silly.

 

Q: Is it something you felt ill prepared for?

 

A: Apple I think started in 1977 and Atari was doing pretty well. I could easily have done it. What really kept me from investing in Apple was that Atari had this computer thing going in the back room. I felt it was a conflict of interest.

 

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-63...when-Nolan.html

[Allas]

Steve Jobs was a lucky man. On older days of Atari Steve Jobs enter to the team, just because Atari needs very urgent more people. But Steve, doesn't have any technical knowledge about computers. He wasn't capable to design, repair, solder any circuit. But have his friend Steve Wozniak who help a lot on some things. (I think everybody remember for example the Breakout story).

 

Really, Jobs was a step to go out of Atari. Brilliant, he take care about Alcorn was hiding real project progresses, so he converted on a confident for Bushnell. All the things happened on Atari, Jobs told to Bushnell. In this way Jobs, stay on Atari without the enough knowledge to do.

Edited December 12, 2008 by Allas

[atarian63]

Actually the 400/800 was already in dev when jobs proposed it to Atari. They didn't need it.

Jobs does not impress me but I suppose in the heady early days of computers it worked.

This excerpt from Wikipedia agrees with everything I've heard on the subject:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_8-bit

 

Design of the 8-bit series of machines started at Atari Inc. as soon as the Atari 2600 games console was released in late 1977. The engineering team from Atari Grass Valley Research Center (originally "Cyan Engineering")[2] felt that the 2600 would have about a three year lifespan before becoming obsolete. They started "blue sky" designs for a new console that would be ready to replace it around 1980, three years after the 2600's introduction. What they ended up with was essentially a "corrected" version of the 2600, fixing its more obvious flaws.[3] The newer design would be faster than the 2600, have better graphics, and would include much better sound hardware. Work on the chips for the new system continued throughout 1978 and primarily focused on much-improved video hardware known as the Color Television Interface Adapter, or CTIA.

 

During this gestation the home computer era began in earnest in the form of the Apple II family, Commodore PET and TRS-80—what Byte Magazine would later dub the "1977 Trinity".[4] Ray Kassar, the then-new CEO of Atari from Warner Communications, wanted the new chips to be used in a home computer to challenge Apple. In order to adapt the machine to this role, it would need to support character graphics, include some form of expansion for peripherals, and run the then-universal BASIC programming language.

Here you go, right from Nolan Bushnell..

Question: You've had a lot of great ideas in your life, but you've also had to pass on some good ideas. Any regrets?

 

Answer: Any of the ones that proved to be foolish, sure. Passing up on a third of Apple, that was really silly.

 

Q: Is it something you felt ill prepared for?

 

A: Apple I think started in 1977 and Atari was doing pretty well. I could easily have done it. What really kept me from investing in Apple was that Atari had this computer thing going in the back room. I felt it was a conflict of interest.

 

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-63...when-Nolan.html

On another note Here is another reason for no expansion slots and limited expandability on the Atari, from Nolan Bushnell.

he Atari 800

 

Atari 800BE: How much involvement did you have in the Atari 400/800 computers at Atari?

 

NB: I had quite a bit in the early phases of it and very little in the marketing. And later, it was on the drawing boards — it was architected and designed while I was there — but it really didn’t hit the market heavily until after I had left.

 

BE: Did you ever use an Atari 800 and like it?

 

NB: Yeah, I did. It was, in a lot of ways, a significantly superior machine to the Apple II; it had sprites. It was definitely a better game machine.

 

One of the problems was that Atari was so big at the time and we had such a strong relationship with Sears that they wanted FCC Type 1 approval, and that was very hard to get. So we had this big cast [metal] thing and only serial ports, and that was all to hit the FCC regulations that turned out to have no teeth at all. And so all the other PC companies, including Apple, were not Type 1 compliant, which gave them the ability to put in a good parallel bus and made the Apple II much more extensible. It was one of those things where you thought you were doing the right thing. [laughter]

 

There is more, great article

http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/404

[Allas]

Interesting stuff

 

You have ten million relatives who argue like you or you misunderstood me or your not using TV hooked up to a C64. Here's a simple piece of code in BASIC that explains what I am talking about as well as showing the GPRIOR/OR color effect in 320 pixel mode:

 

10 GRAPHICS 8

20 POKE 704,16:POKE 705,32:POKE 706,48:POKE 707,64:POKE 623,32

30 COLOR 1:PLOT 256,0:DR. 256,159:PLOT 258,0:DR. 258,159

40 PLOT 265,0:DR. 265,159:PLOT 267,0:DR. 267,159

50 FOR T=53256 TO 53264:POKE T,255:N.T

60 POKE 53248,112:POKE 53249,128:POKE 53250,160:POKE 53251,176

 

On the first blank vertical line, Atari shows correct color but on the next one, it does not show same color although it should. Now show me C64 code that does the above but also shows the same color consistently.

[Fröhn]

You miscounted. GPRIOR and OR produced colors are features not on the C64 whereas color RAM is not on the Atari. Sprite overlays and interrupts are there on the C64 although not as accurate to do horizontal split windows.

There is countless examples of cycle-accurate sync of video + CPU. It's most often used to open the sideborder or to change colors mid line. There are a few examples of actual mode switch, but on C64 that usually isn't too useful because if you want to mix 320 and 160 resolution, you can simply use the C64 character mode which already supports mixing of resolutions.

 

Atari is setting luminance at 1/320 resolution but C64 is setting the color, but I have yet to see this color changing work consistently statically or with scrolling.

many ten million humans have already seen it working both statically or scrolling. havent you seen a c64 scrolling game so far?

You have ten million relatives who argue like you or you misunderstood me or your not using TV hooked up to a C64. Here's a simple piece of code in BASIC that explains what I am talking about as well as showing the GPRIOR/OR color effect in 320 pixel mode:

That's artefacting due to simulated color carrier. If you use lower frequencies (160 res or multiple hires pixels of same color next to each other) there won't be any. Please keep in mind that C64 can scroll anything in 320 res accuracy, even 160x200 resolution.

 

On the first blank vertical line, Atari shows correct color but on the next one, it does not show same color although it should. Now show me C64 code that does the above but also shows the same color consistently.

On PAL Atari you will have different colors even if you shift the pattern 2 hires pixels because of the 16/10 instead of 16/8 color carrier vs pixel ratio.

[emkay]

I still have a problem with the statement that DotC is any better on the C64.

 

 

http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/defend...own/screenshots

 

http://www.mobygames.com/game/c64/defender...own/screenshots

 

You can't see it on screenshots, but it is more fun to play

 

With some C64 bias I guess?

 

 

DotC is another example where the "unused" benifits of the A8 were...

 

http://g2f.atari8.info/big/defender.of.the...od_st_emkay.png

 

http://g2f.atari8.info/big/defender.of.the...wn_st_emkay.png

 

Just 2 conversons. But the title is already not reachable for the C64. With some palette rolling, the screen would look similar to the 16 bit pendants with the metallic shine.

 

A sad thing that they missed to create such games on the A8. They would have been pearls of their time. Even in a "pre C64 time"....

[emkay]

Sprite overlays and interrupts are there on the C64 although not as accurate to do horizontal split windows.

 

I wonder then how is this possible, with multiplexed moving sprites (see below). remember every time a sprite changes Y coord the timing changes, and here we have quite some of them, with horizontal split windows, and this is just one example of dozens of routines like this.

 

 

Can you move the whole thing up and down without any distorsions?

 

On the Atari it takes "some commands"...

[Cybergoth]

It's a well timed list actually.. I can tell you that some of these games you've listed will soon be ticked off the list of unavailable for the A8

 

Yeah, we've already seen the Spectrum emulator

[emkay]

well, no loss in audio quality in most ports I guess, the amiga msx of DOTC was horrible.

 

Yep, no bias here for Oswald....

 

Man... The Sound got a 9 out of 10 at Lemonamiga.

It simply doesn't sound like SID. And that's why you don't like it.

[Cybergoth]

What fun could be when you have to wait minutes between everything happens.

 

See, that's another point why this discussion will never work. Using Action Replay or Final Cartridge or Epyx fast load which every single C64 owner on this planet has attached to his computer, the C64 loading times are faster than on the Miggy.

[emkay]

What fun could be when you have to wait minutes between everything happens.

 

See, that's another point why this discussion will never work. Using Action Replay or Final Cartridge or Epyx fast load which every single C64 owner on this planet has attached to his computer, the C64 loading times are faster than on the Miggy.

 

?

 

If paying Money for the Amiga, where was the problem to use a Harddisk instead? Many games did run from there and in some seconds you got great graphics and sound and playability.

But, not all C64 owner could use this speedups, because of hardware issues.

[Cybergoth]

[quote name='emkay' You can't see it on screenshots, but it is more fun to play

With some C64 bias I guess?

 

No, quite the opposite is required, an objective look.

 

The Miggy version was rushed out within 6 weeks by R.J. Mical to fullfill the publisher contract, after the originally hired programming team failed to deliver.

 

All later versions of the game, also including the Atari ST and even the NES versions, had more time to develop and got enhanced and better, especially more challenging, gameplay. You see, the swordfighting on the C64 (or the jousting as you already noticed ) requires more skill than plain mouse-button bashing for example, thus enhancing the replay value.

[emkay]

All later versions of the game, also including the Atari ST and even the NES versions, had more time to develop and got enhanced and better, especially more challenging, gameplay. You see, the swordfighting on the C64 (or the jousting as you already noticed ) requires more skill than plain mouse-button bashing for example, thus enhancing the replay value.

 

In this case the ST version is the best in my opinion. I played multiple times through it there. But to say the C64 version is "better" by some coarse controlability, sounds really odd to me.

[Crazyace]

Actually, I used it for my curtains demo I mentioned a few times in this thread which is a moving scene not a static one. Once I remove its dependence on joystick input for real-time audio playback, I'll post it as an image disk. It uses > 4-bit color depth total (7-shaded overscanned curtain on top of a GTIA 16-color image). It can also work for some games like joust (if someone wanted to re-write it). Your code above is sub-optimal. Algorithm is that you want to set the Hpos0..3 in HBLank and also set up the A,X,Y registers to the xpos of 3 additional sprites which are closest to HPOSn already used. You want to avoid doing LDAs in the middle of the scanline during visible area. I still had cycles left over for setting the colors for right side of curtain if I wanted to but curtain wouldn't look as good.

 

My code snippet was just for cycle counting - you're right that loading A+X+Y is much better in real code. Were you reloading the graphics for the curtain as well as changing the hpos?

...

 

Even in cycle counting if you were in a DLI kernel (or IRQ-based kernel), the X,Y at least can be factored out to beginning of kernel since the HPOS you are replicating will be constant throughout the kernel. I am actually using zero bytes of RAM for the curtain since it's just shading produced by GPRIOR settings of colored bars.

 

 

True, the X,Y load cost can be eliminated - saving 2 constands and 4 cycles - however your curtain isn't a true multiplexed sprite, just a graphics overlay effect - I would expect to reuse the graphics as well for a game situation.

 

>In a game like joust the problem occurs that all the sprites could intersect, so the calculate of the positioining code can be different ( and the ostriches have different colours ) , but in the non intersecting cases it could look pretty good.

 

You would be allowed to have intersections but obviously not the replicated HPOSes with their originals.

 

It would be an interesting challenge to write a 'real' sprite routine to allow 8 completely indepentant sprites on a horizontal line ( even with only 4 visible ) as it takes 12 cycles to change the 3 sprite attributes ( 24 pixels in 160 mode ) at least - so if the 8 sprites were at X positions $40 , $50, ... ,$a0,$b0 hex they would cause problems

 

>Firstly I'm not confusing things - the sprites on C64 have a 320 pixel resolution, and the A8 ones dont. That is a fact.

 

I was replying to the graphics mode 320*200 not the sprite resolution.

 

My original point was that the c64 was much more geared to 320 pixel modes - the Atari has a limited support , but everything is based on 160. All of the underlay tricks are very usefull to 'extend' the 320 support - but they dont match the builtin colour ram.

 

>Also even with all of the player underlay tricks it is not possible to have each 8 pixel ( @320 ) wide character have 2 unique colours ( 4 background, 16 foreground )

 

>( and on the 160 mode there are 4 choices per pixel - but 3 of them can be defined uniquely per 8x8 colour cell )

 

I don't know what you mean by 4 background, 16 foreground in your parentheses.

 

On Atari you can disable/enable any of the GTIA modes at mid-scanline and put in higher color content in 320*200 mode and selecting a GTIA mode (one STA) automatically switches in/out a 16-color or 16-shade or custom 9-color palette...

 

Extended background colour uses the top 2 bits of the character code to select one of 4 background pallette registers for the 8x8 character ( the foreground colour is set by the colour ram ) - it reduces the charset size to 64 ( it's very similar to the atari charmodes in some ways ) but still in 320 pixel mode

 

Switching GTIA mode on/off is ok - but I really would prefer switching between normal 4 colour mode with no sideeffects ... On the C64 each character can be 8x8 (320) or 8x4(160) with no restrictions, and no need for timing

[Crazyace]

Sprite overlays and interrupts are there on the C64 although not as accurate to do horizontal split windows.

 

I wonder then how is this possible, with multiplexed moving sprites (see below). remember every time a sprite changes Y coord the timing changes, and here we have quite some of them, with horizontal split windows, and this is just one example of dozens of routines like this.

 

 

Can you move the whole thing up and down without any distorsions?

 

On the Atari it takes "some commands"...

 

Can the Atari even display this? The sprites are high res. It's no point having 'some commands' to move up and down if you cant reproduce the original.

 

There are some stunning demos on both machines - and on both machines the best effects are much more than just 'some commands'

I dont understand why there is so much 'blind' arguing - The Atari is amazing because it had graphics features unmatched at it's launch - The C64 is also amazing , not just for the chips, but also for Tramiel - who really produced a 'mass market' computer at prices way lower than the competition.

If you read the various Atari history's you can see that Warner was already ruining the potential of the machine - ( Threatening to sue someone who writes software for your computer? ) way before the C64 or Tramiels takeover

[Tezz]

It's a well timed list actually.. I can tell you that some of these games you've listed will soon be ticked off the list of unavailable for the A8

Yeah, we've already seen the Spectrum emulator

Joking aside, the ones I'm refering to are currently being ported/converted from the C64 and are in progress.

[Cybergoth]

Joking aside, the ones I'm refering to are currently being ported/converted from the C64 and are in progress.

 

Fine, that's very cool news to hear

[Oswald]

Sprite overlays and interrupts are there on the C64 although not as accurate to do horizontal split windows.

 

I wonder then how is this possible, with multiplexed moving sprites (see below). remember every time a sprite changes Y coord the timing changes, and here we have quite some of them, with horizontal split windows, and this is just one example of dozens of routines like this.

 

 

Can you move the whole thing up and down without any distorsions?

 

On the Atari it takes "some commands"...

 

on the c64 it takes also "some commands"

[Oswald]

On PAL Atari you will have different colors even if you shift the pattern 2 hires pixels because of the 16/10 instead of 16/8 color carrier vs pixel ratio.

 

so atari has problem with displaying color in 320x resolutions?

[Oswald]

With some C64 bias I guess?

 

DotC is another example where the "unused" benifits of the A8 were...

 

Just 2 conversons. But the title is already not reachable for the C64. With some palette rolling, the screen would look similar to the 16 bit pendants with the metallic shine.

 

A sad thing that they missed to create such games on the A8. They would have been pearls of their time. Even in a "pre C64 time"....

 

 

ammazgin really. a8 can do a better picture than something that was done 20 years ago for the c64

[atariksi]

Sprite overlays and interrupts are there on the C64 although not as accurate to do horizontal split windows.

 

I wonder then how is this possible, with multiplexed moving sprites (see below). remember every time a sprite changes Y coord the timing changes, and here we have quite some of them, with horizontal split windows, and this is just one example of dozens of routines like this.

...

 

You need to check the interval at which they are doing horizontal splitting. Even if you have a stable enough raster and set up your IRQ, your interval for splits will be at a lower resolution. That's what I meant by accuracy. On Atari in most modes (except lines where char data is fetched), you can set up split basically at every other CPU clock point and in lower resolution modes, the interval decreases. Memory refreshes occur on left side of display which usually won't require a split and adjustments in HBlanking can be used for the left 30%.

 

>>On the first blank vertical line, Atari shows correct color but on the next one, it does not show same color although it should. Now show me C64 code that does the above but also shows the same color consistently.

 

>check any scrolling game with hires pixels ?! how hard is that ? turrican has that fex.

 

Don't have any to check out. I am doubting that pixels can retain their color at 1/320 pixel accuracy given NTSC standard.

[atariksi]

>Can the Atari even display this? The sprites are high res. It's no point having 'some commands' to move up and down if you cant reproduce the original.

 

Is it a static image or are the bubbles or something else moving?