Atari v Commodore

[atariksi]

Does anybody have any views on where any titles were launched on both Atari and Commodore - and the Atari version is the better of the two?

 

Steve

 

I'd say it wouldn't prove much either way. Whichever platform the devoloper liked better would have more resources to produce a better product and/or if you put an atari fan on the a8 and c64 version, the atari would be better and vice versa.

 

Developer may be subjective or biased, but there is definitely advantage of hardware resources overall for Atari (more flexibility) when looked at objectively as discussed mostly in this thread.

[sl0re]

Does anybody have any views on where any titles were launched on both Atari and Commodore - and the Atari version is the better of the two?

 

Steve

 

I'd say it wouldn't prove much either way. Whichever platform the devoloper liked better would have more resources to produce a better product and/or if you put an atari fan on the a8 and c64 version, the atari would be better and vice versa.

 

Developer may be subjective or biased, but there is definitely advantage of hardware resources overall for Atari (more flexibility) when looked at objectively as discussed mostly in this thread.

 

I think the A8s are better myself. I just don't think the argument I addressed did much to prove that point.

 

Example: Commodore sold more units. More so than not, companies put more time and effort into the C64 version because of this (re: its a larger market). Wouldn't surprise me a bit if the C64 versions of many games [ported to both] were better... but, that doesn't make the C64 hardware objectively better.

 

Counter intuitively, it’s probably better to not do apples to apples… take the very best games from each (even unlike) and use them for a comparison… The games where the developers loved the platform, they worked on, and used it to its fullest potential…

[R6502A]

how much better the SID really is.

So this got me to thinking.

 

Sid chips and Sid instruction sets have been used in a couple of stand alone commercial synthesizers and sequencers (Elektron SidStation & Monomachine).

 

Also, if I recall from back in later 80's there was a commercial multi channel A/D capture board (PC based I think) that could use up to 8 of them. Can't for the life of my remember the name of that tho. I do remember the ads in some of my old science and technology related magazines from those days. Dark ad, mostly brown and black, with a picture of the card floating with a bunch of leds along the backplane and wire terminal ports on the card with a bunch of sockets for you to install the sids into. Can't remember if they sold with it with a chips already installed option. Holy crap what was the name of that thing......Me think's I'll be digging through boxes of magazines this weekend. Unless someone else can remember and spare me the trouble. ... PLEASE, someone else remember, I don't want to go on that mission.

 

 

Has the Pokey ever been used in any stand alone commercial applications?

 

Pokey has been used in a few Atari Arcade cabinets. I can't quite remember which ones.

[atarian63]

how much better the SID really is.

So this got me to thinking.

 

Sid chips and Sid instruction sets have been used in a couple of stand alone commercial synthesizers and sequencers (Elektron SidStation & Monomachine).

 

Also, if I recall from back in later 80's there was a commercial multi channel A/D capture board (PC based I think) that could use up to 8 of them. Can't for the life of my remember the name of that tho. I do remember the ads in some of my old science and technology related magazines from those days. Dark ad, mostly brown and black, with a picture of the card floating with a bunch of leds along the backplane and wire terminal ports on the card with a bunch of sockets for you to install the sids into. Can't remember if they sold with it with a chips already installed option. Holy crap what was the name of that thing......Me think's I'll be digging through boxes of magazines this weekend. Unless someone else can remember and spare me the trouble. ... PLEASE, someone else remember, I don't want to go on that mission.

 

 

Has the Pokey ever been used in any stand alone commercial applications?

 

Pokey has been used in a few Atari Arcade cabinets. I can't quite remember which ones.

Crystal Castles and many,many others, usually dual pokey.

[Rybags]

Looking quickly with MAME...

 

Many games from Atari used Pokey, most at lower speed than the A8 computers. Many in dual/quad configuration and also (not listed) many games used them in conjunction with other dedicated sound generators, DMA sound systems, and/or discrete hardware.

 

Alpha One: 2x @ 1.25 MHz

Asteroids Deluxe: 1x @ 1.5 MHz

Battlezone: 1x 1.5 MHz

Black Widow 2x 1.5

Bradley Trainer: 1x1.5

Centipede: 1.152

Cloak & Dagger: 2x1.5

Cloud 9: 2x1.5

Crystal Castles: 2x1.25

Food Fight: 3x 600 KHz

Gravitar: 2x1.5 MHz

I, Robot: 4x1.25

Liberator: 2x1.78979

Lunar Battle: 2x1.5

Major Havoc: 4x1.25

Millipede: 2x1.512

Missile Command 1x1.25

Quantum: 2x 600 KHz

Qwak: 2x1.512 Mhz

Red Baron: 1x1.5 MHz

Return of the Jedi: 4x1.512

Runaway: 2x1.512

Space Duel: 2x1.5

Star Wars: 4x1.5

Super Missile Attack: 1x1.25

Tempest: 2x1.512

Tunnel Hunt: 2x1.2096

Warlords: 1x1.512

720 Degrees: 2x1.789772

APB: 2x1.789772

Championship Sprint: 2x1.789772

The Empire Strikes Back: 4x1.5

Gauntlet II: 1.789772

Indianna Jones & the Temple of Doom: 1x1.789772

Marble Madness: 1x1.789772

Paperboy: 2x1.789772

Peter Pack Rat: 1x1.789772

Road Blasters: 1x1.789772

Road Runner: 1x1.789772

Super Sprint: 2x1.789772

Tetris: 2x1.789772

Toonin': 1x 1.7895

Vindicators: 1x 1.7895

[emkay]

Counter intuitively, it’s probably better to not do apples to apples… take the very best games from each (even unlike) and use them for a comparison… The games where the developers loved the platform, they worked on, and used it to its fullest potential…

 

So what would you assume are the Turricans and Mayhem in Monsterlands on the A8?

OK, "today" we have "the unique" Yoomp! and some conversions. But it is a kind of ideology to have games that run on emulations without having the best what the A8 can give in graphics and sound.

What's particular missing is all games like ZakMcKracken or Maniac Mansion. And as we have seen with the "miracle" demo from Mapa , we can have 20 colours per scanline without using multiplexing or colour splits per scanline. Such games could easily use 128 colours for the pictures with even more than 20 colours per scanline then.

[atariksi]

It's not a strange idea to compare standard PC h/w resources to Atari h/w resources or any other machine for that matter...

HPET may have been required by Microsoft recently, but neither the HPET nor Vista are to be found in every PC...

There are problems with RDTSC/PM timers as first they don't generate IRQ-- you can poll them...

The 1.19Mhz timer is the ONLY one which is present in EVERY PC.

 

I wasn't talking about the comparison between PC and Atari hardware. Personally, I think this comparison doesn't make much sense, but that wasn't my point.

 

My point was about what hardware timers are available in a PC. You claimed that HPET was rare and/or non-standard, and that is wrong. You claimed that only high-end and/or non-standard PCs have other timers than the 1.19 MHz PIT, and that is wrong. Most PCs have, and they had for many years, several other timers available as standard.

...

It's non-standard as far as every pc (or even most pcs) having it. If by standard you mean someone declaring it a standard then that's not what I mean. I gave the example of the Atari 8-bit computer having the same timer regardless of which machine. HPET is relatively new; I would say less than 1% of PCs have it. As I stated, I have a 2.8Ghz DELL machine that does not have it and I bet there are millions of people who have this or similar machines w/o HPET. I don't get what you mean by APIC timer-- APIC is just the interrupt controller. There's a PM timer but that does not generate IRQ and has I/O port read overhead. As you may know I/O port reading is slow and will drop the accuracy even if it's at a higher frequency.

...

Okay, I got the latest Intel manuals regarding APIC (Nov. 2007 and July 2008). There is support for a timer using Local APIC (not I/O APIC) along with IRQ routing that is usually done by 8259. They added some of the 8254 functionality and most of the 8259 functionality into an APIC. My points still hold regarding overhead problems, compatibility issues, etc. And regarding exactness, which the PIT gives at 840 ns, Intel itself declares:

 

"The APIC timer may temporarily stop while the processor is in deep C-states or during transitions caused by enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology."

 

APIC feeds off the bus clock which is less accurate than RDTSC and also requires calibration to another accurate timing reference since its frequency varies with different systems. It's not supported in Windows systems that allow writing directly to 8259. So it's basically a NEW piece of hardware that has to be run at cost of compatibility. And accuracy will suffer once you access standard I/O ports.

[Rybags]

Why does it matter? The entire point of the PC architecture is to have meanial tasks offloaded to devices on PCI cards and the like.

 

And if you're doing something realtime that depends on sub-nanosecond accuracy, you're not going to get it anyway with a consumer level motherboard supplying a master clock to a consumer level CPU.

[Rom Hunter]

from my perspective, I just prefer POKEY sound. SID always had a "cheap" sound for me. Just a preference.

LOL

 

Tell that to Martin Galway, Rob Hubbard and Jeroen Tel.

 

[atariksi]

Does anybody have any views on where any titles were launched on both Atari and Commodore - and the Atari version is the better of the two?

 

Steve

 

I'd say it wouldn't prove much either way. Whichever platform the devoloper liked better would have more resources to produce a better product and/or if you put an atari fan on the a8 and c64 version, the atari would be better and vice versa.

 

Developer may be subjective or biased, but there is definitely advantage of hardware resources overall for Atari (more flexibility) when looked at objectively as discussed mostly in this thread.

 

I think the A8s are better myself. I just don't think the argument I addressed did much to prove that point.

 

Example: Commodore sold more units. More so than not, companies put more time and effort into the C64 version because of this (re: its a larger market). Wouldn't surprise me a bit if the C64 versions of many games [ported to both] were better... but, that doesn't make the C64 hardware objectively better.

...

 

Agree.

 

>Counter intuitively, it’s probably better to not do apples to apples… take the very best games from each (even unlike) and use them for a comparison… The games where the developers loved the platform, they worked on, and used it to its fullest potential…

 

I develop other stuff besides games so no sense in restricting to games. Also, there are hardware aspects on both machines that the best existing games do not use because they aren't needed for the target game.

[atariksi]

Why does it matter? The entire point of the PC architecture is to have meanial tasks offloaded to devices on PCI cards and the like.

 

And if you're doing something realtime that depends on sub-nanosecond accuracy, you're not going to get it anyway with a consumer level motherboard supplying a master clock to a consumer level CPU.

 

In the context, we were talking about Atari IRQ accuracy vs. standard PC IRQ accuracy (that's sub-microsecond accuracy not sub-nanosecond).

[emkay]

from my perspective, I just prefer POKEY sound. SID always had a "cheap" sound for me. Just a preference.

LOL

 

Tell that to Martin Galway, Rob Hubbard and Jeroen Tel.

 

 

Well "normal" people wouldn't say that 3,5kHz music is real music. But this cut helped to make music very well. Cut the sounds of the POKEY chip there and you have nice high sounds with higher variations and clean sawtooths at deeper frequencies.

As you might have recognized in my Xmas tune, POKEY's frequency range is much higher, leaving more possibilites for sound FX.

[peteym5]

I made the point a few pages back also about the Atari being the more versatile compared to any 8-bit computer of the early 80's. Not only going up against the Commodores, but against the Apple IIs, TRS80s, Spectrums, and TI-99s. Really did not get more flexible until 16/32 bit computers based on the 80x86 or 68000 processors were available. Still think the 4th sound channel makes a big difference in combining music and sound effects, 2 or 3 does not cut it. The Sid may be able to play better notes, but if you want sound effects, you have only 2 channels for music. Maybe 3 if you don't mind having one interrupted to play effects. Noticed 2 or 3 channels is consistent with Jack Tremials released systems.

 

I cannot say no other system could combine graphics and text modes in the way the ANTIC/GTIA does. Makes it very efficient on how memory is going to be used for an application. Having text lines with a bitmap mode saves on memory and CPU usage if someone wanted to have a scoreboard on the screen. Think other systems had it, but did not offer the control the Atari has.

 

Think the Atari still holds out for a higher CPU speed at 1.79mhz of the for-mentioned systems, only the IBM-PC at 4.77/8 mhz. It wasn't until the Amiga or VGA based PC before we had computer systems the can drive better graphics and sound. My first experience with VGA PCs were around 25 to 40 mhz, there were just barely exceeding the game play on an Atari-8 bit or even a C64.

 

Something I have to give credit for is having the Atari 8-DOS having a similar file structure to that of MS-DOS. Most of the programming I do with PCs concerning file management and randomly accessing files came from stuff I learned on the Atari.

[atariksi]

I made the point a few pages back also about the Atari being the more versatile compared to any 8-bit computer of the early 80's. Not only going up against the Commodores, but against the Apple IIs, TRS80s, Spectrums, and TI-99s. Really did not get more flexible until 16/32 bit computers based on the 80x86 or 68000 processors were available. Still think the 4th sound channel makes a big difference in combining music and sound effects, 2 or 3 does not cut it. The Sid may be able to play better notes, but if you want sound effects, you have only 2 channels for music. Maybe 3 if you don't mind having one interrupted to play effects. Noticed 2 or 3 channels is consistent with Jack Tremials released systems.

 

I cannot say no other system could combine graphics and text modes in the way the ANTIC/GTIA does. Makes it very efficient on how memory is going to be used for an application. Having text lines with a bitmap mode saves on memory and CPU usage if someone wanted to have a scoreboard on the screen. Think other systems had it, but did not offer the control the Atari has.

 

Think the Atari still holds out for a higher CPU speed at 1.79mhz of the for-mentioned systems, only the IBM-PC at 4.77/8 mhz. It wasn't until the Amiga or VGA based PC before we had computer systems the can drive better graphics and sound. My first experience with VGA PCs were around 25 to 40 mhz, there were just barely exceeding the game play on an Atari-8 bit or even a C64.

 

Something I have to give credit for is having the Atari 8-DOS having a similar file structure to that of MS-DOS. Most of the programming I do with PCs concerning file management and randomly accessing files came from stuff I learned on the Atari.

 

PC CGA had a 320*200 mode with optional 4-line text window like Atari but text window wasn't a real text mode. All the CGA/EGA/VGA had problems updating their display when there was lots of motion given the lack of sprites until VESA local bus. So their games weren't that smooth and color choice was also limited until VGA. Of course, there was no sound card at all-- just a beep. But one thing that was good even in the 1980s was they were backward compatible on hardware level-- so you could run CGA stuff on EGA and VGA; and 8088 code on 80286/80386/etc... Also their disk drives packed more data per disk.

[atarian63]

from my perspective, I just prefer POKEY sound. SID always had a "cheap" sound for me. Just a preference.

LOL

 

Tell that to Martin Galway, Rob Hubbard and Jeroen Tel.

 

Ok.

I prefer Pokey to Sid as the SID sounds cheap.

There you go!

[supercat]

To be honest 4bit + 4bit is not equal to 8bit ... It's actually 5bit

 

Well, 5.5 bits if one doesn't mind generating some extra noise at the sample rate (and harmonics thereof) and the sample rate is high enough that aliasing isn't a problem. Set one of the waves to be full-time "on" and the other to 50% duty cycle. Voila--46 output levels instead of 31.

[Rybags]

More like "simulated 6 bit".

 

2 voices combined at max amplitude = Level of 31.

1 voice at max amplitude = 15

remaining voice for levels 0-15.

 

I've also got something I worked on that plays 8 bit samples by interpolation on a single voice - sounds better than normal 4-bit although not enough so to justify the doubled RAM use and 100% need for the CPU time.

[Allas]

39 - SEAFOX

 

Atari screenshots

 

Really this game is very slow for my taste. But, when levels are advanced, C64 version is too slow to manage the sprites. However, there is better and more colors on Atari version.

 

C64 screenshots

[potatohead]

IMHO, this game rules on Atari.

 

There are strong vertical elements and a lot of opportunities for color. A bit slow for me too, but when it gets intense, the slowness kind of fades, leaving you with what seems like a rushed experience.

 

I've always liked this game.

[Godzilla]

from my perspective, I just prefer POKEY sound. SID always had a "cheap" sound for me. Just a preference.

LOL

 

Tell that to Martin Galway, Rob Hubbard and Jeroen Tel.

 

Ok.

I prefer Pokey to Sid as the SID sounds cheap.

There you go!

 

from a purely hardware perspective, 4 voices is better than 3, but that being said, the sound of the sid is one of my favorite synthesizers of all time, if not my favorite. crunchy creepy goodness. wizball, rambo II and delta among MANY others

[Fröhn]

I prefer Pokey to Sid as the SID sounds cheap.

There you go!

 

from a purely hardware perspective, 4 voices is better than 3, but that being said, the sound of the sid is one of my favorite synthesizers of all time, if not my favorite. crunchy creepy goodness. wizball, rambo II and delta among MANY others

And from a purely hardware perspective:

 

16 bits frequency is better than 8 bits frequency

12 bits pulse width is better than 0 bits pulse width

12 bits filter cutoff frequency is better than 0 bits filter cutoff frequency

4 bits filter resonance is better than 0 bits filter resonance

Triangle+Sawtooth waves are better than no triangle+sawtooth waves

etc

[ThomSW]

16 bits frequency is better than 8 bits frequency

12 bits pulse width is better than 0 bits pulse width

12 bits filter cutoff frequency is better than 0 bits filter cutoff frequency

4 bits filter resonance is better than 0 bits filter resonance

Triangle+Sawtooth waves are better than no triangle+sawtooth waves

etc

[Fröhn]

[emkay]

16 bits frequency is better than 8 bits frequency

12 bits pulse width is better than 0 bits pulse width

12 bits filter cutoff frequency is better than 0 bits filter cutoff frequency

4 bits filter resonance is better than 0 bits filter resonance

Triangle+Sawtooth waves are better than no triangle+sawtooth waves

etc

 

That's odd a standard Piano has 88 Keys, thus 7 bit resulotion. But you can make better music than with a SID

Analogue(!) is better than 12 Bit Pulse width (which actually seems is only 8 bit)

Filter, ok, but POKEY has independant filters for thousands of possibilities, including cutting the wave at an analogue value.

4 voices are better then 3 voices (actually 5 voices are better than three when counting both sound gens. )

And Sawtooth = Sawtooth / triangle = triangle

Multiple Clockings are better than a standard 1MHz clocking

 

It's all nuts.... those comparisions.

The only and real difference there, is the pre-defined interface for programming the SID, while POKEY has to run a software "Interface" there...

[potatohead]

This highlights the differences between the machines.

 

C64 was built with very specific goals in mind. Optimized for what was seen at the time as the best overall comprimise in terms of performance and experiences possible for the end-user.

 

SID does great tunes. Go outside of that, and it's increasingly spotty.

 

POKEY does lots of stuff, and again in classic Atari fashion, is driven by software. The difference is this:

 

Over time, people continue to get smarter about how they write software. More capability is there, and it's there over a wider range of possible experiences on Atari than it is on most other machines, including C64.

 

Throughout this thread, I see this as a recurring theme. Anything that's outside that C64 scope of possible tasks is devalued so that the focus of the discussion comes back to those things it does well.

 

Sorry, but having lots of options and a more software driven design has more value than it's often given credit for. As we see emulators improve, we will see POKEY sounds improve. And they will do so, over a wider range of effects than we will see on SID.

 

I like SID, I think it just nails game tunes. Don't get me wrong there. But, it's not as good of a general purpose sound system as POKEY is. Graphically, the machines are the same with respect to one another as well. C64 does a set of graphical tasks very well. Atari does an extremely wide set of graphical tasks well, with only a couple of hardware limitations. How well they happen is a function of how hard people want to get after it, not some hardware cap.

 

To be fair, this is done with Atari also. However, it isn't done as often and that speaks to the greater overall utility of the machine as a whole, where graphics and sound is concerned.

Edited January 4, 2009 by potatohead