Atari v Commodore

[potatohead]

The trust issue can be resolved.

 

Al set a time limit on edits. This was a very good move. The temptation might be to fire back a response, and we all do. However, some waiting brings levity to the expression (often good), and will lock in theirs, rendering this matter moot.

[atariksi]

True, but you still have the cycles!

 

Latency on the PC is higher, because of the software layers. I personally do not believe it is so high as to not be manageable. Additionally, there appears we are not going to avoid this. So then, we have old 8 bit computers and micros, where that just isn't a problem!

 

Latency is one problem due to software layers, but i/o speed of PC is not at CPU speed nor even at AGP VGA speed. If your system has a 8259-based PIC (programmable interrupt controller), it's EOI (OUT 20h,AL) instruction along takes about 1 microsecond to execute. Various I/O instructions are around this figure-- some a little faster some slower. So if you had to execute multiple of these I/O instructions to do a transfer via USB, you can see the time adds up to more than what it takes to do an LDA 54016 on Atari.

 

Software latency is on top of the I/O speed.

[Wolfram]

Hear, hear. Oswald, I apologize for even the suggestion of comparison to such a prick. Likewise, Frohn - I disagree on some points but you still have my respect.

 

I find it interesting how much DAMAGE blow-hards like Wolfram actually do for the Commodore community. Wolfram (I know you're reading (in chicken-shit fashion and won't address this issue).

 

I dont think my behaviour does damage. You wear the a8 glasses and dont notice, how everyone except the "atari versions of Fröhn" like Bryan for example, or Heaven, goes on calling me soar loser, fucker, and such just attacking me in person endlessly. While you will find me not doing these name callings, I just ignore them, because I'd like to argue about numbers, which behaviour you simply address as "chicken-shit" fashion. You bring some forums as examples how this should settle, and I just agree, there are no namecallings, no one calls anyone behaving like a "chicken-shit" because he's just ignoring the post who dont do anything but attack someone in person.

 

Remember the disk drive speed debate? You have asked for numbers (in very angry style, shouting in capitalls, generalizing how I dont bring proofs, calling what I said bullshit, saying I never argue correctly etc etc) and I have just ignored or your attacks, and politely I have gave you your numbers, and the end result was that I was right. Using real disk drives on both sides, or in same cases even a8 disk simulators for comparison the 1541 is faster.

 

And likewise the guys over on Lemon64, I have no problem admitting (just read back a few pages for proof) that the A8 cpu is faster, Display list is a nice feature, ROF is faster etc. etc. what makes THIS thread going on forever some guys not being able to accept some of the c64's similarly obvious strengths.

 

Like atariksi comes and says stuff like "CIA is superior but from a software point its useless compared to what the PIA has to offer". Can maybe YOU explain me how CIA is useless, when it can do everything PIA does, and MORE. Can you explain me the chips doing keyboards/joys/paddles/c64 sio/rs232/parallel I/O/etc etc how are useless for the software?

 

 

So I went to Lemon64, expeciting a Borg Collective of buttholes like the Wolfram.

 

and what is your reason calling me a butthole ? You're and others just going on and on calling me names. I have given you the numbers, I am not attacking anyone in person, like many of you do here with all this namecalling etc, and I end up being the butthole.? You and others just turned the whole thing into a personal debate! Whats the problem? Its like 5-6 guys trying to bully me off the site because I will just not accept stuff like "atari's multicolor sprites are superior" or "c64 OS cant buffer keystrokes" or "CIA is useless", and so on.

 

 

Wolfram - I suggest you apologize for your attempts at making all Commodore users look like pricks, and just admit that it's a personal problem you have, or you wouldn't be here. Everyone's on to you now.

 

so you are there on it again. I will just ignore all this shit you are throwing on me, and this was the last time I have adressed this issue.

[Wolfram]

Regarding joystick ports, it's not a minor difference if you are transferring data through it.

 

so its a minor difference, because c64 almost never uses the joystick ports for transferring data. the c64 uses in 99% of the time its serial port or its parallel port.

 

and in these days there are cartridges doing TCP/IP networking, which are the shit, and cartridges using memory cards. joystick porti I/O on the c64 is a rare non standard solution.

[Wolfram]

It was a done topic until it was perked up again due to misinformation being spread regarding it. Way back in this thread, I did comparison of joystick i/o for PCs, C64s, Atari STs, Atari 8-bit, Amiga, etc. and the results were:

 

Atari 8-bit > Amiga > C64 > Atari ST > PCs. PCs, to be fair, don't have digital joysticks so their analog joystick timing through port 201h suffers through the waiting for one-shots to complete.

 

which is a pointless&unfair comparison. because except the A8 all of the listed computers have and use another solution for I/O and not their joystick port.

 

to repeat myself this comparison is like:

 

- hey my car's exhaust is better than your because it can blow dust off better than yours!

- thats true, but my car came with a vacuum cleaner t do that job, and it can suck dust in, which is even better

- bah, dont change the subject its exhaust vs exhaust!!

 

[potatohead]

So?

[atariksi]

If you consider when 1541 came out and the hardware modded 1050s available at that time, that would be a fair comparison. You are numbers are all false because you forgot add overhead for uploading loaders of which there are hundreds of versions.

There have been hardware mods to the 1541 aswell. DolphinDOS or Prologic DOS being two of them. Those add RAM, parallel cable and sometimes a faster CPU to the drive so they can read a whole track in one revolution, buffer it and send it to C64 in minimum time. Those are even faster than Action Replay fastloaders but for most people the AR loader was good enough especially considering that you didn't have to mod your hardware for it.

 

Those multifunction carts (Final Cartridge 3, Action Replay 5 or 6) have been pretty standard for a C64 user since ~1985. Before FC3 there was other carts like "Epyx Fast Load" or "KCS Power Cart" which had slower fastloaders (6x speed instead of the 10x or 15x speeds of FC3/AR6). They also added a lot of other nice tools, for example F-key presets so you didn't have to type weird basic commands to read directory and load files together with other basic extensions, and ofcourse a machine language monitor.

 

And: No I didn't forget the overhead for uploading the code. I measured loading times from the moment I pressed the F-key to load the file until the cursor reappears. This includes the upload time of the code and also the directory scanning + file seek.

 

The analysis is incomplete. You haven't mentioned how much CPU time you have available while your particular fast loader is working. How many bytes is the fast loader that is getting uploaded as compare to the file size since you just mentioned the total size. You have to consider the fact that Atari SIO transfer is being done by POKEY HARDWARE so you can actually have other things going on while doing disk i/o (unless you use polled mode). I can currently read SIO serial register, joystick port, and be playing audio DACs and display imagery and/or download new code all together. The byte that is being inputted is automatically going into shift register without any CPU involved. And the 59659bps used by enhanced drives or drive simulator is just one speed setting. If I run the simulator from DOS, for example, I can transfer 70kbps easily using internally clocked SIO.

 

So if you had a space invaders which is 4K (it's 4K on Atari) then you add fast loader code and it becomes 4.5K and it takes 5 seconds to load that does not mean it's 4.5/5 = 0.9kbps but it's still 4K/5 since the 0.5K is the overhead. And during loading, is the CPU free.

[potatohead]

Of course it's slower on the PC, and of course it's hardware.

 

That is the cost of general purpose computing. And despite that cost, we still essentially have those cycles, no matter how ugly. Those that want to realize a very interactive experience can do so.

 

Where those limits are not enough, we don't use a PC!

[Fröhn]

The analysis is incomplete. You haven't mentioned how much CPU time you have available while your particular fast loader is working. How many bytes is the fast loader that is getting uploaded as compare to the file size since you just mentioned the total size. You have to consider the fact that Atari SIO transfer is being done by POKEY HARDWARE so you can actually have other things going on while doing disk i/o (unless you use polled mode). I can currently read SIO serial register, joystick port, and be playing audio DACs and display imagery and/or download new code all together.

C64 load routines can also be written in ways that they allow for other tasks aswell. Look at all the demos and games which do fast loading while all kinds of stuff is happening on the screen. And concerning the uploaded fastload routine size: The drive has a memory of 2k, so all fastloaders are smaller than that. Probably around 1k.

[Crazyace]

The best thing about the 1541 ( apart from the 170k vs 90k on my 810 ) was the fact that no extra h/w was required for the fast loaders, so in that way it was superior.

But both of them were pretty rubbish compared to the Apple 2 discs..

[Fröhn]

But both of them were pretty rubbish compared to the Apple 2 discs..

Depends on what you want. For pure speed ofcourse Apple2 drives were the best because the main computer handled all the drive hardware stuff and because of that everything was loaded directly to memory. But if you want to do anything else during loading, the 1541/1050 method of having an external drive read the data from the physical disk and buffer it for you until the computer downloads the data from drive memory is the way to go.

[atariksi]

The best thing about the 1541 ( apart from the 170k vs 90k on my 810 ) was the fact that no extra h/w was required for the fast loaders, so in that way it was superior.

But both of them were pretty rubbish compared to the Apple 2 discs..

 

You still have no boot option even with fast loaders. And when you use a disk simulator, you don't necesserly need extra h/w either and it beats both 1541 and 1050/810 in storage and speed. An atari plus is that you can basically have all your disks on a laptop and boot up any disk. I can even boot up the Atari machine with a BASIC program written in a PC editor.

[atariksi]

Of course it's slower on the PC, and of course it's hardware.

 

That is the cost of general purpose computing. And despite that cost, we still essentially have those cycles, no matter how ugly. Those that want to realize a very interactive experience can do so.

 

Where those limits are not enough, we don't use a PC!

 

Yes, you can use the joystick perfectly well on a PC as you can on C64 but the facts are Atari 8-bit is superior in performance. It may not matter that much if you are only going to read the joystick once a frame or something, but we're analyzing hardware aspects and that's one of them. Actually, C64 would get the worst rating if you started doing keyboard and joystick i/o together since PC and Atari can do interrupt based keyboard i/o whereas C64 OS won't be able to buffer any keys while joystick i/o was taking place.

 

Looking at mathematical computations, we can state a similar comparison that:

 

PC > Atari ST > Amiga > Atari 8-bit > C64

 

This is assuming standard machines (not with math coprocessors).

[Wolfram]

Actually, C64 would get the worst rating if you started doing keyboard and joystick i/o together since PC and Atari can do interrupt based keyboard i/o whereas C64 OS won't be able to buffer any keys while joystick i/o was taking place.

 

Looking at mathematical computations, we can state a similar comparison that:

 

PC > Atari ST > Amiga > Atari 8-bit > C64

 

This is assuming standard machines (not with math coprocessors).

 

 

The c64 OS doesnt use the joystick ports for I/O because they were never intended to be. (The c64 OS infact never cares about joystick ports.) c64 has a dedicated parallel and serial I/O port, for doing (DATA) I/O, and beside using that it can just happily read the keyboard too. Not that it's a real life like situation, that you do both loading/typing/joystick movements at the same time. Does your solution on atari support reading keyboard/loading on the same time? Is there any use of that?

[Fröhn]

You still have no boot option even with fast loaders.

But on the other hand C64 doesn't need to boot the DOS from disk all the time since the DOS is in ROM.

 

An atari plus is that you can basically have all your disks on a laptop and boot up any disk.

I have to pull out my 10 year old PC to do that. None of my current PCs are SIO2PC compatible.

[Heaven/TQA]

Hear, hear. Oswald, I apologize for even the suggestion of comparison to such a prick. Likewise, Frohn - I disagree on some points but you still have my respect.

 

I find it interesting how much DAMAGE blow-hards like Wolfram actually do for the Commodore community. Wolfram (I know you're reading (in chicken-shit fashion and won't address this issue).

 

I dont think my behaviour does damage. You wear the a8 glasses and dont notice, how everyone except the "atari versions of Fröhn" like Bryan for example, or Heaven, goes on calling me soar loser, fucker, and such just attacking me in person endlessly. While you will find me not doing these name callings, I just ignore them, because I'd like to argue about numbers, which behaviour you simply address as "chicken-shit" fashion. You bring some forums as examples how this should settle, and I just agree, there are no namecallings, no one calls anyone behaving like a "chicken-shit" because he's just ignoring the post who dont do anything but attack someone in person.

 

Remember the disk drive speed debate? You have asked for numbers (in very angry style, shouting in capitalls, generalizing how I dont bring proofs, calling what I said bullshit, saying I never argue correctly etc etc) and I have just ignored or your attacks, and politely I have gave you your numbers, and the end result was that I was right. Using real disk drives on both sides, or in same cases even a8 disk simulators for comparison the 1541 is faster.

 

And likewise the guys over on Lemon64, I have no problem admitting (just read back a few pages for proof) that the A8 cpu is faster, Display list is a nice feature, ROF is faster etc. etc. what makes THIS thread going on forever some guys not being able to accept some of the c64's similarly obvious strengths.

 

Like atariksi comes and says stuff like "CIA is superior but from a software point its useless compared to what the PIA has to offer". Can maybe YOU explain me how CIA is useless, when it can do everything PIA does, and MORE. Can you explain me the chips doing keyboards/joys/paddles/c64 sio/rs232/parallel I/O/etc etc how are useless for the software?

 

 

So I went to Lemon64, expeciting a Borg Collective of buttholes like the Wolfram.

 

and what is your reason calling me a butthole ? You're and others just going on and on calling me names. I have given you the numbers, I am not attacking anyone in person, like many of you do here with all this namecalling etc, and I end up being the butthole.? You and others just turned the whole thing into a personal debate! Whats the problem? Its like 5-6 guys trying to bully me off the site because I will just not accept stuff like "atari's multicolor sprites are superior" or "c64 OS cant buffer keystrokes" or "CIA is useless", and so on.

 

 

Wolfram - I suggest you apologize for your attempts at making all Commodore users look like pricks, and just admit that it's a personal problem you have, or you wouldn't be here. Everyone's on to you now.

 

so you are there on it again. I will just ignore all this shit you are throwing on me, and this was the last time I have adressed this issue.

 

when did I attack you as a person? I doubt that... it is not attacking when I am saying please read tech docs first...

[Wolfram]

when did I attack you as a person? I doubt that... it is not attacking when I am saying please read tech docs first...

 

re-read. I have listed you as an exception of the attacking crowd

 

edit: ie. I have said quite the contrary.

Edited April 19, 2009 by Wolfram

[dwhyte]

Alternate Reality

 

 

[frogstar_robot]

Regarding joystick ports, it's not a minor difference if you are transferring data through it.

 

Perhaps so but then if the joystick port don't suffice most of the vintage micros have other options. The use case most of the time for a joystick port is that someone is going to plug a controller into it and proceed to play a game. If the correct thing happens quickly enough then the port is Good Enough. And the C-64 ports qualify as Good Enough under the original premise of this thread.

[Bryan]

The standard on PC is the gameport which was later incorporated into the audio cards and/or motherboards. This gameport is accessed via port 201h and it takes approximately 1 ms to read the joystick directions. Even the latest PC I got (Dell 2.8Ghz) has the gameport. You can add USB devices for keyboards/mice/joysticks/etc. but these are non-standard and you have to access them via some API call. Even if you wrote your own low-level method of access, you will find you still need more cycles to read the joystick than Atari 8-bit!

 

I had a dream where it was the future and nobody in their right mind had an old analog stick connected to their PC. In fact, almost all IO devices were connected with a futuristic and standard interface called USB. I also remember how Atari enthusiasts (who were much older in my dream, since it was waaaaay in the future and all) were cheering and bragging about how USB was the descendant of SIO. Oh yes, and there were unicorns and leprechauns and world peace.

 

It was truly a magical dream.

[atariksi]

You still have no boot option even with fast loaders.

But on the other hand C64 doesn't need to boot the DOS from disk all the time since the DOS is in ROM.

 

An atari plus is that you can basically have all your disks on a laptop and boot up any disk.

I have to pull out my 10 year old PC to do that. None of my current PCs are SIO2PC compatible.

 

DOS is not required to boot a disk on Atari. You can boot directly to software application in both cassette and disk. All examples I posted in this thread were boot disks w/no DOS.

 

You can make a simulator using parallel ports, serial ports, or other ports. Modern desktops will allow you to put PCI parallel port and/or serial port in if they already don't have one and laptops are plenty available on Ebay w/parallel ports costing $20 each.

[MaPa]

I have to pull out my 10 year old PC to do that. None of my current PCs are SIO2PC compatible.

 

Just wondering.. why it's not compatible, no COM port available? What PCs do you have?

[atariksi]

The standard on PC is the gameport which was later incorporated into the audio cards and/or motherboards. This gameport is accessed via port 201h and it takes approximately 1 ms to read the joystick directions. Even the latest PC I got (Dell 2.8Ghz) has the gameport. You can add USB devices for keyboards/mice/joysticks/etc. but these are non-standard and you have to access them via some API call. Even if you wrote your own low-level method of access, you will find you still need more cycles to read the joystick than Atari 8-bit!

 

I had a dream where it was the future and nobody in their right mind had an old analog stick connected to their PC. In fact, almost all IO devices were connected with a futuristic and standard interface called USB. I also remember how Atari enthusiasts (who were much older in my dream, since it was waaaaay in the future and all) were cheering and bragging about how USB was the descendant of SIO. Oh yes, and there were unicorns and leprechauns and world peace.

 

It was truly a magical dream.

 

Windows XP may have built-in drivers for various USB devices so you think they are all standard, but try hooking up the same devices under Windows '98SE and you'll see quickly that you need specific drivers for specific mice, joysticks, flash drives, keyboards, etc. depending on brand. And cycles required to read a joystick device is not a simple IN AL,DX. It's multiple instructions even at low-level and newer OS won't let you do direct i/o anyway.

[Bryan]

I have to pull out my 10 year old PC to do that. None of my current PCs are SIO2PC compatible.

 

Just wondering.. why it's not compatible, no COM port available? What PCs do you have?

 

I think he means he needs one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16812156009

Edited April 19, 2009 by Bryan

[atariksi]

Regarding joystick ports, it's not a minor difference if you are transferring data through it.

 

Perhaps so but then if the joystick port don't suffice most of the vintage micros have other options. The use case most of the time for a joystick port is that someone is going to plug a controller into it and proceed to play a game. If the correct thing happens quickly enough then the port is Good Enough. And the C-64 ports qualify as Good Enough under the original premise of this thread.

 

In all the machines compared, obviously the joystick ports are good enough for reading a joystick (else manufacturer would be in deep trouble for even making a joystick port on their machine). But it was a de facto standard amongst A8, C64, Vic-20, C128, Sega, Amiga, Atari ST, etc. while PC had the 15 pin gameport (called joystick port). So just as they compared parallel port performance back in those days amongst PCs, I compared the joystick i/o. And as I stated before, it allowed you to make a multiplatform device like they made ZIP drives for parallel ports although the parallel port was meant for printers (and was called LPT port). There's no other port on C64 that's also available on the other machines compared. If you want to compare non-standard ports or other ports, be my guest-- it's comparing apples and oranges.