Atari v Commodore

[atariksi]

 

 

 

 

Just to show how far from the original even the C64 pic is.

 

Other than the inevitable green and purple tinging, the C64 is producing quite a nice likeness of it.

 

You need to look closely; C64 image is dithered in addition to being miscolored.

 

You need to take your fanboy glasses OFF and notice the Atari image posted looks much worse and amatuerish in the first place. Use a consistent base for your comparisons please...no wait you can't because you are nothing more than a trolling fanboy trying to use deception and distraction from true bare faced facts to 'win' and argument with inferior 'evidence' like emkay.

 

Maybe you two should hook up outside the forum, sure you will both get on like a house on fire in your own delusional world

 

You need to first read what is written before you reply. THERE IS DITHERING IN THE IMAGE AS COMPARED TO ORIGINAL. Point is valid. You are in some delusion that I'm arguing something else. The atari image posted was conversion from C64 image. I never did any comparison with Atari image except stated that it's a WASTE of time to convert from the C64 paletized image. Stop your mental speculations. You have been PROVEN wrong several times already and shown to be being biased as well. You have yet to reply to all my replies to you.

[atariksi]

You probably are. Gay and unskilled. Gay would be fine...

 

Well, thank you, and it takes one to know one....unskilled that is, and we established that you are quite some posts back already.

"takes one to know one" is kinda cheap.

 

Like a C64 perhaps? They seem to thrive on 'cheap'.

 

Obviously a troll who doesn't read anything other than fanboy Atari posts and skips the rest. The C64 may have been $599 not $799 and the reason why is...dun dun dahhhh....Commodore OWNED MOS Technologies, MOS employees designed the VIC-II and SID for FREE, and produced the chips at COST PRICE for Commodore. The real price of producing the C64 for any other company would have been double the price. These are facts...please pay attention or you will just get ignored for ignorant trolling thanks

 

The reason why Jack Tramiel was the ONLY businessman in the world to ever screw Bill Gates over in business (he didn't pay Microsoft any royalties until the Commodore 128 version of Basic) is because he is clever, and because he was so damned clever in business he bought MOS Technologies with Irvine Gould's money so he would never get screwed over again by a 3rd party chip manufacturer after Texas Instruments screwed him on calculator chips. He did to everyone else with the C64 hardware and MOS ownership what Texas Instruments did to him with calculator chips.

 

What is cheap without a doubt is the horrible spongey 65XE/130XE keyboards (800 and 800XL had great keyboards)...now that was a cheap and nasty machine to type on for sure compared to the C64 frenchman...feel free to try and hurt my feelings with dumb nonfactual off topic insults about that though man LOL

LMAO the original C64 keyboard was a really POS, Not that they 65XE/130XE was great but to say it was worse that C64 is laughable. And the typing angle on C64 , just god awful. Was a dealer, sold both. C64 was crappy.

Also... if Jack was so smart. What happened later when he gave Atari 8bit the jack treatment..

 

Erm are you really saying the XE keyboard is better than the C64? LMAO? now I know you're an idiot the XE keyboard is probably the worst 8bit keyboard out there. It's unusable for anything other than 1 finger typing noobs

 

As for the 8bit...what did you expect him to do....spend the last of his cash on streamlining production costs for something that software houses found a pain in the arse to program compared to the rival 8bit machines out there....OR....make a modern 16bit machine that beat the pants of the Mac in speed and cost

 

This is why this thread is useless, for every wolfram there is 10 atari idiots still sniffing there butts and dreaming of 'what might have been' what actually happened was your 1978 difficult to handle technology was superceded with simpler machines producing the same or better results.

 

XE keyboard better than a proper keyboard....lol yeh ok mate....stop smoking the weed k?

Personal insults are a waste of time, if you can't see what a POS the C64 KB (proper my ass) is then there is no point talking to you. You just won't get it. I can't help you with a different perspective , but to each his own.

 

On the Jack stuff, actually the 800xl's he was moving out cheap, out cheaped the C64 that season and they sold ton's it was a recommended buy from CR that year I believe. Value for the money.

I can't help that there were idiots prior to that time that bought a crappy, cheap machine because it was cheap which it was. The result was a larger base to sell to, therefore more programs, Atari was just fine to program as many have shown here and as evidenced by thousands of titles.

I would have expected him maybe to license some titles, get some venture capital from others and really make a go of the fight. If "Business is war" and you only have $50million sized gun, well you better get some bigger guns! He had great products. A cheap consumer machine (130xe), A Mac Killer(ST) just advertise where someone can see it an push HARD. Lynx,easily the best handheld of it's day, Then later the Jag. Talk about a failure to license and advertise not to mention making programming tools available.DUH! Hard to loose when your are dealt mostly aces. Compromise and get some capital!

 

With Jack it was always about control and everything was personal. I personally am grateful he kept it going (drives Commodore people crazy) and in the end Atari did outlast Commodore. He could have done more that is all. License decent titles for Lynx, advertise in general. Funny thing is that Commodore seemed to have forgotten what to do without Jack as well. Good products, not much advertising.

 

The reality is that often the most popular item is usually not the best one, but one that will do the job in an ok fashion and is cheap. People are cheap.

Applies to cars, phones, etc. Look at Ipod restrictive software, not the best tech(ok iTouch is nice) but it's an apple... the Hanna Montana syndrome.

 

Well if a 'crap' machine can produce a game like Enforcer II with no funny add ons at all then what does that make a so called super powerful games machine like the A8 hmmm? I have yet to see a single fast arcade game as impressive as that piece of coding linked to on youtube by a single member in this forum.

 

The XE keyboard IS a POS and therefore you ARE being an idiot over it. Like I said the 800 and 800XL had great keyboards (and better than the C64 as I said) XEGS keyboard, 65XE and 130XE had a POS for a keyboard. If you take that as a personal insult then I suggest you never leave your house into the world of facts......

 

Most A8 games looked like 1983 first generation C64 stuff at best. The fact was generally games on the C64 looked and sounded better, games on the Amiga looked and sounded better.....history tells the rest.

 

You are living in a dream world mate, if this was a multiformat machine forum where any kind of level headed common sense was required you would have been banned for trolling within days of joining it...sadly the moderators here are Atari fanboys looking at the banning of JUST frohn so it's a shame that I shall have to leave you Atarians in this section of the forum to live in your delusional world that your machine is a super fantastic 100 slamdunk winner against any other 8bit machine ever produced in the world

 

The fact that you calling names to people means you can't deal with it rationally and are getting your biased emotions get the best of you. You saw some game on C64 and haven't seen anything better so that makes C64 better??? That's not logical. That's just your limited experience. Atari hardware is superior whether there are many applications that make use of that superiority is another issue. Why don't you reply to those hardware features mentioned in this thread that prove Atari hardware is superior.

[atariksi]

Rybags said "The CIN+ mode I devised allows 96 colours (with some restrictions) using PAL mixing, with 160 pixels across, and not using the TIP like technique of alternating Modes 9 and 10."

 

Can you post some images?

 

 

They're from running in the emulator. The mode uses colour mixing like APAC and TIP. One GTIA colour line, then a truncated Antic Mode 4 line (single scanline).

 

That allows 5 colours due to the high-bit of the character selecting PF3 instead of PF2. Then the PMG underlay allows a sixth. So, you have 6 luma choices at 160 pixels across, colour representation is still at 80 pixel resolution.

 

You can alternate the colour with the luma lines per frame which gives a fuller effect (ie reduces the "blinds") but at the cost of the flicker effect.

 

That mode is rather memory hungry since it has to use 40 bytes of character set RAM for every 2 luma lines. Only 2 bytes of each 8 bytes for a character cell can be used.

 

I've devised a better system though, you can use bitmap mode instead, and a kernal to reuse Players on a scanline to get virtually the same effect with much less RAM usage.

 

There's a number of possibilities for what you can do - use the Players in OR mode, use them as underlays etc.

 

The pics are kinda quick & dirty implementations... some sort of proper editor would probably showcase the mode better.

 

FC2.zip - Far Cry pic (XEX) - pressing SPACE toggles between interleaving col/luma lines per frame, and static pic.

 

I would say OR method is the way to go with GPRIOR to get the OR of not only players but playfields as well. It does not matter if you can overlay the entire image with sprites since in general imagery is not that you need every color at every point. You want to position the sprites in such a way that it's optimized for the image.

[Artlover]

Only 1423 more posts before this becomes the biggest thread on AA.

 

<chanting>

Come on, lets go, post post post.

Come on, lets go, post post post.

</chanting>

[Bryan]

You are living in a dream world mate, if this was a multiformat machine forum where any kind of level headed common sense was required you would have been banned for trolling within days of joining it...sadly the moderators here are Atari fanboys looking at the banning of JUST frohn so it's a shame that I shall have to leave you Atarians in this section of the forum to live in your delusional world that your machine is a super fantastic 100 slamdunk winner against any other 8bit machine ever produced in the world

 

The problem is that the ones who are most fanatical are the ones who will post the most. There are many Atari fans who recognize that the 64 has strengths that the A8 does not and it offered a unique level of sprite and color freedom. It's cool that some clever coding can coax more graphics performance out of the Atari (and that's what I plan to do), but VIC-II made it easier to produce great looking games.

 

Atari had cool custom hardware in a day when computers didn't have cool custom hardware; but it's unreasonable to think no one would ever challenge it. Just enjoy the hobby and stop caring if some guy in another part of the world sees things your way. After all, what's at stake anymore? Is Commodore going to lose a 64 sale? Is Atari going to lose a XE sale? Are the major software companies going to stop supporting us? Is the 8-bit section at Wal-Mart going to shrink? :

 

BTW, Fröhn was banned for losing his temper and making a personal attack. If you think similar statements were made by others perhaps you should alert a Moderator.

[atariksi]

Conclusion: frenchmen still surrender monkey without ANY kind of skills apart from random trolling. Have you done ANYTHING valueable in your life at all? Your wife must be pretty disappointed.

Buh-Bye. Fröhn

 

..Al

 

A couple of us find it very possible that account may have been hijacked. Up until a very suspect and out of character series of posts, Fröhn has at times been heated but respectful. Of course, an account compromised by a troll needs to be dealt with but I'm reserving judgment on Fröhn himself.

 

It's quite possible the amount of points against his beloved C64 reached a threshold in his brain and there weren't enough neurons in his brain that could help him to hold back his agression that had formed due to his delusion that Atari wasn't that much better. So he had to let it out.

[Artlover]

There are many Atari fans who recognize that the 64 has strengths that the A8 does not

Tobad none of them participate here.

[emkay]

There are many Atari fans who recognize that the 64 has strengths that the A8 does not

Tobad none of them participate here.

 

Have you read the last "1000" posts?

[+wood_jl]

There are many Atari fans who recognize that the 64 has strengths that the A8 does not

Tobad none of them participate here.

Sure there are!!! My 1541 Ultimate is ready to be shipped, and I "won" (hate that term) a "new in the box" unopened (we'll see how true that is, shortly) Commodore 64 on Ebay. Neither has arrived yet. I've downloaded 3 torrents (half-gig to over 5 gigs) of C= software. I'm ready to "game on," and I certainly shall do so, shortly!

 

However, I totally disagree with Atari being inferior, as well as overblown advocacy for C64 as being so absolutely superior. I sustain that they are overall quite similar, and that similarity (as well as the convenience of not having to own bulky C= floppy drives) is what lured me to C64. All the games and software ever created for the price of a mouse click didn't hurt, either.

[saehn]

I use GTIA modes mostly and original argument of color depth favors Atari since it offers 16+ colors for more pixels than C64. Here's a sample executeable that will put up different color for every pixel in the scanline for GTIA modes. Theoretically, this does 7 different 16-shade palettes per scanline with player #5 for another 16 shades, 4 players for another 6 colors = 134 colors/scanline from palette of 256. Since there are only maximum of 96 GTIA pixels/scanline, you end up with a different color for every pixel. You can also switch to other GTIA modes or Graphics 8 at any of the 7 points where modes are switched. There's the fifth player scrolling around on top of the 112 GTIA colors and 6 colors of 4 players in the overscan area:

 

Hi, I'd like to take a look at your file... but I'm not really familiar enough with the A8 to know how to run an IMG file. I tried changing the filename extension to XEX or ATR and running that in the emulator, but no luck. What do I do? Thanks...

[Bryan]

However, I totally disagree with Atari being inferior, as well as overblown advocacy for C64 as being so absolutely superior. I sustain that they are overall quite similar, and that similarity (as well as the convenience of not having to own bulky C= floppy drives) is what lured me to C64. All the games and software ever created for the price of a mouse click didn't hurt, either.

I agree and I've posted on this before. The 64 rapidly overtook the Atari for games but gaming isn't everything.

[iwan-iwanowitsch-goratschin]

Oswald........Fröhn................This thread is a minefield!

[irwin]

Edited April 27, 2009 by irwin

[ZylonBane]

What I've learned from this thread is that the sort of people who become embroiled in these wastes of time are often the same ones who aren't smart enough to trim nested quotes.

Edited April 27, 2009 by ZylonBane

[miker]

Good work, irwin!

[Artlover]

I agree and I've posted on this before. The 64 rapidly overtook the Atari for games but gaming isn't everything.

Lets face it, what did most people buying either computer actually use it for. Even back during the high point of their lives, there wern't "millions" of people coding for either one.

 

Like I said, the typical user (gamers), wasn't looking at two identical games that looked, played and sounded the same on both arguing over the merits that the game on system A used 17 bytes less memory and 3 less CPU cycles then the one on system B.

 

 

What I've learned from this thread is that the sort of people who become embroiled in these wastes of times are often the same ones who aren't smart enough to trim nested quotes.

Hahahahahahah!

[dwhyte]

 

Very nice job irwin...

 

You possibly couldn't "gray" the griffon a little more to look more like the original could you?

[+SpiceWare]

Looks nice, but don't atariksi see the dithering

[irwin]

[Bryan]

I agree and I've posted on this before. The 64 rapidly overtook the Atari for games but gaming isn't everything.

Lets face it, what did most people buying either computer actually use it for. Even back during the high point of their lives, there wern't "millions" of people coding for either one.

 

I knew people who did all sorts of things with their computers in the 80's, but you're right; gaming was usually #1 and the 64 was the best value for that purpose.

[Allas]

 

Good conversion!, I really want to do that, the main graphic with 6 colors.

 

I wan't to look like an anti-commodore person, but...:

 

Atari ... 10

C64 ... 0

 

Edited April 27, 2009 by Allas

[Garak]

I've downloaded 3 torrents (half-gig to over 5 gigs) of C= software. I'm ready to "game on," and I certainly shall do so, shortly!

 

I'm assuming you're getting a NTSC C64? You should be aware that much of those 5 gigs may not run on it. Just like the Atari has NTSC and PAL differences for a computer so does the C64.

 

Also, just like when some PAL specific Atari programs may not run on an NTSC Atari (or vice versa) that same situation exists with the C64.

 

Why am I telling you this? The majority of C64 programs on the internet are PAL specific. Unless you, of course, hunted down all the NTSC specific, NTSC/PAL (recognizing the system running on and makes adjustment), or NTSC fixed cracks of those programs. Then again some may work and if they do they will run faster or show screen problems.

 

Garak

[dwhyte]

:thumbsup:

[potatohead]

There are many Atari fans who recognize that the 64 has strengths that the A8 does not

Tobad none of them participate here.

 

Hey, I am here, and I do recognize those things.

 

320 COLOR resolution without significant artifacting. C64 strength. Probably the biggest one, because it allows for a better aspect ratio and a more modern look. This is brought to us with the nice effort on producing an interlaced-color NTSC signal. Good move then.

 

SID = makes great chip tunes easy, compared to POKEY. I think it falls short in the area of general effects however. Still, C64 strength.

 

Color Memory Scheme = Total strength. A lot can be done with 2 colors per character cell. Speccy guys have this too. Strength.

 

Sprites. When the discussion got goofy, I the Atari fan, posted up the clarification of capabilities after taking some time to look them up, just so it was clear to me and others what the machine does. I have a hard time sorting out if this is the biggest strength, or the color resolution. Probably the sprites tho.

 

There's your C64 power trifecta, right there. And, if you go back through my posts here, you will see those things recognized as they should be.

 

Also noted on this thread are the great C64 games produced in the later years. Lots of great gaming there. And the beauty of it is that much of it is to be enjoyed on a great 8 bit machine; namely, the C64. Kick ass man! There is nothing wrong with that.

 

 

For me, C64 weaknesses are:

 

16 colors only. This is a major bummer. If it were not for the 320 resolution, where some dithering can happen, it would be pretty damn stale.

 

Slower CPU. I like the compute heavy games.

 

Overall system engineering. The OS, I/O and such are capable of all that needs to be done, but it's a PITA compared to Atari 8 bit stuff, which I think is elegant and I always have. Go up-thread to see why.

 

Lousy disk system.

 

Chipset largely exploited. I should explain this one. VIC II and friends have been hammered on with good results. The story is told. ANITC + GTIA haven't been hammered as completely, and that's a numbers game, IMHO. So then, the story is NOT yet told.

 

 

 

IMHO, what is at issue is the overall value those strengths have in the minds of those retro gamers today.

 

Personally, I like the kind of non-modern style games that really shine on Atari 8 bit. I also like compute heavy games, like Rescue on Fractalus too. Color variety is a big deal to me, as is intensity variety. My own tastes gravitate toward lower resolutions, more colors and a more abstract game experience overall. Atari goes down this road quite a bit farther than the C64 does, and that is exactly why I like Atari. I suspect this is directly related to me playing on a VCS as a kid, and my first computer being an A400.

 

I love the systems engineering that went into the Atari machines. Lots of good stuff there. Now, if you are just gaming, and you don't care, then this really isn't all that important. However, if you appreciate computing in general, there is a lot to like about how Ataris did things.

 

Where "POWER" is concerned, the machine with the widest overall set of possible experiences gets the nod from me. That's Atari. Where a C64 really shines, it's the best. Where a C64 is weaker, or just weak, it's NOT POSSIBLE. On the Atari, it generally is possible overall, with degrees of excellence, depending on what the experience is. Also, the systems engineering elements contribute to "POWER" as well.

 

 

Atari is the "BEST" then because:

 

-greater diversity of experiences

 

-retro capability story untold

 

-favors very strong color / intensity / abstract presentations

 

-is faster on raw compute

 

-has good ports of games I really like

 

-is associated with AA. (hey, that's a plus as far as I am concerned.)

[atarian63]

You probably are. Gay and unskilled. Gay would be fine...

 

Well, thank you, and it takes one to know one....unskilled that is, and we established that you are quite some posts back already.

"takes one to know one" is kinda cheap.

 

Like a C64 perhaps? They seem to thrive on 'cheap'.

 

Obviously a troll who doesn't read anything other than fanboy Atari posts and skips the rest. The C64 may have been $599 not $799 and the reason why is...dun dun dahhhh....Commodore OWNED MOS Technologies, MOS employees designed the VIC-II and SID for FREE, and produced the chips at COST PRICE for Commodore. The real price of producing the C64 for any other company would have been double the price. These are facts...please pay attention or you will just get ignored for ignorant trolling thanks

 

The reason why Jack Tramiel was the ONLY businessman in the world to ever screw Bill Gates over in business (he didn't pay Microsoft any royalties until the Commodore 128 version of Basic) is because he is clever, and because he was so damned clever in business he bought MOS Technologies with Irvine Gould's money so he would never get screwed over again by a 3rd party chip manufacturer after Texas Instruments screwed him on calculator chips. He did to everyone else with the C64 hardware and MOS ownership what Texas Instruments did to him with calculator chips.

 

What is cheap without a doubt is the horrible spongey 65XE/130XE keyboards (800 and 800XL had great keyboards)...now that was a cheap and nasty machine to type on for sure compared to the C64 frenchman...feel free to try and hurt my feelings with dumb nonfactual off topic insults about that though man LOL

LMAO the original C64 keyboard was a really POS, Not that they 65XE/130XE was great but to say it was worse that C64 is laughable. And the typing angle on C64 , just god awful. Was a dealer, sold both. C64 was crappy.

Also... if Jack was so smart. What happened later when he gave Atari 8bit the jack treatment..

 

Erm are you really saying the XE keyboard is better than the C64? LMAO? now I know you're an idiot the XE keyboard is probably the worst 8bit keyboard out there. It's unusable for anything other than 1 finger typing noobs

 

As for the 8bit...what did you expect him to do....spend the last of his cash on streamlining production costs for something that software houses found a pain in the arse to program compared to the rival 8bit machines out there....OR....make a modern 16bit machine that beat the pants of the Mac in speed and cost

 

This is why this thread is useless, for every wolfram there is 10 atari idiots still sniffing there butts and dreaming of 'what might have been' what actually happened was your 1978 difficult to handle technology was superceded with simpler machines producing the same or better results.

 

XE keyboard better than a proper keyboard....lol yeh ok mate....stop smoking the weed k?

Personal insults are a waste of time, if you can't see what a POS the C64 KB (proper my ass) is then there is no point talking to you. You just won't get it. I can't help you with a different perspective , but to each his own.

 

On the Jack stuff, actually the 800xl's he was moving out cheap, out cheaped the C64 that season and they sold ton's it was a recommended buy from CR that year I believe. Value for the money.

I can't help that there were idiots prior to that time that bought a crappy, cheap machine because it was cheap which it was. The result was a larger base to sell to, therefore more programs, Atari was just fine to program as many have shown here and as evidenced by thousands of titles.

I would have expected him maybe to license some titles, get some venture capital from others and really make a go of the fight. If "Business is war" and you only have $50million sized gun, well you better get some bigger guns! He had great products. A cheap consumer machine (130xe), A Mac Killer(ST) just advertise where someone can see it an push HARD. Lynx,easily the best handheld of it's day, Then later the Jag. Talk about a failure to license and advertise not to mention making programming tools available.DUH! Hard to loose when your are dealt mostly aces. Compromise and get some capital!

 

With Jack it was always about control and everything was personal. I personally am grateful he kept it going (drives Commodore people crazy) and in the end Atari did outlast Commodore. He could have done more that is all. License decent titles for Lynx, advertise in general. Funny thing is that Commodore seemed to have forgotten what to do without Jack as well. Good products, not much advertising.

 

The reality is that often the most popular item is usually not the best one, but one that will do the job in an ok fashion and is cheap. People are cheap.

Applies to cars, phones, etc. Look at Ipod restrictive software, not the best tech(ok iTouch is nice) but it's an apple... the Hanna Montana syndrome.

 

Well if a 'crap' machine can produce a game like Enforcer II with no funny add ons at all then what does that make a so called super powerful games machine like the A8 hmmm? I have yet to see a single fast arcade game as impressive as that piece of coding linked to on youtube by a single member in this forum.

 

The XE keyboard IS a POS and therefore you ARE being an idiot over it. Like I said the 800 and 800XL had great keyboards (and better than the C64 as I said) XEGS keyboard, 65XE and 130XE had a POS for a keyboard. If you take that as a personal insult then I suggest you never leave your house into the world of facts......

 

Most A8 games looked like 1983 first generation C64 stuff at best. The fact was generally games on the C64 looked and sounded better, games on the Amiga looked and sounded better.....history tells the rest.

 

You are living in a dream world mate, if this was a multiformat machine forum where any kind of level headed common sense was required you would have been banned for trolling within days of joining it...sadly the moderators here are Atari fanboys looking at the banning of JUST frohn so it's a shame that I shall have to leave you Atarians in this section of the forum to live in your delusional world that your machine is a super fantastic 100 slamdunk winner against any other 8bit machine ever produced in the world

Wow, name calling and trolling and uneducated.. better dig deeper here, I think you'll find what a great machine the Atari is. I'll consider the source on name calling. As I mentioned I was an authorized dealer for both and that's my perspective. Don't like it. Troll elsewhere.

 

Atari 8-bit 10 Trolls 0