Best 80's computer

[Arkhan]

For ease of location of loot/hardware, C64.

 

the games are pretty good quality too compared to other machines.

 

 

 

You can find C64 stuff everywhere, and its probably the most well documented old computer.

[Manoau2002]

For ease of location of loot/hardware, C64.

 

the games are pretty good quality too compared to other machines.

 

 

 

You can find C64 stuff everywhere, and its probably the most well documented old computer.

 

 

Yeah thats what i am thinking too. When i am ready to buy i am pretty sure it will be a C64. I may eventually buy an adam as well because of the coleco collecting.

[FastRobPlus]

Arghhhh. I hate the A500. True it was the most popular Amiga and was the main driving force of sales etc so we Amigans should be respectful of it..... but it is ugly, huge, a pig to upgrade (and not really worthwhile) does not have any redeeming features such as IDE or SCSI built in, no pcmcia interface, no composite out, no AGA etc.

 

It covers half your desk and if you are silly enough to add an A570 or A590 or any sidecar expansion it hangs off the side of your desk!

 

I remember when the A600 came out I thought it was stupid because it had no numeric keypad. That was then. Now the A600 is a FAR better Amiga than the A500. It has built in IDE so you can have a nice compact internal hd, it has a pcmcia port, 2mb agnus, ecs chipset, composite out and is only two thirds the size.

 

The A500 is the only Amiga I refuse to keep in my collection. I have several expanded 2000s, 3000s and 4000s, a 4000T. A CDTV with matching black keyboard, mouse, 1084S and floppy drive. A couple of A600s with ACA630s (68030/32mb ram upgrades), half a dozen A1200s with 030s/040s and even an 060 @ 80 mhz (nice machine), with subway usb cards etc. I even have two A1000s in mint condition, one with a phoenix board. But I draw the line at the craptacular A500.

 

Still, thats me.

 

As for the A500 not having composite, and the A2000s only having mono composite (from memory there is a hack to give chroma) this is true, however composite is crap on a machine that is capable of 1280x512 (and more with overscan) so you really need S-video at a minimum, and S-Video is a simple $30.00 plug in card away.

 

The A500s do have mono composite. While this would have sucked back in the day, it's actually a good thing now. It makes it easy to see a fairly clear composite screen on any video source. It also means if an eBay seller says "it powers on but I have no means to test" they are not being honest.

 

I do agree that the 500 is ugly. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that all Commodore machines save the A1000, A3000, CDTV, 128D and perhaps some of the PETs were pretty ugly. Commodore could have learned a lot from Atari in this regard.

 

Still, the internals of the case were fully socketed and the interior was surprisingly cavernous. In the second half of the A500's life, small/clever internal upgrades really made the system powerful and cheap. For example, I obtained this A500 from a former ICD employee. It was a demo of their cheap high-tech ad ons.

Hidden in this case, it has:

- ICD AddSpeed (68010 @ 14.2Mhz) and AddIDE with a 2,5" IDE laptop hard drive.

- Full ECS chipset and 3.1 kickstart on ROM.

- A high density 1.7MB floppy drive

- ICD AddRAM 540 and 560, with 6MB RAM (though I think only 4.5MB free due to address space conflicts)

- ICD FlickerFree Video II scan doubler and flicker fixer (you can see the SVGA adapter lead coming out the side a bit in the pic) I really need to dremel a nice cutout for it...

[Hatta]

- Full ECS chipset and 3.1 kickstart on ROM.

 

Are the ECS chips available anywhere?

[Arkhan]

Yeah thats what i am thinking too. When i am ready to buy i am pretty sure it will be a C64. I may eventually buy an adam as well because of the coleco collecting.

 

Good choice. It's the easiest one to get into. It's fairly non-finnicky, and you can find a ton of hardware relatively easy.

 

You could even get a transfer cable and hook your floppy drive up to your PC and use VICE to transfer stuff! (or one of the other programs)

[FastRobPlus]

Are the ECS chips available anywhere?

 

Back in the day, you'd get them from an authorized service center and you'd pop them in yourself. If your 500 is old enough, you'd have to solder a trace and connect two solder pads (put there for this purpose) if you wanted to reassign the Amiga's base 1MB RAM to be purely Chip RAM, which is a desirable thing to do.

Nowadays, you can find the chips on eBay fairly cheaply. For a 500, you need to add at least a 1MB Agnes, an ECS Super Denise, and a Kickstart 2.x or 3.x ROM.

I see someone on eBay US selling $20 SuperDeinse chips, which are probably the rarest of these ECS chips.

[Hatta]

If your 500 is old enough, you'd have to solder a trace and connect two solder pads (put there for this purpose) if you wanted to reassign the Amiga's base 1MB RAM to be purely Chip RAM, which is a desirable thing to do.

 

To display my complete and utter ignorance, how is "chip ram" different from "base ram" and why is one more desirable than the other?

[desiv]

To display my complete and utter ignorance, how is "chip ram" different from "base ram" and why is one more desirable than the other?

Think of CHIP RAM as the RAM on a video card.

It's RAM directly usable by the graphics chips. So more CHIP memory, more cached graphics.

Of course, it's not just graphics, on the Amiga it's also sound data.

 

Several games will "preload" more graphics/sound data if you have more CHIP to give you less in-game disk loading or more sounds/graphics in the game.

 

Not a lot, but some games do that..

 

There's also GUI, graphic and sound/music programs that benefit from the extra CHIP.

 

desiv

Edited April 18, 2013 by desiv

[FastRobPlus]

To add to what Desiv says:

Chip RAM can be written into and read by the CPU and the Amiga's custom chips (including the audio chip). So the Amiga can be said to have what we now call a GPU (and an APU.) This is why the Amiga can often be so much smother in operation than other 16bit PCS of the era, despite the CPU being a bit slower (early Amiga is ~7Mhz, early Mac was 8Mhz)

 

Any RAM that isn't Chip RAM on an Amiga is called "Fast RAM'. This is because it's dedicated to only the CPU and can be accessed more quickly. But on a non-ECS Amiga, the first 1MB of the memory map is assumed to be Chip RAM, even if some of it is not. Therefore even if part of your first 1MB RAM is Fast RAM, it isn't accessed in the "fast" way. So Amiga users are encouraged to upgrade to 1MB (or more) of Chip RAM, since it gives the most overall benefit.

 

That sounded a lot less confusing in my head...

[high voltage]

Mind you aren't Apple 2 and A8 'best 70s computers'?

[potatohead]

Unless one uses an 80's model The //e and C are 80's machines and should be considered in that era.

[carmel_andrews]

Unless one uses an 80's model The //e and C are 80's machines and should be considered in that era.

 

 

 

 

But what if you bought a 90's built A8 or C64 (since both were still being made until 1992)

[TMR]

But what if you bought a 90's built A8 or C64 (since both were still being made until 1992)

 

A C64 or Atari 8-bit from 1992 is close to identical functionally to one from the early 1980s.

[potatohead]

If you could buy one in the era, it should be considered.

[R.O.T.S]

It all depends really,it is all in the eye of the beholder.

I imagine my experiences and opinions as a UK retro gamer would be a lot different to most other members here too,The BBC model B was the school computer for me and i was a ZX Spectrum and Amiga owner.In 2010 i gave up with next gen and became a full retro gamer and since then i have u-turned to explore and play games on other systems i never owned like BBC,C64,Amstrad CPC,Atari ST and 8-bits.

The ZX Spectrum has a place in my heart anyway and along with it i would easily recommend the Amiga and any Atari 8-bit computer.Maybe the Acorn BBC too as it really surprised me with some of its games and visual effects that are used but i am sure some of its hardware and software is not going to be easy to find,I understand the popularity and importance of the C64 in retro computer history with its audio and i have seen a few awesome games on it such as IK+,Retro Grade,Armalyte,etc,that i am sure are not done as well on other 8 bit machines.At the end of the day though i have simply not found enough quality on the C64 and can simply count the number of good playable games in 10`s but on other computer of the time,CPC,BBC,Spectrum and Atari-8bits i can find 100`s of enjoyable games.I guess the C64 would be easy to find stuff for though.

Edited May 11, 2013 by R.O.T.S

[Thorsten Günther]

There's still an important line of machines missing from this thread: the Amstrad CPC series

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbvYuKb7lDA

 

And as stated previously, it depends very much on the region where you live which computers were relevant, AFAIK the most widespread "good" home computers were (in no particular order)

 

North America: TI-99/4A, Atari 8-bit, Apple II, Commodore 64, TRS-80 CoCo, (Tandy 1000?)

 

Europe: Sinclair Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST

 

Japan: MSX, Sharp X68000

 

I am sure there are several missing from my list, and MSX was also of some importance in the Netherlands and AFAIK also in South America (Brazil?).

 

Hardware-wise most of these are quite unique, with the only exception being MSX (first gen), which are essentially the same machines as the Colecovision/Adam or Spectravideo SVI-318/328 series (or the European Memotech MTX and Sord M5), which in turn are - except for the CPU - very similar to the TI-99/4A. MSX2 was much improved (most system included a floppy drive), and you can get most Colecovision titles for MSX nowadays.

[Seob]

Yes here in the netherlands, the c64, and the msx where pretty big, followed by the spectrum, cpc464. Of course there where other systems available but they didn't have a big market share.

[Thorsten Günther]

The European market was a special case indeed, as there were Welsh CoCo clones (Dragon 32/64), French MC-10 clones (Matra Alice), a unique French line of computers all equipped ith a lightpen (Thomson TO/MO series), quirky but nice (ZX81, Spectrum, Oric) to innovative (Apricot, Enterprise, Archimedes) British computers and of course, a very boring German one (Triumph Adler Alphatronic PC) alongside all the computers from the USA (the Apple II never getting quite the market share as on the other side of the pond though and most of the Japanese models (the X1 and later X68000 series by Sharp never made it here, but the MZ700/800 models did).

 

That the Netherlands were the European stronghold of MSX is hardly a surprise considering the fact that Philips and Sony collaborated on many fields back in the day - Audio CD and SPDIF being the most well-known results.

[toptenmaterial]

 

 

It's no uglier than a C128 or C64c. Of course, if you think those things are ugly, then I digress.

 

It doesn't need much upgrading, depending upon use. 1MB upgrade is all I need, and it's easy, and cheap.

It's as reliable as the day is long, compared to A1200 and A4000 with bad caps.

AGA never got much support, anyway. The vast majority of games are for the earlier machines.

 

 

With this floppy emulator and 1MB upgrade, it plays every Amiga game I throw at it, and it's reliable.

 

But I admit I'm not a "hardcore" Amiga fan. I like the Amiga though, and it's a great game machine - even the A500.

 

I suppose if I was hardcore, I wouldn't use mine with an Atari monitor....

 

 

 

The A500, 1MB, and HxC SD Floppy Emulator, and this torrent and it's 22Gb of more stuff than I'll ever get to. Plug and play. No hassles. No further upgrades. No WHDLoad conversions, no Degrader, nothing but the disc images and SD card. Not everybody's cup of tea, but undeniably, some excellent, reliable gaming.

 

The PET sure is one ugly mofo, isn't it?

[desiv]

The PET sure is one ugly mofo, isn't it?

Well, that's a matter of opinion too..

For the time, I kind of liked that look.

 

And the hinged monitor/lid so you could access the board was pretty cool..

 

Of course, that calculator keyboard on the original PET was pretty cheesy..

 

desiv

(And the PET would be your favorite (or not) 70's computer..)

Edited May 16, 2013 by desiv

[slinkeey]

The A500s do have mono composite. While this would have sucked back in the day, it's actually a good thing now.

 

Yes it did suck when your TV did not have composite in.

 

When I ran into that problem, I relied on my Parent's VCR to convery from Composite to RF F connector.

[FastRobPlus]

Yes it did suck when your TV did not have composite in.

 

When I ran into that problem, I relied on my Parent's VCR to convery from Composite to RF F connector.

 

Ouch!

 

Though now that you mention it, I remember my monitor dying in the Hawaiian heat once, and I used similar trick of Composite ->VCR -> RF Coax input on a TV. I think I even had to have the VCR on "Record" or something....

 

It looked really bad.

[Jinks]

TRS-80 COLOR COMPUTER 2 FTW!!

Cause it is the only computer I can write basic programs on.. Downland... need i say more??? Why downland Its a low kb masterpiece never outdone..

[AtariVCS101]

In my opinion you should get the Atari 800 XL home computer. It's pretty good!

[kenjennings]

If i was to purchase a classic computing system what would you recommend? As a child i owned a vic 20 and i used the apple two at school. I would prefer something that uses disks or carts and not cassette tapes. I would like something that has or had a strong homebrew following as well. I would prefer something i could hook up to a tv or a modern computer monitor.

 

Best 80s computer? That's a wide range. At the start of the 80s you have the Atari 8-bits, Apple II, VIC-20. By the end of the 80s there was the Mac, PC, Atari ST and Amiga 2000.

 

My favorites 8-bit is the Atari 8-bits, (800 and XLs). The amount of hardware and software development still occurring for the Atari 8-bits is astounding.

 

For 16/32-bit I go with the Amigas. The end user enthusiasm for the Amiga is like it never went away. There have been modern spin-offs into RISC hardware and continuing development of the OS. Totally amazing.