Stuff I Wish The XL/XE Had

[bbking67]

You know I drooled all over the 1450XLD when it was announced, but in hindsight I think this computer would have been a huge mistake... it was expensive and included a crappy modem and speech synthesizer (the speech synthesizer is a gimmick in my mind). Atari screwed a lot of stuff up (in addition to everything they got right). For me, these are the things that would have made a difference (oh and I'm an XL guy):

 

1. A native 80 column capability using the Parallel bus - I know so many people who bought the vastly inferior Apple II for more money because they could use a word processor in 80 columns on their green screen. Please don't say XEP80.

2. Double density on the 1050 - The enhanced density thing was stupid. I can't rationalize it to anything other than that.

3. An Atari branded CP/M upgrade. If nothing else just to say you have it and you can run Wordstar (or whatever)

4. Enhanced graphics on XL or XE machines - imagine how things would have been different with some kind of enhanced graphics on the XL/XE (but retain backwards compatibility) Graphics modes with more suimultaneous colours would have done it, but enhanced sprites would also have been nice

5. An Atari branded monitor- dang I would have loved an nice matching monitor for my XL or even XE. Wouldn't have made much of a difference I guess, but I still want it

6. More PBI peripherals! I loved the MIO, but all Atari ever did with it is the 1064. That 1090 expansion bus looked sweet.

7. Something other than "hold option key to disable BASIC". Better yet give me DOS in ROM and an easy way to turn BASIC on when needed.

8. Some kind of networking capability that would allow daisy chained Atari computers to operate in a network for multi-player games, telecommunications, etc. They had Joe decuir... he knows this shit.

9. Faster SIO speeds. We all know the Atari is capable of far faster, so why limit to 19,200 bps?

10. Less Tramiel. Enough said.

 

 

I suppose the 800xl was all about cost cutting so nothing made it. well except DOS 3 and enhanced density. yay.

[Tickled_Pink]

Well, you just answered your own question with that last line. The XL and XE were about cost cutting but not for the sake of it. The 400 and 800 were overpriced compared to the competition. One reason was that they were better built. But that chunky build quality came at a cost. The XL line (and IMO even the XE) were still better built than the C64, which felt hideously flimsy and cheap by comparison.

 

Because of the cost issues there's no way Atari were going to make any major upgrades to the 8-bit line, apart from more memory and one or two tweaks here and there.

 

A lot has been said about Tramiel but I guess if it wasn't for his cost cutting ways, the 8-bit range wouldn't have lasted for as long as it did.

 

I think Atari really envisaged the PBI as a way of encouraging third party add-ons rather than in-house developments. Atari initially pumped quite a bit of money into R&D if the amount of vapourware is anything to go by. But by the time the ST market started to decline, it seems they'd already started to run out of money. The Falcon and the Jaguar were the last things to come out of that. Both were impressive in their own way but sadly doomed to failure for a multitude of reasons.

 

As for the use of the Option key, I have no problem with that. The issue with having DOS in ROM is that it couldn't be upgraded. If you loaded a new DOS from disk later, all that would have happened is that Atari would have added extra cost to the machine for no reason. A faster disk drive would have been the answer - and yeah ... most definitely double density. Again, I suspect it's because Atari cheaped out on the drive controller chip or, at least, using it to its potential.

 

Still, could have been worse. We could have been Commodore 64 owners and have to put up with THEIR joke of an attempt at a disk drive. Probably the only system ever devised where cassette loading may well have been faster than disk.

[gozar]

At the time speech was pretty hot, and if the machine was released it would be the only computer that was capable of having the computer talk to you. That would have been pretty powerful. But, as for your list, the first item is the most important. Eighty columns should have been a top priority for the XL line. Second was the enhanced density. I guess Atari didn't want to pay for the extra 128 bytes required? The modem should never have been planned as an internal device.

 

Spartados allowed you to turn the basic cart off and on at will. I don't know if there were any utilities written to allow you to do that from DOS 2/3.

 

For all the bad press the Tramiel's receive, someone here on the forums made a very good point about the fact that the Tramiels pushed the 8-bits into Europe into the early 90s, giving us the great things out of Poland and other European countries.

 

A 1450XLD with 80 columns and an app like AppleWorks would have been amazing. It would have blown the Apple //e away. But, Atari had no idea what they were doing with the computer market since '79.

[+Allan]

I'd like to see an 80-column card that works with the E: device handler or with custom handlers. It should be backward compatible with the 800 80-column adapters as well.

 

Allan

[Keatah]

80 columns for the win! And that's what made the Apple II the superior machine. You could do real world things with it, games aside.

[adam242]

This:

 

4. Enhanced graphics on XL or XE machines - imagine how things would have been different with some kind of enhanced graphics on the XL/XE (but retain backwards compatibility) Graphics modes with more suimultaneous colours would have done it, but enhanced sprites would also have been nice

 

DLIs are wonderful for horizontal effects and I know about PM underlays, etc.. but a standard, easy (bit-mapped) way to get more than 4 or 5 unique colors on a scanline would have been welcome. Without having to go to an 8:1 aspect ratio (thanks, GTIA mode 10).

[Bryan]

1. A native 80 column capability using the Parallel bus - I know so many people who bought the vastly inferior Apple II for more money because they could use a word processor in 80 columns on their green screen. Please don't say XEP80.

Yeah, Once the 1090 got shelved there was really no backup plan for 80 col.

 

2. Double density on the 1050 - The enhanced density thing was stupid. I can't rationalize it to anything other than that.

Total cost cutting move to save 128 bytes of SRAM.

 

3. An Atari branded CP/M upgrade. If nothing else just to say you have it and you can run Wordstar (or whatever)

I'm indifferent to CP/M. Don't know if it would have made much of a difference.

 

4. Enhanced graphics on XL or XE machines - imagine how things would have been different with some kind of enhanced graphics on the XL/XE (but retain backwards compatibility) Graphics modes with more suimultaneous colours would have done it, but enhanced sprites would also have been nice

Most of the original 400/800 engineers moved on (to Hi-Toro/Amiga and whatnot) and Atari just didn't want to spend the $$$ on having a new set of engineers go through the chip design. But, yes, they should have had some new features.

 

 

5. An Atari branded monitor- dang I would have loved an nice matching monitor for my XL or even XE. Wouldn't have made much of a difference I guess, but I still want it

I think it was planned a couple times, but never happened.

 

6. More PBI peripherals! I loved the MIO, but all Atari ever did with it is the 1064. That 1090 expansion bus looked sweet.

Yeah, I think Atari went into a budget-system mode after the 1200XL fiasco and the C64 release and PBI projects kinda vanished.

 

7. Something other than "hold option key to disable BASIC". Better yet give me DOS in ROM and an easy way to turn BASIC on when needed.

One of the strengths of the Atari was that you could migrate to better DOSes if you desired. Once the disk support is in ROM, that all tends to go away. I know booting DOS was a pain, but it made it so easy to switch to SpartaDOS or whatever. The BASIC thing was a kludge to get rid of the pack-in cartridge.

 

8. Some kind of networking capability that would allow daisy chained Atari computers to operate in a network for multi-player games, telecommunications, etc. They had Joe decuir... he knows this shit.

Built in, or as one of those PBI devices we never got?

 

9. Faster SIO speeds. We all know the Atari is capable of far faster, so why limit to 19,200 bps?

They were pretty worried about RF noise/FCC certification which is why 19.2K was the standard.

 

10. Less Tramiel. Enough said.

Well, I'm no fan of the T's but Warner was screwing it all up as well. The biggest mistake Warner made was letting it's top VLSI engineers walk out the door.

[FifthPlayer]

1. A native 80 column capability using the Parallel bus - I know so many people who bought the vastly inferior Apple II for more money because they could use a word processor in 80 columns on their green screen. Please don't say XEP80.

 

80 columns for the win! And that's what made the Apple II the superior machine. You could do real world things with it, games aside.

 

As much as I love the A8 family, I have to agree that the Apple II was not "vastly inferior" as a productivity machine. 80-column display, fast high capacity floppy drives, and slots for expansion made the Apple II the best 6502-based machine for real world stuff. The II's hi-res display was not particularly easy to program, but again it services the needs of productivity apps rather well.

 

I would have loved an official Atari-branded color monitor, though.

Edited December 8, 2015 by FifthPlayer

[thorfdbg]

Total cost cutting move to save 128 bytes of SRAM.

 

One of the strengths of the Atari was that you could migrate to better DOSes if you desired. Once the disk support is in ROM, that all tends to go away. I know booting DOS was a pain, but it made it so easy to switch to SpartaDOS or whatever. The BASIC thing was a kludge to get rid of the pack-in cartridge.

 

It's more than 128 bytes saving for the floppy. The current 256 bytes the 6507 in the floppy has comes from two standard RIOTs, off-the-shelve devices that have 128 bytes RAM each. In addition to a timer and some I/O ports. The first RIOT is used as stack and zero-page, the second RIOT is the disk buffer. Adding another 128 bytes would have required to go for a completely different design, or add another chip, both of which would have increased the costs overproportionally. Thus, they went for a floppy disk controller that could do MFM, but with 128 byte sectors.

 

I'm not buying the argument with the DOS. It was an outright stupid idea not to have *some* DOS in ROM that is sufficient for almost all purposes. Such a ROM-based Dos does not preclude to bootstrap another one if necessary or desired, but it would have released another precious 3K of Basci RAM and would have made the overall machine much more usable on average. Os++ comes with a built-in Fms, but that can be replaced by just booting from a regular Dos disk, so one does not prevent the other.

 

The problem with more colors is the lack of bandwidth. In principle, a 16 colors in a 159x96 mode would be possible (i.e. the resolution of graphics 7, but with four times the colors), but the problem is here that ANTIC is not able to shuffle more bits in a line to GTIA per row. Hence, to increase the horizontal resolution at the price of the vertical resolution, GTIA would have had to have an additional 64 byte internal buffer to buffer the first line to combine it with the next line. Entirely possible, but it would have required a radically new GTIA chip - something Atari did not want to invest anything into.

 

The next in line was the Amiga, which came up with a design that was "as close to the Atari chipset as possible", but on a more modern ground. But this swapped the entire chipset, not just a couple of improvements.

[snicklin]

I think that they did a pretty good job with what they did do.

 

Yes, there's always more that we can ask for, but I'm pretty happy with what they achieved as it was.

 

If I had to beg for something, I'd ask for the following: (I was a 65XE user back in the day)

 

a) Get rid of the self test, make that a disk/cassette packaged in. Exchange it with something of more use.

b) A built in RAMBIT tape loader. Tape loading was painful.

c) Multi-coloured sprites. Perhaps a few more also.

 

[ Added after original post ]

d) A better way of drawing the PMGs. I'd rather say, here is my sprite (supply an address), here is its vertical size (supply a byte) and it then draws it. It should just be able to read memory in the right place and draw it, why do we have to manually code the copying of bytes into RAM and why is there no Y position we can supply?

Edited December 8, 2015 by snicklin

[+slx]

I fully agree on the selftest. What a piece of useless ......p! Even the 1200 rainbow logo would have been better

 

It is hard to say whether improved hardware would have inspired new software. I don't think so as it was easier for software companies to stick to the lowest common denominator (as proved by the dearth of right cartridges?). Over the life of the 800XL there wasn't a lot of software that did not run on 400/800s and by the time the XEs came out those looking for more features looked at ST/Amiga/PC? already and the XEs were a means to sell a low-cost machine to those unable or unwilling to afford the new high-end machines.

 

In a perfect world Atari would have bought BASIC XL (or even Action!) from OSS and incorporated it into the XLs, as well as faster disk drives and improved graphics. Having started with the 800 in 82 I would probably still have changed to an ST in 86 without an "upgraded" Atari 8-bit in between. But even now we don't live in a perfect world gadget wise as cheapness is still more important than quality for most manufactureres (presenting as evidence flatscreen TVs with a CPU requiring well over a minute to boot before allowing to change a channel, smartphone losing features for simplicity's sake, the disappearance of the high quality pocket calculator, etc.) Blame the C64 on starting that trend......=;-o

[snicklin]

 

(presenting as evidence flatscreen TVs with a CPU requiring well over a minute to boot before allowing to change a channel, smartphone losing features for simplicity's sake, the disappearance of the high quality pocket calculator, etc.) Blame the C64 on starting that trend......=;-o

 

While it is way off the subject of the discussion, I have to agree. Why is it that my TV takes absolutely ages to load when my TV in the 80s was ready in less than a second? In many ways TV has gone backwards in the last 30 years.

 

I never used to have a TV that crashed.

 

It didn't have to boot up.

 

I didn't get a warning that an app was using too much memory (even when only trying to show a video)

 

I learned the TV remote as a 4 year old. I learned all of the Teletext features in the UK and taught them to my Dad who had no idea that I was playing with the TV after he left the house to go to work on the morning. A 4yr old couldn't learn my current remote, though she's learned how to get channel 22 on for children's TV.

 

The TV's worked with the computers, unlike now.

[ryanmercer]

Hmmm. get some prototyping boards and get it working!

[+Larry]

 

While it is way off the subject of the discussion, I have to agree. Why is it that my TV takes absolutely ages to load when my TV in the 80s was ready in less than a second? In many ways TV has gone backwards in the last 30 years.

 

I never used to have a TV that crashed.

 

It didn't have to boot up.

 

I didn't get a warning that an app was using too much memory (even when only trying to show a video)

 

I learned the TV remote as a 4 year old. I learned all of the Teletext features in the UK and taught them to my Dad who had no idea that I was playing with the TV after he left the house to go to work on the morning. A 4yr old couldn't learn my current remote, though she's learned how to get channel 22 on for children's TV.

 

The TV's worked with the computers, unlike now.

 

Can you amplify this a bit? I'm really curious about your TV!

 

What kind of TV? -- never had one that "crashes" or "loads" (maybe from rom). Never even have had to be reset after a power interruption. Maybe something that is connected to the TV is an issue?

 

TV's in the 80's went into standby mode, same as today. Earlier ones had to "warm up" the tubes. Our first TV was ~1952 -- one of the early "non-round" tube types!

 

-Larry

[Bryan]

It's more than 128 bytes saving for the floppy. The current 256 bytes the 6507 in the floppy has comes from two standard RIOTs, off-the-shelve devices that have 128 bytes RAM each. In addition to a timer and some I/O ports. The first RIOT is used as stack and zero-page, the second RIOT is the disk buffer. Adding another 128 bytes would have required to go for a completely different design, or add another chip, both of which would have increased the costs overproportionally. Thus, they went for a floppy disk controller that could do MFM, but with 128 byte sectors.

 

Actually, the 1050 has one RIOT and one additional 128-byte SRAM. If the drive had a bigger SRAM (or even an empty space for it), we could have uploaded code and added features like high-speed SIO and MSDOS disk reading. Of course, the lack of drive features is what made the 3rd party drive market flourish, and what makes SIO2PC easy to implement.

 

I'm not buying the argument with the DOS. It was an outright stupid idea not to have *some* DOS in ROM that is sufficient for almost all purposes. Such a ROM-based Dos does not preclude to bootstrap another one if necessary or desired, but it would have released another precious 3K of Basci RAM and would have made the overall machine much more usable on average. Os++ comes with a built-in Fms, but that can be replaced by just booting from a regular Dos disk, so one does not prevent the other.

 

I think it would have ended up like the C64 where everyone's concept of DOS is a couple BASIC commands. Also, had it been built into ROM, we'd all be stuck supporting DOS 1.0 forever.

 

The problem with more colors is the lack of bandwidth. In principle, a 16 colors in a 159x96 mode would be possible (i.e. the resolution of graphics 7, but with four times the colors), but the problem is here that ANTIC is not able to shuffle more bits in a line to GTIA per row. Hence, to increase the horizontal resolution at the price of the vertical resolution, GTIA would have had to have an additional 64 byte internal buffer to buffer the first line to combine it with the next line. Entirely possible, but it would have required a radically new GTIA chip - something Atari did not want to invest anything into.

 

There are some things that could have been done. GTIA 10 could have supported all 16 colors. Also, with a GTIA line buffer you could have had a 160x100x16 mode at the same bandwidth (by reducing horizontal resolution). More PMG cycles could have been added for more objects or width. A new GTIA could have accomplished a lot.

[bbking67]

Yeah, Once the 1090 got shelved there was really no backup plan for 80 col.

 

Total cost cutting move to save 128 bytes of SRAM.

 

I'm indifferent to CP/M. Don't know if it would have made much of a difference.

 

 

The truth is that I'm indifferent about CP/M too. But the availability of CP/M on the Apple II via Microsoft's Softcard was a major selling feature of the Apple II and I think all Atari needed to do was offer the capability. This would have brought the Atari to par with the Apple in that regard.

[thorfdbg]

 

I think it would have ended up like the C64 where everyone's concept of DOS is a couple BASIC commands. Also, had it been built into ROM, we'd all be stuck supporting DOS 1.0 forever.

 

 

There are some things that could have been done. GTIA 10 could have supported all 16 colors. Also, with a GTIA line buffer you could have had a 160x100x16 mode at the same bandwidth (by reducing horizontal resolution). More PMG cycles could have been added for more objects or width. A new GTIA could have accomplished a lot.

It's hard to argue with all the "what if's". Actually, Dos 1.0 was outdated at the time the XL series came on the market, so *if* Atari had made a choice to place the Dos in ROM, it would certainly not be 1.0, but probably 2.0S or a variant thereof. Not the worst possible choice. The self-test area could be put in better use for the DOS menu (or command line) as in Os++. That's a much better use for this area than for the rather pointless "selftest".

 

The problem is that a new GTIA would have required a development "from scratch", and apparently, Atari did not have the resources for that. Or rather, did not want to invest into it. Problem with wider PMGs is that somehow the cycles for the DMA have to be allocated - and there are none for the wide playfield. Thus, more colors or wider PMs would have required reducing the width, or disallowing the wide playfield.

 

As said, this discussion is somehow academic, and GTIA was obsoleted by DENISE, ANTIC by AGNUS and POKEY by PAULA. The advanced features you request are all there - or no longer needed.

[kiwilove]

While the topic was about the hardware aspect - I like to take it up via the software.

Although I am no programmer and don't know the inner hardware workings in detail - I will be always wanting to do stuff that hasn't been done, because obviously it is so hard to do, with problems to overcome - but I believe in the creativity possible to address the shortfalls and seek alternative ways and means to present something similar and different instead. That is - in not delivering an authentic conversion of a difficult game format/design but one that the hardware can deliver. An example being the Galaga game - not to deliver the original - but something inspired by the coin-op game in which some features are used - and the most difficult to achieve bits discarded. It may or may not capture parts of the game faithfully but it's flavour will be undeniable.

 

I don't doubt the quality work that has gone into converting hard to convert pictures across to this hardware using advanced software techniques but I always think that the human eye is also needed to work on problem areas that need to be hand done/drawn which software can't interpret/translate so well - and this is usually a key area of interest in the picture - the rest can be done via software.

 

Harvey

[snicklin]

 

Can you amplify this a bit? I'm really curious about your TV!

 

What kind of TV? -- never had one that "crashes" or "loads" (maybe from rom). Never even have had to be reset after a power interruption. Maybe something that is connected to the TV is an issue?

 

TV's in the 80's went into standby mode, same as today. Earlier ones had to "warm up" the tubes. Our first TV was ~1952 -- one of the early "non-round" tube types!

 

-Larry

 

It's a "Soniq" TV and it's basically a PC inside and runs Android (poorly). It loads up (takes about a minute or so) and then I (think) that it runs TV tuning software within Android. It even puts adverts up on one of the screens which I think is very poor when you've paid for a tv set that you have adverts displayed to you. Every now and then I have to update the firmware.

 

This TV is a similar model: https://www.jbhifi.com.au/tv-home-entertainment/hd-televisions/soniq/soniq-e43v15b-43-full-hd-led-lcd-tv/786285/

 

To be fair, when it crashed, it was playing a video which it was struggling with. So that isn't strictly the TV that is running, that is one of the apps that the TV runs.

 

Stick with your old TVs, they're far better though take up more room.

[yorgle]

Back in the day, a native 80 column display would have have been all it took to set the XL line apart from the toys.

[kiwilove]

It's a "Soniq" TV and it's basically a PC inside and runs Android (poorly). It loads up (takes about a minute or so) and then I (think) that it runs TV tuning software within Android. It even puts adverts up on one of the screens which I think is very poor when you've paid for a tv set that you have adverts displayed to you. Every now and then I have to update the firmware.

 

This TV is a similar model: https://www.jbhifi.com.au/tv-home-entertainment/hd-televisions/soniq/soniq-e43v15b-43-full-hd-led-lcd-tv/786285/

 

To be fair, when it crashed, it was playing a video which it was struggling with. So that isn't strictly the TV that is running, that is one of the apps that the TV runs.

 

Stick with your old TVs, they're far better though take up more room.

I have watched various videos sourced from the internet on a friend's Soniq TV - and it did seem to crash fairly often - like once a day when I was there - I assumed that it was probably a random glitch in the file, and would not do this for live TV.

The remote control was poorly laid out and I would not recommend this as a TV to buy.

 

Whereas I have a Samsung TV - but they do not provide any updates etc for it. It's one of the early ones that has internet connection possible with it - but is useless because Samsung doesn't provide any updated firmware for it. But it is a decent TV, and does have more features over the Soniq - which you paid for - naturally.

 

Harvey

[Bryan]

It's hard to argue with all the "what if's". Actually, Dos 1.0 was outdated at the time the XL series came on the market, so *if* Atari had made a choice to place the Dos in ROM, it would certainly not be 1.0, but probably 2.0S or a variant thereof. Not the worst possible choice. The self-test area could be put in better use for the DOS menu (or command line) as in Os++. That's a much better use for this area than for the rather pointless "selftest".

What I meant was that if the 400/800 had a built-in DOS, it would have been based on DOS 1.0 and it would have then been much harder to leave it behind.

[snicklin]

I have watched various videos sourced from the internet on a friend's Soniq TV - and it did seem to crash fairly often - like once a day when I was there - I assumed that it was probably a random glitch in the file, and would not do this for live TV.

The remote control was poorly laid out and I would not recommend this as a TV to buy.

 

Whereas I have a Samsung TV - but they do not provide any updates etc for it. It's one of the early ones that has internet connection possible with it - but is useless because Samsung doesn't provide any updated firmware for it. But it is a decent TV, and does have more features over the Soniq - which you paid for - naturally.

 

Harvey

 

I agree that it's not a TV to buy. The missus said she was buying one (I was out of work at the time) and she asked me to research the best TV. After much looking around, I settled for a particular TV. When she came back, she came back with another one, $100 further out of our price range but it had 3D (which we've used once and found that it was useless). It's both the best and worst TV that I've ever had. Technically it has a lot of features but they're so poorly implemented.

 

Hmm, I have a Samsung TV also, it was prior to them being connected to the internet. It has a USB port in the back which you can use to load firmware onto it. You can't watch videos with it though. Just give yours a check, you may be able to update the firmware via a USB slot if it has one.

 

As for your comment previously mentioning to produce something inspired by something else, that's a very wise comment. I saw in one of the threads here the game "Ghastly Night". I'd not seen it before and was impressed that it didn't try and do all the colours of Ghouls 'n' Ghosts (or Ghosts and Goblins) - I get those games mixed up. It just did everything in its own way and it looked very good for it.

[Keatah]

While the topic was about the hardware aspect - I like to take it up via the software.

Although I am no programmer and don't know the inner hardware workings in detail - I will be always wanting to do stuff that hasn't been done, because obviously it is so hard to do, with problems to overcome - but I believe in the creativity possible to address the shortfalls and seek alternative ways and means to present something similar and different instead. That is - in not delivering an authentic conversion of a difficult game format/design but one that the hardware can deliver. An example being the Galaga game - not to deliver the original - but something inspired by the coin-op game in which some features are used - and the most difficult to achieve bits discarded. It may or may not capture parts of the game faithfully but it's flavour will be undeniable.

 

I don't doubt the quality work that has gone into converting hard to convert pictures across to this hardware using advanced software techniques but I always think that the human eye is also needed to work on problem areas that need to be hand done/drawn which software can't interpret/translate so well - and this is usually a key area of interest in the picture - the rest can be done via software.

 

Harvey

 

Sure. All that. BITD, in practice, an arcade game for an 8-bit home system would be written once on the programmer's favorite machine - whatever it may be. And then it was cross compiled and patched to work on others. Or even ported by someone else totally not involved in the creation of the original. That's what porting was. Ha!

 

That's why there's usually one killer version that everyone likes on one specific machine. It's usually the machine where the game was first made. One version that rises above all and pushes the limit. While the rest of the ports look like afterthoughts. Once in a great while you'll get a programmer that is better and more enthusiastic about a game and a game will buck that trend and come out being better for having been ported.

 

Examples of not being better:

Star Raiders and BallBlazer on the Atari 400/800. Later versions stunk on platforms 10x more capable. And to add insult to injury, some weren't even ports but just used intellectual property, names, game environs..

 

The truth is that I'm indifferent about CP/M too. But the availability of CP/M on the Apple II via Microsoft's Softcard was a major selling feature of the Apple II and I think all Atari needed to do was offer the capability. This would have brought the Atari to par with the Apple in that regard.

 

Early in the Apple II's life CP/M was important. As the 8-bit stuff matured in the mid-80's CP/M more or less just faded away. 80-Columns wasn't enough, GUIs were on the scene and the Z80 was getting old.

 

 

It's a "Soniq" TV and it's basically a PC inside and runs Android (poorly). It loads up (takes about a minute or so) and then I (think) that it runs TV tuning software within Android.

 

I guess this is what you get when the new school engineers grew up programming microcontrollers as opposed to wiring up individual discrete parts. It's easy to spec out an embedded computer for running programs that does the equivalent of a 70's analog TV. Much easier than farting around with discrete parts. However worse the results may be.

[kiwilove]

As for your comment previously mentioning to produce something inspired by something else, that's a very wise comment. I saw in one of the threads here the game "Ghastly Night". I'd not seen it before and was impressed that it didn't try and do all the colours of Ghouls 'n' Ghosts (or Ghosts and Goblins) - I get those games mixed up. It just did everything in its own way and it looked very good for it.

Thanks for pointing this game out. While the night colours are good - I still like to see what a regular colours scheme might look like.

The black? cat is a nice graphics addition. It is a pretty decent effort overall - with a few bits here and there, which could have been

improved upon?

While a decent Ghosts n Goblins like game - I can only guess it's still only marginally better than Domain of the Undead in gameplay?

It's not an easy game and seems to suffer like Crownland - rather frustrating to play with it's jumping?

But then Ghosts n Goblins on the C64 - was no easy game - but I think it's control system was more positive.

 

Harvey