Bless and Curse of Atari and Amiga computer designs

[Keatah]

18 hours ago, zzip said:

And they had to re-engineer the architecture how many times?

At least it was possible to re-engineer it. Because money and heavyweights. For some reason 68000 (and other architectures) weren’t getting that support and investment.

 

I always say that part of being a good product is availability and mfg support. It’s why VHS the superior choice. And the best camera is the one you have with you.
 

Worlds greatest whatever isn’t so great if it isn’t available and workable.

 

16 hours ago, calimero said:

PC manage to survive by paddling compatibility of software at expend of hardware progress / main progress in x86 world at first place have x86 compatibility in mind.

I was more than happy to have a less-featured machine if it meant getting the software  I wanted.

 

16 hours ago, calimero said:

Do not forget that Amiga, Atari, Mac gave birth of most successful Windows software: all major software for DTP, Graphics, Text, SpreadSheet, 3D was born on alternative (non Wintel) platforms and later ported to Wintel.

Thankfully there was a platform for that software to evolve on. DTP and the likes would have stagnated into oblivion if stayed on Commodore and Atari.

 

We needed (and thankfully got) Wintel with less buggy and a more stable architecture. C= & /|\ were all over the place.

16 hours ago, calimero said:

Thanks to Apple we have now M1 and we can see how crap Intel CPUs are (finally!).

Too bad it toils in a walled garden.

[Keatah]

16 hours ago, calimero said:

Please, can you tell us what software/accessories make biggest impression on you when you switch to PC

All the neat astronomy software of the time. 16-bit machines had nothing like it.

 

That we could have all those 90’s games without needing specialized hardware. Generic and consumer-grade stuff was everywhere. 
 

ZipDrive and low-cost IDE stuff was impressive in the storage arena.

 

SoundBlaster being available at WalMart of all places.

 

Today it’s still nice that everything works with everything unlike in 8/16 era.

 

Integrated office suites..

[zzip]

3 hours ago, Keatah said:

At least it was possible to re-engineer it. Because money and heavyweights. For some reason 68000 (and other architectures) weren’t getting that support and investment.

They did take the 680x0 line all the way to 68060,  and performance of the higher generations was comparable to equivalent x86 chips.    The reason it wasn't getting more investment was there was so much more money in the clone market.   There were several competing CPU manufacturers, if Intel didn't innovate. AMD or maybe even Cyrix would eat their lunch.   Plus all the sales in the clone world lead to better economies of scales so that by the 1990s prices were lower for PC components than an equivalent 68K based system would cost.

 

If IBM had started with a 68000 like they had considered, than all that investment would have gone into the Motorola ecosystem instead and the 8088 would be a chip that few remembered.   IBM didn't chose 8088 because of any technical advantage, it was based on Intel + AMD's ability to produce the volume of chips IBM needed.

 

3 hours ago, Keatah said:

We needed (and thankfully got) Wintel with less buggy and a more stable architecture. C= & /|\ were all over the place.

Ah yes that famous Wintel stability

 

3 hours ago, Keatah said:

Today it’s still nice that everything works with everything unlike in 8/16 era.

It doesn't though.   You are better off running pre 2000's PC software under an emulator than trying to get it to run natively on a modern system (sometimes it works, a lot of times it will have issues).  And on the hardware side,  I'm sure we've all got boxes of ISA cards, VLB, PCI (not express), AGP cards, and RAM DIMMs that we can no longer use on a modern PC motherboard.

[TGB1718]

3 hours ago, zzip said:

Ah yes that famous Wintel stability

 

My WindoZe 10 still does the modern equivalent several times a day, I believe its some driver incompatibility,

but have you seen how many drivers Windoze loads under the covers, could probably solve it with a full reinstall

but the pain of reinstalling all the software I have etc. etc. Funny, I never remember having to do that with Unix or Linux

 

[zzip]

9 minutes ago, TGB1718 said:

My WindoZe 10 still does the modern equivalent several times a day, I believe its some driver incompatibility,

but have you seen how many drivers Windoze loads under the covers, could probably solve it with a full reinstall

but the pain of reinstalling all the software I have etc. etc. Funny, I never remember having to do that with Unix or Linux

 

Windows 7/10 are a lot more stable in my experience with just occasional crashes.    But in the 90s blue screens were so common that BSOD became an acronym everyone could identify with.   Windows 98 even famously blue-screened during a public demo hosted by Bill Gates

[Keatah]

7 hours ago, zzip said:

It doesn't though.   You are better off running pre 2000's PC software under an emulator than trying to get it to run natively on a modern system (sometimes it works, a lot of times it will have issues).  And on the hardware side,  I'm sure we've all got boxes of ISA cards, VLB, PCI (not express), AGP cards, and RAM DIMMs that we can no longer use on a modern PC motherboard.

Yes of course. I was coming at it from the USB and ZipDisk angle. Mostly USB though. Nice to see the keydrives I had from the 1999-2004 era work today. For the hell of it tried a USB ZipDrive, and it worked straight away in Win10. Disks I wrote on 386/486 machine worked in Win10.

 

As far as virtualization/emulation, I'm happy that's an option. All the DOS games of the 1990's seem simple enough that emulation handles them well.

 

Yes boxes of cards and boards and stuff! Woot!

[Xebec]

On 10/1/2021 at 4:41 AM, ParanoidLittleMan said:

Yes, having wider data bus increases effectively RAM access speed. And Pentium is what used it in PCs first.

As I know, there are some (high end) video cards with even 256-bit RAM data bus - same purpose.  But not really new thing - good old TT used something like it.

(Yes older thread) -- I always assumed the Pentium went to 64-bit width because it could execute two instructions at once, so this was a way to get enough instructions and data to keep it fed..  I guess that's the same thing though as trying to make ram faster for access.. 

[Lynxpro]

On 5/3/2022 at 6:44 AM, zzip said:

They did take the 680x0 line all the way to 68060,  and performance of the higher generations was comparable to equivalent x86 chips.    The reason it wasn't getting more investment was there was so much more money in the clone market.   There were several competing CPU manufacturers, if Intel didn't innovate. AMD or maybe even Cyrix would eat their lunch.   Plus all the sales in the clone world lead to better economies of scales so that by the 1990s prices were lower for PC components than an equivalent 68K based system would cost.

 

If IBM had started with a 68000 like they had considered, than all that investment would have gone into the Motorola ecosystem instead and the 8088 would be a chip that few remembered.   IBM didn't chose 8088 because of any technical advantage, it was based on Intel + AMD's ability to produce the volume of chips IBM needed.

 

 

 

It's really mind-boggling how stupid Motorola was in not lining up decent 2nd source suppliers to meet IBM's expectations. If they were worried about AMD cutting into them, they could've licensed to Synertek. And maybe they weren't willing to license to IBM to produce their own which IBM of course did with x86 despite still being under anti-trust investigation. But wasn't IBM first interested in the 6809? Maybe I'm thinking of the 68008 since its relation to the 68000 was similar to the 8088 to the 8086.

 

Let's also remember that many years later, the Epyx Handy/Atari Lynx ended up using the 6502 because of Motorola's inflexibility in licensing the 6809 or the 68000 for customization [at least at the level Epyx was interested in doing].

[zzip]

5 minutes ago, Lynxpro said:

It's really mind-boggling how stupid Motorola was in not lining up decent 2nd source suppliers to meet IBM's expectations. If they were worried about AMD cutting into them, they could've licensed to Synertek. And maybe they weren't willing to license to IBM to produce their own which IBM of course did with x86 despite still being under anti-trust investigation. But wasn't IBM first interested in the 6809? Maybe I'm thinking of the 68008 since its relation to the 68000 was similar to the 8088 to the 8086.

The way I understood it was that Intel was just in a better place to meet the kind of volume IBM wanted at the time.   Motorola couldn't just ramp up production overnight the way Intel was ready to.

[Keatah]

6 hours ago, Lynxpro said:

It's really mind-boggling how stupid Motorola was in not lining up decent 2nd source suppliers to meet IBM's expectations.

The company was run by a bunch of old farts. And bloated as all hell toward the end. 160,000 employees milling about doing nothing but feeding from the dripping blubber.

 

Quote

If they were worried about AMD cutting into them, they could've licensed to Synertek. And maybe they weren't willing to license to IBM to produce their own which IBM of course did with x86 despite still being under anti-trust investigation. But wasn't IBM first interested in the 6809? Maybe I'm thinking of the 68008 since its relation to the 68000 was similar to the 8088 to the 8086.

They weren't interesting in doing anything. And they certainly didn't care about AMD - old man mentality again.

 

I rather liked the concept of the 68000. And it was so unfortunate that big M let it stagnate into obscurity.

Edited May 25, 2022 by Keatah