64kb really?

[+x=usr(1536)]

34 minutes ago, Robert Cook said:

Obviously, you are being sarcastic.

Yes, but with just a soupçon of truth to it.

34 minutes ago, Robert Cook said:

If there is something I got wrong or there is a gap in my knowledge, then I am willing to learn.  I certainly don't know everything there is to know about these computers.  I know that because I learn something new about them just about every day (that I have the time to spend on this hobby).

What I am referring to is perception.  By writing tomes to explain your position, it makes you look like a complete know-it-all.  Whether or not your points are right or wrong really doesn't matter when glancing at their sheer mass makes one wonder if it's ultimately worth their time to even read them, let alone respond.

 

Bear in mind that I'm writing this as someone who is capable of both rather wordy posts and replies, and has had to train himself to kerb that instinct.

[Gunstar]

Wait a minute here! I think you've really stumbled onto a true conspiracy of "scams" regarding memory here, @Robert Cook ! It's not just with dram memory either! They are scamming us with storage memory too! My disk drives are supposed to be 90K, 130K and 180K memory storage solutions, but damn it they short you there too! After formatting the media for use, I can't save 90/130/180K on my floppies either! And my HDD partitions always seem to come up short too, no matter how much space I allocate for the partitions, damn it if I don't lose space there too, after initializing and formatting to make the device usable! Those damned corporate !

 

This goes way beyond computer ram scams!

 

What a rip-off, I guess it's time to fall back on good-old analog audio and cassette tapes! At least then you have just as much room for storage memory on tape as there was when it was still sealed! Unless...Doh! Dammit, my cassette drives are all upgraded for turbo speed, which means I lose tape space to the turbo boot loader program! I've painted myself into a corner! Even though the turbo boots allow more programs to be saved to the same length of tape, some how I still lose storage space due to system operations!

Edited November 21, 2022 by Gunstar

[leech]

4 hours ago, Gunstar said:

Wait a minute here! I think you've really stumbled onto a true conspiracy of "scams" regarding memory here, @Robert Cook ! It's not just with dram memory either! They are scamming us with storage memory too! My disk drives are supposed to be 90K, 130K and 180K memory storage solutions, but damn it they short you there too! After formatting the media for use, I can't save 90/130/180K on my floppies either! And my HDD partitions always seem to come up short too, no matter how much space I allocate for the partitions, damn it if I don't lose space there too, after initializing and formatting to make the device usable! Those damned corporate !

 

This goes way beyond computer ram scams!

 

What a rip-off, I guess it's time to fall back on good-old analog audio and cassette tapes! At least then you have just as much room for storage memory on tape as there was when it was still sealed! Unless...Doh! Dammit, my cassette drives are all upgraded for turbo speed, which means I lose tape space to the turbo boot loader program! I've painted myself into a corner! Even though the turbo boots allow more programs to be saved to the same length of tape, some how I still lose storage space due to system operations!

Shhh, they are watching! 

[zzip]

On 11/18/2022 at 10:06 PM, Robert Cook said:

Yeah, but wouldn't he also have been motivated to make sure that as many people got to hear the soundtrack as possible (until it drives you crazy, that is, although personally I always had it playing)?  Sound cards for the Apple II were rare and never received much support.  Almost everyone who had ever heard the Ultima soundtracks back in the day must have heard them on a C64/C128 or A8 (Ultima III)--I mean early on before additional ports were made for newer platforms.

 

On 11/18/2022 at 10:06 PM, Robert Cook said:

What I know is that on a 6502-based computer Ultima IV needs more than 36.5 kB free (after accounting for any resident DOS) to run at all, and that 52.5 kB is enough (more than enough?) to run the game with the soundtrack.  The Atari 800 with about 47 kB free (minus OS variables and the system stack), and probably more like 43-44 kB after accounting for Origin's custom Atari DOS, falls in between, so it can run the game (and fortunately does, since there was a port made for the A8) but without the soundtrack.  I also know, for sure now, that the 800XL has more than enough RAM to run Ultima IV with the soundtrack (not that this was much in doubt).  So why wasn't the soundtrack made optional?  That's the question people have been asking for ages.  This game offers two types of artifacting, one for the 800 and the other for the 800XL, since their artifact colors are reversed, but it can't optionally load the soundtrack on the 800XL?  By that time, 1985, there were more 800XLs (most of which were effectively sold at clearance prices) than 800s, and a lot more than there were Mockingboards.  I guess there always will be decisions that don't make much sense.  Sure, translating the soundtrack for the A8 probably involved a little work, but not more than making a custom DOS for both the A8 and C64 ports.  Why?  Ultima V on the C64/C128 simply used CBM DOS (with a fastloader for the C64 as a separate matter), which takes no work and uses up no RAM.  So weird.

 

I'm sure he wanted the music everywhere it could be played.   However, software development is chaotic, especially back them.   There's deadlines, technical expertise (or lack thereof), cost of doing port vs expected revenue from that port.

 

The Atari 8-bit line was not in a good spot in 1985.  The Atari sale threw Atari into chaos, and nobody was quite sure what the future held for the platform,  putting XLs out at clearance prices doesn't look like a move that a company that believes in the platform will do.   So after the sale,  Atari 8-bit development kind of dried up.  We were getting a trickle of games vs what the Apple II/PC/C64 were getting at the time.   Things did improve somewhat after the XE came out and Atari showed renewed commitment to the platform.   But Ultima IV was ported during those dark days.  So if they ran into technical issues with the music, that would be additional cost for the port that maybe they didn't want to take on.   Or maybe the 90K 810 disks forced them to cut content to fit on the disks and music was an easy target.

 

Has anyone ever tried patching the music into the 8-bit version?   In the PC world the ultima games have all kinds of patches to add music, improve graphics, etc.

On 11/18/2022 at 10:06 PM, Robert Cook said:

As I had calculated earlier, the background music player uses no more than 8.5 kB of RAM, and possibly less.  The A8 and Apple II bitmaps take the same amount of RAM, with only a couple of hundred bytes extra for the A8's display list, so that wasn't an issue.

Even 8.5K is a lot for that kind of task.   Many 16K carts had background music and I doubt half the code went to playing music.

[leech]

On 11/21/2022 at 7:58 AM, zzip said:

Has anyone ever tried patching the music into the 8-bit version?   In the PC world the ultima games have all kinds of patches to add music, improve graphics, etc.

If I had the talent and time, or at least the time to learn the talent, I'd make an Enhanced Ultima IV for the Atari 8bit, with support for dual-pokeys, vbxe, etc.  I think it deserves an upgraded version.  Still my favorite Atari 8bit game.