Atari-inspired, new "8-bit" computer

[+bent_pin]

9 minutes ago, zzip said:

Rasperry Pi's were built with education in mind,  they are cheap, quick-booting can use modern languages like Python.   Linux doesn't force disruptive updates on you the way Windows does.   Not allowing privileged access should prevent OS-level damage, but if it still occurs, just swap out the SD card with a spare clean one-  it's no harder if they screw up the DOS disk on a classic computer.

 

Networking doesn't have to be essential, or you can just have local access to say a shared drive and no general internet access to lock them down.

I use 2600s to teach an introduction to assembly programming. It's much easier for a 10-year-old to understand 6502 ASM than it is for the to understand ARM ASM. Students should learn on modern equipment, but I've heled produce quite a number of engineers by starting them on vintage hardware.

[Geister]

1 hour ago, Dinadan67 said:

We had that back in the day, google „Amiga“. If you desperately want something even more like the GS, get a XE with Rapidus and VBXE. I don‘t get the idea of modern „fantasy“ 8 bit computers that never existed. What for?

IDK, wish fulfillment, actually getting what Atari promised but never delivered?  I had an Amiga and was underwhelmed.  Maybe it was that Commodore produced it and not Atari.  Maybe it was the high cost of anything to do with it.  I didn't want anything to do with 16 bit Atari because I saw them as the next gen of the C64. I don't even much like the 130xe except it was still Atari compatible.  I just wanted what Atari promised and never delivered on.  If Atari had the expansion bus back in the day we might have got the equivalent of the Atari GS.  The original Apple IIGS was a replacement motherboard for the II+ or it was at least an option.  It's an option I'd like to explore.  

 

@zzipI've got a few PI's.  It's not the same thing.  I'm probably going Debian this year because Micro-sloth has overstepped too many boundaries.  Call me weird, but I just want to see how far the Atari can be taken.  I have modern systems, but I keep them separate from my hobbies. 

[zzip]

2 minutes ago, bent_pin said:

I use 2600s to teach an introduction to assembly programming. It's much easier for a 10-year-old to understand 6502 ASM than it is for the to understand ARM ASM. Students should learn on modern equipment, but I've heled produce quite a number of engineers by starting them on vintage hardware.

But why?  There's small niche of jobs these days that requires assembly knowledge vs other languages.   It's not like in our day where we needed to learn it out of necessity to get any kind of performance out of our machines.

[lightman]

12 minutes ago, zzip said:

Rasperry Pi's were built with education in mind,  they are cheap, quick-booting can use modern languages like Python.   Linux doesn't force disruptive updates on you the way Windows does.   Not allowing privileged access should prevent OS-level damage, but if it still occurs, just swap out the SD card with a spare clean one-  it's no harder if they screw up the DOS disk on a classic computer.

 

Networking doesn't have to be essential, or you can just have local access to say a shared drive and no general internet access to lock them down.

Linux can be adapted but it's still too complex for what I am looking for. Modern scripting languages are also too complex and have too many requirements. I think BASIC has been unfairly shunted when it's still a good learning tool.

 

If I could get Linux down to booting in no more than two seconds, there might be a chance. The OS would have to be read-only (like squashfs) and ideally be on some internal flash.

 

 

[lightman]

2 hours ago, bent_pin said:

I'm toying with a few projects along that line.

1) I'm making a hypercharged 6502/6507 to juice up the existing machines

2) I'm working on reclaiming ICs from several boards to make a multiprocessor z80/32u4 computer from the ground up. 

Looks interesting! Do you have a thread or site for the project?

[lightman]

1 hour ago, Dinadan67 said:

We had that back in the day, google „Amiga“. If you desperately want something even more like the GS, get a XE with Rapidus and VBXE. I don‘t get the idea of modern „fantasy“ 8 bit computers that never existed. What for?

On the "fantasy" side, I think people want to have simple systems that they can understand and quickly develop for.

 

On the hardware side ("new 8-bit" computers), people want to enhance older systems.

[+bent_pin]

9 minutes ago, zzip said:

But why?  There's small niche of jobs these days that requires assembly knowledge vs other languages.   It's not like in our day where we needed to learn it out of necessity to get any kind of performance out of our machines.

It gives meaning to the 1s and 0s. The also learn how to use it in microcontroller and eventually ARM and X64. Along the way the learn all the modern languages as well, but concepts such as iteration and abstract data structures are quite literally child's play for them, having already learned the fundamental underlying concepts.

[+bent_pin]

4 minutes ago, lightman said:

Looks interesting! Do you have a thread or site for the project?

Not yet. I'd rather have at least an alpha to demonstrate first.

[Geister]

36 minutes ago, zzip said:

Fair-enough, but the problem for the Apple IIgs was that the Mac already existed, and the problem for Atari 8-bit was that the ST existed and it's dumb to compete against your own product lines.    Unless there's a world where ST doesn't exist and the 65C816 was Atari's 16-bit strategy and it extends that lineage the way 286, 386 extended the life of the PC.  That would have been nice,  but the 65C816 was late to the party and ST, Mac and Amiga were already being designed around the 68000

True. the MAC pre-existed and the turtle-necked Vampire wanted to push his baby and not Woz' child.  As I said earlier, the GS, even deliberately handicapped by Severus Jobs, still out-performed the monochrome tombstone.  

 

I've already said how I felt about the ST.  I would have shipped it to Commodore with a note about keeping better track of their children.  The expandable 8-bit pre-existed the ST and should have been produced.  We was robbed.  That's all I want and an unstable Rapidus and an unsupported VBXE is interesting, but I'd rather have them as bus cards.  I don't care for the hack and slash installation of those devices as clever as they are.  I was designing a 65C816 card on an Apple prototype board that plugged into the PBI port and it would boot the computer in compatibility mode.  Imagine if I'd know what I was doing.  If you can find out if Bob Tune is still aroound, I gave the board to him along with the rest of my Atari stuff back in the day.  Ask him for the card. 

[zzip]

1 minute ago, lightman said:

Modern scripting languages are also too complex and have too many requirements.

How so?

 

2 minutes ago, lightman said:

I think BASIC has been unfairly shunted when it's still a good learning tool.

The problem with BASIC, at least as implemented on 8-bit systems, is it encourages some really bad programming practices and inhibits good ones.   Way too easy to fill your program with GOTO's and the preferred alternative GOSUB doesn't really implement functions/procedures very well--  doesn't allow parameter passing,  all variables are global in scope.   It's also not very good for data types.   It's not great for readability.   And I think every 8-bit BASIC is line-number oriented while no modern language is.

 

 

[mickster]

3 hours ago, Geister said:

I understand that point of view, but I really want a version of the Atari with the features that it should have gained along the way if the Atari company hade been a bit more innovative after Bushnell & Co. had left the building. I just want what should have been delivered before Tramiel came in and side-lined 8-bit development.  I always envisioned a 800GS version of our computers.

 

If Atari would have been more innovative it would have made the Amiga. The Atari 8 bit is just a 6502 with a custom video chip and custom audio chip.  The Amiga is a 68000 with just a custom video chip and a custom audio chip.  There really was no innovation to be done on the Atari 8 bit line.  When using custom chips, scalability is pretty much completely removed from the situation.  Anything done to scale up the 8bit line would have destroyed compatibility.  Once that is done, it is not really a scaled up machine, but whole new platform. 

 

For example, look at the prototypes of the 1400xl and 1450xl.  Basically bigger cases to allow external components to be in the inside of the case.  I imagine the reason for this was for Atari power users that had 'case envy' of the emerging ibm compatibles and wanting everything in one box.

 

I remember in the late eighties wondering why Atari didn't upgrade the 8 bit line (and actually the ST line by much).  The problem is the original design makes it impossible, or at the very least undesirable.  A custom chip makes a cheap computer with fantastic results with no upgradability.  A good hardware design makes an expensive computer that can somewhat have 'legs' with a stable platform to grow.   I enjoy these discussions because how so many things didn't seem to make sense at the time come clear with 20 years looking back.

 

early 80' computers =  High prices and promises with computers were not able do much of anything other than games and low level word processing

mid 80's computers =  high priced computers with GUI's that were to bring the masses.  Still really didn't do much but games and better word processing

later 80's early 90's= Computers with tons of expansion, but if you filled all of those slots, it was very expensive and didn't really add to the lifetime of the computer.

mid 90's to 00  =   Computers losing expansion as things slowly end up all on the main board.

2000s' on = hardware so cheap, that its really more about software platform and specific needs

 

Been an interesting hobby (and job) for me all these years.  

 

 

[Geister]

2 minutes ago, zzip said:

How so?

 

The problem with BASIC, at least as implemented on 8-bit systems, is it encourages some really bad programming practices and inhibits good ones.   Way too easy to fill your program with GOTO's and the preferred alternative GOSUB doesn't really implement functions/procedures very well--  doesn't allow parameter passing,  all variables are global in scope.   It's also not very good for data types.   It's not great for readability.   And I think every 8-bit BASIC is line-number oriented while no modern language is.

 

 

I like Javascript so I'll stay out of that. What are modern scripting languages otherwise.

 

There is a very good lineless Basic on the Atari these days.  

[lightman]

1 hour ago, 5-11under said:

The question is what you want to do with such a computer.

Once you've answered that, there may be existing solutions, or at least you'd know (and we'd know) what the general requirements are.

I'm also not sure if you're looking to buy something, or to make something.

 

Personally, I'd love it if my MiSTer FPGA was built into something like a laptop. That's be convenient for me, and I could try out some BASIC in Apple or MSX or a variety of other computers.

 

That's a good place to start. I am less interested in making something. Ideally, I would buy something already made, like the AgonLight2. However, if I can't find something that meets my requirements, I'm willing to take a shot at making it.

 

What I want to do with the computer is write software for it and use it for teaching. I am working on my list of requirements, which may also help.

 

FPGAs are very interesting. I have a MiST but it had some problem and stopped working. I haven't had to time to try and fix it.

[lightman]

39 minutes ago, bent_pin said:

I use 2600s to teach an introduction to assembly programming. It's much easier for a 10-year-old to understand 6502 ASM than it is for the to understand ARM ASM. Students should learn on modern equipment, but I've heled produce quite a number of engineers by starting them on vintage hardware.

Thanks for the insight! I do suspect that Arm assembly might be harder to pick up. I started with Motorola 68K assembly.

[+bent_pin]

2 minutes ago, lightman said:

Thanks for the insight! I do suspect that Arm assembly might be harder to pick up. I started with Motorola 68K assembly.

It's also a lot easier when you tell them that they'll be writing video games. 

[lightman]

38 minutes ago, zzip said:

But why?  There's small niche of jobs these days that requires assembly knowledge vs other languages.   It's not like in our day where we needed to learn it out of necessity to get any kind of performance out of our machines.

How niche is it? In any event, assembly language jobs are not going away. They will always be needed and I think especially so with the surge of embedded systems that use low-power 8-bit and 32-bit CPUs. Performance is still critical for some of those machines.

 

At the same time, not everything is about getting a job. There are people who are interested in assembly for its own sake.

 

On an educational level, it gives you important insight into how the computers really work. I wish we had someone teaching 6502 assembly when I was a kid.

[lightman]

31 minutes ago, zzip said:

How so?

Installations, versions, libraries, object-oriented paradigms, IDE and IDE setup, lack of portability, etc. etc. Too many features and requirements. I have had a number of instances where Python scripts didn't work because I had the wrong minor revision of the interpreter and couldn't install some needed library, not to mention all the times I've hit Python 2 vs. Python 3 compatibility issues. I won't go into the silly formatting requirement of Python.

 

31 minutes ago, zzip said:

The problem with BASIC, at least as implemented on 8-bit systems, is it encourages some really bad programming practices and inhibits good ones.   Way too easy to fill your program with GOTO's and the preferred alternative GOSUB doesn't really implement functions/procedures very well--  doesn't allow parameter passing,  all variables are global in scope.   It's also not very good for data types.   It's not great for readability.   And I think every 8-bit BASIC is line-number oriented while no modern language is.

I don't agree. I think on a learning level, it has a simplicity that works. Anecdotally, the best programmers I know started with BASIC.

 

However, I do agree that line numbers are questionable.

[zzip]

6 minutes ago, Geister said:

I like Javascript so I'll stay out of that. What are modern scripting languages otherwise.

Python is the other big one nowadays,  but there's Perl, Groovy, PHP, Bash, Ruby, Powershell, 

 

10 minutes ago, Geister said:

There is a very good lineless Basic on the Atari these days. 

Getting rid of line numbers is a good start, but what else does it add?

 

For instance I had GFA BASIC on the ST back then, and there was a lot of hype at the time about BASICs with no line numbers.    But it still fell short in other areas-  it didn't have good datatype support,  procedure implementation was minimal (but it at least had local variable support),  it discouraged whitespace by still requiring REM on "blank" lines.   When I go back and try to read my old GFA code, it's much harder to read than it should be because of the way the editor forces thing to be written.

[lightman]

58 minutes ago, Geister said:

I've already said how I felt about the ST.  I would have shipped it to Commodore with a note about keeping better track of their children.

 Agreed.

 

50 minutes ago, mickster said:

If Atari would have been more innovative it would have made the Amiga.

I think you mean, if Atari had been wiser. The Amiga was made by former Atari people and in that sense, it was made by Atari.

[zzip]

21 minutes ago, lightman said:

How niche is it? In any event, assembly language jobs are not going away. They will always be needed and I think especially so with the surge of embedded systems that use low-power 8-bit and 32-bit CPUs. Performance is still critical for some of those machines.

I think primarily in embedded systems or working on compilers maybe some work in optimizing code for gaming and what not.  But I have never seen it used in any job of my almost 30-year career.

 

9 minutes ago, lightman said:

Installations, versions, libraries, object-oriented paradigms, IDE and IDE setup, lack of portability, etc. etc. Too many features and requirements. I have had a number of instances where Python scripts didn't work because I had the wrong minor revision of the interpreter and couldn't install some needed library, not to mention all the times I've hit Python 2 vs. Python 3 compatibility issues. I won't go into the silly formatting requirement of Python.

Yeah I've hit those issues on Python and I'm not a fan of the way Python indents things either,  but I haven't had these kinds of issues with other scripting languages.

 

17 minutes ago, lightman said:

I don't agree. I think on a learning level, it has a simplicity that works. Anecdotally, the best programmers I know started with BASIC.

 

I started with BASIC and I had to unlearn a lot of bad habits that I picked up from BASIC.   I think BASIC could be refined into a fine language, but the default implementations on the 8-bits leave something to be desired.

[lightman]

8 minutes ago, zzip said:

Python is the other big one nowadays,  but there's Perl, Groovy, PHP, Bash, Ruby, Powershell, 

 

Yes and those are good, too, in their own ways. PHP can be quite portable. Perl is usually already installed on a lot of systems. However, I think they are all relatively complex and they need larger environments around them.

8 minutes ago, zzip said:

Getting rid of line numbers is a good start, but what else does it add?

 

For instance I had GFA BASIC on the ST back then, and there was a lot of hype at the time about BASICs with no line numbers.    But it still fell short in other areas-  it didn't have good datatype support,  procedure implementation was minimal (but it at least had local variable support),  it discouraged whitespace by still requiring REM on "blank" lines.   When I go back and try to read my old GFA code, it's much harder to read than it should be because of the way the editor forces thing to be written.

But I think this is a little like complaining that a bicycle can't compete with a car. BASIC was meant to be simple. However, I think if you look at something like QuickBasic, it had those features (or many of them). I tried Amos on Amiga and thought it worked well as a next step. After that, I went on to C.

[lightman]

26 minutes ago, zzip said:

I started with BASIC and I had to unlearn a lot of bad habits that I picked up from BASIC.

It comes down to personal experience, I suppose. Everyone learns in their own way and some people don't develop the same bad habits.

26 minutes ago, zzip said:

I think BASIC could be refined into a fine language, but the default implementations on the 8-bits leave something to be desired.

Fair enough. I don't mean to copy the default 8-bit implementations.

[mickster]

57 minutes ago, lightman said:

 Agreed.

 

I think you mean, if Atari had been wiser. The Amiga was made by former Atari people and in that sense, it was made by Atari.

No, if they wiser, they probably would have gotten into making audio/video cards and licensing their software to the ibm compatible platform.  Trying to continue to be their own 'computer line' was a fool's errand.  With hindsight , only apple and ibm compatibles really made it.   Even with all the c64 seed money, Amiga really was a failure if a company is trying to build a long term platform.  Once again, it was a computer with custom chips that was 'too expensive' and not upgradeable.  Even if they would have dropped out of computers all together and used the amiga chips for a console, Sega and Nintendo would have killed them with their superior software support.

 

The truth is , they really didn't have a good place to move forward.  Anything they would have done would have failed.  A good example of this is the ST and the Amiga.

 

The ST was a stripped down cheap as you can make a next generation computer.  While I loved it, it failed and most people never heard of it. ( i certainly never saw them for sale around me).

 

The Amiga was the same tech with a great sound and graphics processor.  I would have loved it, but it failed and most people never heard of it. I never saw one for sale.

 

The computer industry had grown up and Commodore/Atari were not able to adjust for the times.  Just like Warner thought they could sell atari 2600s forever,  Tramiel thought he could make another c64 (cheap computer for everyone) .  That worked the first time around, but the consumers had grown up to computers for the 2nd generation.

 

I could relive and talk about this stuff all day.  I was teenager when all this happened, so its neat to go back and read about the 'why they did certain decisions' as an adult.  It really does show how a great product will die unless it has proper software/support.

 

 

Edited August 21, 2023 by mickster
typo

[_The Doctor__]

No, IPODS made it, and carried Apples other products or lack there of for a time. Ipods and phones end of story

[+Stephen]

3 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

No, IPODS made it, and carried Apples other products or lack there of for a time. Ipods and phones end of story

They never innovated.  Just took other ideas and slickly packaged them and over-priced them.  Even going back to Jobs stealing parts, time, and info while working at Atari, to everything that followed.  Hell - Jobs even screwed Wozniak on the Breakout deal (1975), so he's always been a huckster.