1469 replies to this topic

[oky2000]

TMR, on Fri May 14, 2010 3:07 AM, said:

oky2000, on Thu May 13, 2010 11:10 PM, said:

And then a few years ago when loads of schools had dumped their old stock and they ended up on ebay there was hardly any games to be found for sale or download.

Pretty rare machine now.

Schools dumping stock is why i've got an A3010, two A5000s and two A7000s... i want to set one of the latter up but it needs the operating system reinstalling and my current "project" on that front is trying to get the A600HD i was given at Retro Reunited booting from a CF card...

I thought the OS was in ROM like an ST not like an Amiga where only the Kernal and other essential routines are in ROM and the rest is loaded from Workbench disks like the GUI etc.

I had a look a few days ago, it's still quite a rare beast to find and still no games in the last two weeks I could locate.

The Tosec is slightly larger today but still too many games I want to play are missing so no sale

Getting back to this topic, is there any actual recorded output from the AMY sound chip anywhere? Given that had Warner not sold Atari (and been in the black not red) we might have seen a new 8 bit with this soundchip at some point.

And given all the R&D on the AMY SPU was there a new graphics chip to compliment it or was it an isolated project? Hence no graphical equivalent of the 65XEM prototype.

I find AMY interesting because Atari was at least attempting to provide a more sophisticated solution to what was already provided by Atari home computers, Commodore on the other hand botched SID with their "FIX" ruining the excellent sample playback virtual 4th channel music and stuck it in the C128, and the TED chip was about as good as the sound in the VIC-20 (but remember it was designed to go in the $60 home computer Tramiel ordered not the post Tramiel Commodore cockup that was the Plus/4). So apart from the 3 man team at Amiga computers inventing Paula for them Commodore had no innovation of their own beyond SID in 1981 when Bob Yannes left. Kinda sad that even the Commodore 65 only had a dual SID setup, nothing too technically ingenious about sticking dual SIDs in a C64 today.

[sack-c0s]

RISC OS is in ROM and can run without anything extra loaded, but the !System folder has extra modules in it and IIRC loads whatever extensions the user wants at boot time. I think it's like the ST in that respect.

in RISC OS 2/3/3.1 it was more common to not load any extras but by 3.5 it was pretty much a fully-fledged boot sequence

[oky2000]

sack-c0s, on Fri May 21, 2010 7:48 PM, said:

RISC OS is in ROM and can run without anything extra loaded, but the !System folder has extra modules in it and IIRC loads whatever extensions the user wants at boot time. I think it's like the ST in that respect.

in RISC OS 2/3/3.1 it was more common to not load any extras but by 3.5 it was pretty much a fully-fledged boot sequence

Same as Kickstart/Workbench. Kickstart 2 onwards on Amiga is enough to boot an OS to a CLI (need Workbench disk to get a shell dos prompt but otherwise same on 1.2/1.3) with all the windowing and menu software in the kickstart core code. The Workbench disks have extra functionality. Imagine if you didn't need DOS to load Windows 98 and it would boot to a DOS prompt on a PC with no hard disk or floppy disk loaded.

On the ST, apart from desk accessories or utilities everything is in the code in the ROM chips. You can boot into GEM with no disk drives at all and if you have a Fast BASIC cartridge etc plugged in you have no loss of functionality except the ability to save your work to secondary storage

[OldAtarian]

youki, on Thu Apr 9, 2009 2:01 AM, said:

Hi all,

Reading the post about Commodore Vs Atari here :

http://www.atariage....s...t&p=1624439

where commodore 's fan said C64 is the best , and Atari 's fan said A800 is the best.

this post turned to be a steril discussion that will never end.

As on that forum it seems there is very good A800 programmer and very good C64 programmer also.

So what i propose instead of that steril discussion is to do concrete things.

i propose a kind of contest.

Take a game that does not exist on A800 and C64 , and make it for both . and lets compare the result.

I propose for instance , you adapt the level 1 of the MSX game KnightMare on both plateform.



The goal being to show power of your favorite plateform!.

And then we can judge what is the best plateform.

What do you thing?

A800's fan it is a mean to proof that you plateform is the best.
C64's fan it is the way to proof they are wrong.

Personnaly i don't think the A800 is better than a C64 ,but i don't think the opposite is true as well...
It is like comparing a Ferrari and a SUV .
On a highway , the ferrari is the best , but go "off road"... you will prefer the SUV...

Have you ever played Great Giana Sisters? The C64 version scrolls beautifully but the Atari ST version can't do side scrolling at all. I guess that means the C64 is better than the Atari ST.

C64

Atari ST

See how the C64 scrolls but the Atari ST loads one screen at a time?

Edited by OldAtarian, Fri Sep 24, 2010 3:31 PM.

[wood_jl]

[quote name='OldAtarian' date='Fri Sep 24, 2010 3:31 PM' timestamp='1285363872' post='2101137']
[quote name='youki' date='Thu Apr 9, 2009 4:01 AM' timestamp='1239264086' post='1722385']
See how the C64 scrolls but the Atari ST loads one screen at a time?
[/quote]

Yes, this proves that the ST was absolute dogshit, and should have been snuffed into the ground with a pair of shit-kicker boots.

[sack-c0s]

[quote name='wood_jl' date='Fri Sep 24, 2010 6:56 PM' timestamp='1285368978' post='2101216']
[quote name='OldAtarian' date='Fri Sep 24, 2010 3:31 PM' timestamp='1285363872' post='2101137']
[quote name='youki' date='Thu Apr 9, 2009 4:01 AM' timestamp='1239264086' post='1722385']
See how the C64 scrolls but the Atari ST loads one screen at a time?
[/quote]

Yes, this proves that the ST was absolute dogshit, and should have been snuffed into the ground with a pair of shit-kicker boots.
[/quote]

My big criticism of the ST is it follows on from the 8-Bit ataris so surely things should get *better*? Having a machine that was not being much good at scrolling as a follow-on from a range of machines born to play games seems a bit naff to me.

To be fair though - following up the Commodore 64 with the C16...

[Bryan]

sack-c0s, on Fri Oct 15, 2010 5:32 AM, said:

My big criticism of the ST is it follows on from the 8-Bit ataris so surely things should get *better*? Having a machine that was not being much good at scrolling as a follow-on from a range of machines born to play games seems a bit naff to me.

To be fair though - following up the Commodore 64 with the C16...

Well, as we know the history of Atari is about as complicated as it gets so the Amiga ended up with more in common with the Atari 8-bits than the ST.

[JamesD]

Does anyone here even remember the original intent of this topic?

[Bryan]

to determine the best recipe for fruitcake?

[TMR]

JamesD, on Wed Dec 15, 2010 2:58 PM, said:

Does anyone here even remember the original intent of this topic?

To get a direct competition going between C64 and A8 programmers... that's doomed to failure either way, i tried it during one of the big threads in the A8 sub that wasn't about joysticks and all the really gobby A8 people went quiet!

We did try getting a similar competition going for fun over at Format War, but i took the initiative and ended up with a game that i wasn't happy with because most of the other 8-bits couldn't handle it without dropping back to 25FPS for scrolling whilst the C64 was moving at 50FPS. i might resurrect the project because there's talk about publishing it on cartridge, who knows...

Bryan, on Wed Dec 15, 2010 3:33 PM, said:

to determine the best recipe for fruitcake?

Oh don't, i'm hungry now!

[sack-c0s]

The cake is a...

oh sod it. I'm bored of that meme now.

[JamesD]

I was just hinting that people had turned this into just another C64 vs Atari fight and none or the people arguing have put forth a single line of code to accomplish the original goal.

[Sheddy]

JamesD, on Tue Jan 11, 2011 5:57 AM, said:

I was just hinting that people had turned this into just another C64 vs Atari fight and none or the people arguing have put forth a single line of code to accomplish the original goal.

OK then, proof the Atari can do nothing faster than a C64
Read it and weep, Atari fanboys

nop

OK, I was bored!

Edited by Sheddy, Tue Jan 11, 2011 6:22 AM.

[sack-c0s]

Sheddy, on Tue Jan 11, 2011 6:20 AM, said:

OK then, proof the Atari can do nothing faster than a C64
Read it and weep, Atari fanboys

nop

OK, I was bored!

is it a coincidence that the opcode for nop is EA? Was chuck peddle so far ahead of his time he could encode games industry satire in his opcode table 30 years ahead?

OK, I'm watching a bunch of figures churn out on another monitor and I'm bored too

[carmel_andrews]

You forgot one Sack O's....JMP (named after a well known Hewson games programmer, John Phillips)

Or Rol And (an AA member here)

Lda...Is infact the Portuguese shortform for what the rest of the english speaking world call 'Limited'

Sta....I am guessing you remember Sta travel (a well known global travel agency for students)

RTS.... Royal Television Society

ORA...The latter half of Kia Ora (a fairly popular brand of soft drink)

DEC....(Didn't they merge with Compaq)

CLI....Command line interface

SEC...America's leading financial/banking sector regulator

TAX....Something the government whack us with

TAY...Scotland's largest river

LAX (apparently used in variants of 6502)....Los Angeles's main airport

CMP...Isn't that a market research company

ASL...American Sign Language or the american's shortform for Age, Sex, Location

BMI....British Midland International (budget airline)

RTS...Should be familiar to all that work at the post office (return to sender)

Anyone with any more

Edited by carmel_andrews, Wed Feb 2, 2011 4:05 PM.

[DracIsBack]

Amazing how long this thread is ... as we argue over computers dead for more than 20 years ...

Edited by DracIsBack, Sun Feb 6, 2011 10:19 AM.

[popmilo]

DracIsBack, on Sun Feb 6, 2011 10:18 AM, said:

Amazing how long this thread is ... as we argue over computers dead for more than 20 years ...

They are not dead

[NightSprinter]

Carmel, RTS can also be shortform for "Real Time Strategy".

[sack-c0s]

DracIsBack, on Sun Feb 6, 2011 10:18 AM, said:

Amazing how long this thread is ... as we argue over computers dead for more than 20 years ...

I think the fact this page is made up of C64 and Atari folks discussing other platforms and joking about other unrelated stuff is a subtle hint that *we can't be bothered with having a platform war*.

Maybe that's the lesson of the thread?


anyhow... does anyone else think the fact that the c64 has a SEX register is a tad seedy?

Edited by sack-c0s, Mon Feb 7, 2011 9:25 AM.

[potatohead]

Seedy: Well, the computer and electronics people I grew up with had a LOT of seedy things they used to remember stuff. Resistor color codes, for example??

Bad, Boys, Rape, Our, Young, Women, But, Violet, Gives, Willingly! Never did forget that one.