Were the Atari ST's big for gaming or just the 8 bit line?

[kool kitty89]

 

There are few computers with good software support that weren't good for gaming by contemporary standards... but "good" is a matter of oppinion.

 

Yeah, all of them. Anything before 2007 isn't good for gaming by contemporary standards. Whether someone likes ST games or not is a matter of taste. A good game is a good game regardless of platform, and with over 5000 games released for the ST the numbers speak for themselves. And speaking of numbers, ST game sales accounted for 10% of overal sales in December 1992 in the UK according to ST format.

Sorry, I meant contemporary standards for each system: ie the context of when it was released and the competition in the same class.

 

The Apple II should have been poor for games given the hardware, but the software pushed beyond that. (albeit it was better than the contemporary PET or TRS-80 in many respects -namely color and resolution) Though in the context of cost effectiveness, not so much compared to competition.

 

Even CGA PCs got a fair amount of support, and eventually (by the mid 80s) a fair amount started looking pretty good for the limitations (and the PC speaker DID have timers to run off unlike software controled clicks/beeps of others -albeit it could have been better if developers had allowed music only options like EU games often did... preferable music only, sfx only, AND both concurrently -something an odd amount of games didn't support). And then there's the NTSC artifact color modes really expanding things for an effective 160x200x16 colors (technically you could vary graphical detail resolution as seen fit -namely used for keeping text at an effective 320 pixels wide), and that's something that would have seen a lot more support had composite/RF monitors for PCs been more common. (or especially had a clone manufacturer pushed a low-end single-board PC with embedded CGA graphics and composite/RF out, something Tandy went above and beyond though and noone else really pushed at all in the US, at least in the way Tandy did... hell IBM probably would have been better off doing that than the proprietary PCJr, but the main problem there was simply the proprietary expansion and poor keyboard, not the added hardware -and the added sound chip would be more necessary regardless of the graphics)

Edited November 1, 2010 by kool kitty89

[svenski]

I think we should all go out and buy a Dragon 32. It never really took off here in the UK despite being a decent system.

 

Either that or a SAM Coupe , which was a car with built in Spectrum computer system for onboard computer (fuel consumption, parking aid etc)

[kool kitty89]

I think we should all go out and buy a Dragon 32. It never really took off here in the UK despite being a decent system.

 

Either that or a SAM Coupe , which was a car with built in Spectrum computer system for onboard computer (fuel consumption, parking aid etc)

The CoCo wasn't really big in the US either, but at least it was affordable compared to the Apple and in the case of a lower-end userbase who actually still wanted to use tapes (otherwise mostly dead in the US), you got some pretty fast load times compared to contemporaries (like the Spectrum). They probably should have added a cheap off the shelf sound chip for the model 2 (or at least 3)... the SN76489 was very small and should have been cheap enough. A lot of reasons the CoCo didn't do better, but the games it did do, it generally did well (in some ways a bit better than the Apple II and at a much, much lower price), but the C64's crushing dominance and low price was probably one of the biggest. (but certainly not the only factor)

 

But as I said, it really depends on software support and the CoCo didn't have the sort of dedication that really pushed other platforms especially limited ones like the Spectrum. (the CoCo is probably the closest long-lived counterpart to the Spectrum in the US, though the Apple II could have been had it not been sold at a premium -especially if it had gotten cut-down and integrated low-end versions with a single expansion interface and compact PCB... actually it's interesting that there weren't low-end apple II clones as such, only the more complete clones)

 

 

And yes, the SAM Coupe, more or less the only real sort of enhanced compatible successor to the Speccy... but a good deal too late and lacked direct compatibility with the Speccy 128k. (both memory and sound wise though they could have used an AY8930 or YM2203 to enhance sound and be directly backwards compatible -the former likely the cheaper option) The upgrade isn't unlike the CPC+ in some respects.

Of course, prior to Amstrad buying Sinclair there were far more ambitious plans for an upgraded speccy with the Loki project. (the engineers left after the Amstrad takeover and formed Flare and completed the chipset around 1987 and later consolidated it into the Slipstream ASIC used for the Konix Multisystem -powerful Blitter rendering to a 256x200 x16 or 256 color or 512x200x16 color display along with a 12 MHz DSP, fast ALU coprocessor, and interleaved DMA management similar to the Amiga -the Flare 1 was meant to use a 6 MHz Z80, but Konix demanded an 8088).

Aside from that monster being built into a speccy, it could have been a killer on the console market had Amstrad managed to keep the Loki team compared to the poor GX-1000. (rather odd Atari didn't take interest in the chipset either after the Panther was dropped and Flare 2 started work on the Jaguar)

Edited November 1, 2010 by kool kitty89

[+wood_jl]

The original Mac was during Jobs' first tenure.

 

Yeah, he worked there. So it was his creation? He was running the show and not CEO John Sculley? I thought Jobs was just a pitchman.

Jobs *founded* Apple. And while Mac wasn't his creation - that would be Jef Raskin - Jobs did have quite a bit of say into the Mac project when the Apple /// project went chest up.

 

Well, yeah - but "co-founded" is more like it. As I said, wasn't he just a pitchman? Wozniak was the guy designing the circuits and stringing them together in the early days. So, once again, I ask the question again: "Isn't he just a pitchman?" I mean if he didn't design anything, what did he have to do with the Mac, in the context of referring to the Mac as a product from "his tenure?" Would not CEO John Sculley have been the one with tenure?

Edited November 2, 2010 by wood_jl

[kool kitty89]

I'm not sure about Jobs, but there is a difference between being involved with a design or concept or ideas and doing the engineering... Even with Bushnell's exaggeration of achievements, he WAS (or is) very good at coming up with new/creative ideas and did do a fair bit of hardware work, but others did the actual engineering for the most part (in the case of the very early period: Nolan would more or less bounce ideas off Ted, Ted would engineer the circuit and Bushnell would implement and assemble it -Ted did the very early proof of concept prototype by himself at home iirc, but not after that).

Now I don't know how similar that would be to Jobs and Wozniak, but the relationships seem to parallel a fair bit (and Jobs learned a lot of his showmanship from Bushnell).

 

I do recall that the IIGS was more or less Woz's baby so to speak and that team was pushing that against the general consensus/wishes of Jobs/management though it wasn't released until Jobs was gone. (it did have a better price point, better hardware, backwards compatibility, and a better OS than the Mac, but the CPU was rather slow and Apple pushed forward more with the MAC... in hindsight you could certainly argue that the work put into the IIGS would have been better spent on an upgraded MAC and perhaps pushing a lower-cost model of the MAC a fair bit earlier, but OTOH you could argue that they should have pushed for a proper upgrade to the Apple II earlier and stronger -and not a la Apple III- with some higher-end 68k machines separate/parallel, and they didn't even have to jump to the '816 either but faster 6502s -NMOS went up to 4 MHz iirc- and then 65C02s followed by the '816 and/or R65C02/W65C02S derivatives, and they didn't have to jump as far with the hardware as the IIGS either, but perhaps add a simple DAC and MAC-like DMA audio support or a simple sound chip and enhance the existing video -single LSI chip and increased flexibility of color use, maybe a full 4bpp direct 16 color at a decent resolution -at least 140x192 -though artifact colors using double highres already added a fair bit of flexibility at least with composite monitors, and updated OS with GUI support -successive improvements for hardware and software at least starting with the IIE and more so with the IIC... the IIE should have been 2 MHz standard at the very least)

[carmel_andrews]

The Amstrad CPC+ and GX 4000 had nothing to do with sinclair's LOKI project, Amstrad had been boasting for a couple of years before they released those machines that they could launch an 'amiga basher' within an existing 8bit environment, only difference between the new systems and the original cpc machines was an updated gfx chip (amiga colour range and more h/w sprites) and a stereo sound chip (based on the existing cpc/speccy sound chip AY/YM etc)

 

Also, just to let you know, Apple originally inked a design/development contract with the 65816 designers/originators WDC, they later canceled the contract preferring instead to simply have the processor made for the IIGS system

[The Usotsuki]

though the Apple II could have been had it not been sold at a premium -especially if it had gotten cut-down and integrated low-end versions with a single expansion interface and compact PCB... actually it's interesting that there weren't low-end apple II clones as such, only the more complete clones)

Laser 128?

[kool kitty89]

The Amstrad CPC+ and GX 4000 had nothing to do with sinclair's LOKI project, Amstrad had been boasting for a couple of years before they released those machines that they could launch an 'amiga basher' within an existing 8bit environment, only difference between the new systems and the original cpc machines was an updated gfx chip (amiga colour range and more h/w sprites) and a stereo sound chip (based on the existing cpc/speccy sound chip AY/YM etc)

 

Also, just to let you know, Apple originally inked a design/development contract with the 65816 designers/originators WDC, they later canceled the contract preferring instead to simply have the processor made for the IIGS system

Yes, I'm well aware of the nature of the Amstrad machines: what I was saying was that HAD the Loki team (the Flare engineers) been compelled to move over with Amstrad after the takeover, they COULD have applied that work to Amstrad's machines instead, and probably could have done it earlier than the CPC+ or GX-4000. (the Flare 1 chipset was completed ~1987 and the Slipstram ASIC based on it was done by '89) If Amstrad wanted to get into the console market, that could have been a pretty amazing route to do so.

 

 

though the Apple II could have been had it not been sold at a premium -especially if it had gotten cut-down and integrated low-end versions with a single expansion interface and compact PCB... actually it's interesting that there weren't low-end apple II clones as such, only the more complete clones)

Laser 128?

That's still rather expensive and a bit later than I was thinking... I was thinking something pushing closer to the CoCo's price range and timeline.

[kool kitty89]

Scrolling is the most important one - as it free's up a massive amount of CPU time in scrolling games. Without it the ST was hamstrung when trying to replicate common 8 bit games.

Other stuff ( blit/256 colours ) would require a lot more silicon. ( Imagine a 10MHz cpu at launch though , that would have been nice )

Didn't VGA ( or MCGA ) come out in 1987? 16 colours was a good choice - ( Amiga was better, but it was a much better design )

 

Yeah, just look at the ST port of Grest Giana Sisters. It plays on one screen at a time instead of scrolling and even the C64 version can scroll. If the Blitter chip had been present on all ST's it could have been written to scroll just like the other systems.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr58eAozSM4

 

Firstly thats a poor example as the ST COULD scroll in software, but it took a lot of work... some games simply avoided it. (Giana Sisters doesnt use normal page flipping either but shifts about 1/4 of the screen at a time, so its sort of like *really* choppy scrolling I think one of the simpler/less intensive options is to scroll in increments of 8 pixels across (which is what most MSX/TMS9928 based machines do due to the 8x8 cell character architecture and lack of hardware scrolling -simply remapping the names/tilemap- and the Speccy sort of does that using software blitting like the ST would have to -like the ST it can also do smoother scrolling at the expense of much more resource use). I think the planar nature of the display makes 8-pixel increments particularly attractive. (opposed to a packed/chunky pixel framebuffer)

 

However, what Crazyace was suggesting WAS to add scrolling, but NOT to bother with something as complex as a blitter. Just add simple H/V scroll registers to the shifter. (and if not in '85, something addressed in '86... maybe even before the European launch)

You'd still have to do software blits on top of that for other objects moving around the screen ("software sprites"), but that's far, far less work than having to move every single pixel on-screen as scrolling requires. (with simple screen scrolling, it should also be fairly straightforward to do tricks for parallax and such -ie alter the scrolling rate between scanlines- if actual linescroll wasn't supported in hardware)

Now had the Shifter used packed pixels instead of bitplanes on top of that, it would have made things even better still. (let alone if a 160x200 256 color mode had been added)

 

Actually, a plain 160x200 16 color mode would probably be rather useful as well (in any case, even with no scroll and the same bitplanes of the ST), ie the normal 16 color mode of the ST, but at 1/2 the dot clock... technically that would allow up to ~192 pixels across on most TVs/monitors with standard SDTV calibration. (assuming that would be 4 MHz) But a nice alternative to using small screen windows...

 

 

I seem to recall you mentioning the SHIFTER also used an 8 MHz dot clock, is that correct? (which would mean a pretty hefty horizontal boarder on normally calibrated TVs/monitors -more so than the Amiga... and also really non-square pixels in NTSC -too tall- but for a stright to the edge 320 wide display on SDTVs you'd want about 6.7 MHz -which the MD does- or a little higher to ensure no overscan at all, and a big problem with higher dot clocks is worse artifacting in composite video, especially NTSC especially with anything above ~5.4 MHz though also depending heavily on the video encoder and TV used) For RGB that doesn't matter at all though and even less for monitors with easy to access H/V scan adjustment. (plus you get more Hblank time, if that's useful)

I was thinking on this again, and it seems like it could have been pretty nice if (even without other color depth modes), the SHIFTER had supported more variable dot clocks for the various resolutions available, or even different sync rates.

As above, a 1/2 res mode for 16-color could be pretty useful, and as the resolution drops, you can push full into overscan (but you'd hit the edge of a normal screen at ~192 pixels, so you wouldn't fill the 320 wide max -and you'd also have closer to square pixels than normal 3.58 MHz low-res modes of contemporaries). But you'd have to stick to 200 lines of resolution without modifying the framebuffer organization more. (ie allowing horizontal clipping)

You could do that for the 4-color mode too, setting it to 8 MHz rather than 16 for almost 384 visible pixels across.

And had they supported a monochome mode at 15 kHz Vsync, with 16 MHz you could have 720 (or almost 768) pixels across by as haigh as the screen could go (ie ~272 lines in PAL, or 224 NTSC -or more if you adjusted to show the full 240 lines or more), or 1280x200 with 24 MHz and they could have used it as a high-res 2-color mode instead of only monochome. (worthless in composite video aside from artifact colors -and a defacto variable-depth packed pixel framebuffer -only if consistent use of composite video encoders were used though and PAL and NTSC would have different artifacts)

 

And that's not counting if more variable dot-clocks were avilable either: like 6 MHz (288 wide on-screen and almost perfectly square in NTSC) or 12 MHz (576 wide), depending on what master clock was used and what clocks were conveninet to generate from that.

[atarian63]

Once again excuse my ignorance having grown up a Commodore fan and now trying to come to grips with all things Atari. I am getting there having recently acquired an 5200 lol! In regards to the Atari line of computers though, it seems at least to me that most of the "buzz" and conversation as far as gaming on Atari Computers revolves around the 8bit line? Since I loved Amiga gaming back in the day I would of though that 16 bit Atari gaming would of been pretty cool. However I don't hear much about gaming on Atari ST's, was it not a big thing? We're the ST's more for applications or music? Did anyone particularly love or prefer gaming on the ST? Please enlighten me, did I miss anything not gaming on an ST back in the day instead of or in addition to my beloved Amiga? Your opinion and thoughts welcomed as always!

ST for many years was much larger and outsold Amiga 2-1, wasnt until Atari reallocated supplies to europe and commodore brought out the a500 did that situation change. People wanted st's but when they weren't available Amiga 500 was there with a good price point and relativly reliable

[atarian63]

I think that the miggy only caught up with the ST because commodore were basuically giving them away (pricewise that is), which commodore knew unless they could reduce manuf'g costs (which they couldn't) and they started hitting the pc/mac market share considerably then commodore were sunk

 

Both machines suffered big time because they didn't support the hard drive software format from the word go (that is where the pc and mac basically took the market away from atari and commodore), had atari and commodore supported HD's as standard media of software dev. like the pc and mac's were starting to, i reckon that both machines would still be with us in some form or other

 

And because neither atari or conmmodore were going to support HD format for software development, it hurt their chances of the atari/commodore cd devices ever succeeding

True,had commodore continued the a1000 path, it was going to be all over. once they chose the"jack" method and stopped trying to calling it a "business" machine and more the games machine that Atari/Jay Miner had intended it to be,Things changed. we sold almost all amigas as a gaming machine at that point.nothing wrong with that as it was a great game machine!

[atarian63]

It (the STe) may have supported harddrives from day one, but not as the default medium (which was the point being made), whereas, the mac/pc was supporting hard drives as the default medium (as standard), which is why they (and not atari/commodore) got the support from the heavyweight publishers, like ashton tate, borland, adobe, etc etc

I dunno, I ran my retail business from an sh204 shoebox and a 520st in mid 87. worked great!

[kool kitty89]

True,had commodore continued the a1000 path, it was going to be all over. once they chose the"jack" method and stopped trying to calling it a "business" machine and more the games machine that Atari/Jay Miner had intended it to be,Things changed. we sold almost all amigas as a gaming machine at that point.nothing wrong with that as it was a great game machine!

They could/should have done both... ie offered higher-end "professional" form factors with more built-in features and expandability as well as the lower-end console form factor units... except even for the latter they could have supported expansion (single external expansion port -would have been way more useful than the cart slot on the ST- and make more of the internal chips socketed, or short of that have clip-on/piggy-back chip upgrades to simplify things -the latter could have been done as-is for some things and was done for RAM expansion... ie just take your atari down to the dealer/service center for a RAM/SHIFTER/sound-chip uppgrade, no added cost of sockets, but no desoldering either -maybe cutting some pins/traces and adding a few patch/jumper wires, but more of that could have easily been done through an expansion port with more address lines, and more added signals... a replacement PSG sound chip or SHIFTER would be more cost effective to do internally, but RAM modules, or a DMA sound upgrade or other sound add-on that wasn't going to replace old hardware on newer production units would be great as add-on card/carts)

 

Commodore didn't have the A500 in '85 or '86, and Atari didn't have the MEGA then either... if both had had incarnations of both from the start, that could have been very significant. (or at least by '86... especially if the ST had bumped the CPU up to a 12 or 16 MHz 68k and maybe addressed some of the graphics limitations -as Crazyace mentioned, a blitter wasn't really necessary, but hardware scrolling registers would have helped loads... actually had the MEGA added the faster CPU, scrolling, and upgraded to a YM2203 on top of that, that would have been even more substantial -that and/or a DMA sound circuit or short of that a DAC with FIFO for PCM playback to reduce overhead for software playback -which would already be helped by the faster CPU)

[atarian63]

True,had commodore continued the a1000 path, it was going to be all over. once they chose the"jack" method and stopped trying to calling it a "business" machine and more the games machine that Atari/Jay Miner had intended it to be,Things changed. we sold almost all amigas as a gaming machine at that point.nothing wrong with that as it was a great game machine!

They could/should have done both... ie offered higher-end "professional" form factors with more built-in features and expandability as well as the lower-end console form factor units... except even for the latter they could have supported expansion (single external expansion port -would have been way more useful than the cart slot on the ST- and make more of the internal chips socketed, or short of that have clip-on/piggy-back chip upgrades to simplify things -the latter could have been done as-is for some things and was done for RAM expansion... ie just take your atari down to the dealer/service center for a RAM/SHIFTER/sound-chip uppgrade, no added cost of sockets, but no desoldering either -maybe cutting some pins/traces and adding a few patch/jumper wires, but more of that could have easily been done through an expansion port with more address lines, and more added signals... a replacement PSG sound chip or SHIFTER would be more cost effective to do internally, but RAM modules, or a DMA sound upgrade or other sound add-on that wasn't going to replace old hardware on newer production units would be great as add-on card/carts)

 

Commodore didn't have the A500 in '85 or '86, and Atari didn't have the MEGA then either... if both had had incarnations of both from the start, that could have been very significant. (or at least by '86... especially if the ST had bumped the CPU up to a 12 or 16 MHz 68k and maybe addressed some of the graphics limitations -as Crazyace mentioned, a blitter wasn't really necessary, but hardware scrolling registers would have helped loads... actually had the MEGA added the faster CPU, scrolling, and upgraded to a YM2203 on top of that, that would have been even more substantial -that and/or a DMA sound circuit or short of that a DAC with FIFO for PCM playback to reduce overhead for software playback -which would already be helped by the faster CPU)

True on those specs.. 85 really only had st available in limited numbers i.e. dev,user groups mainly untill end of year. 86 was really the 1st full marketing year. a500 didnt really make an impact till 89. that 85 headstart and price advantage,plus clear mono display (yes mono,think mac) really helped sell it. A1000 had some following,but was very high priced from a consumer viewpoint and initially (longer than st 2week wait for tos roms) had o/s/kickstart and lack of memory issues. just too rushed. fixed in a few months but started later than st and a higher price as well as initially (note initially) did not do it's claim to fame without crashing. the rep it developed wasnt fixed till a500. That machine sold to an entirely different customer. Gamers! very mainstream like old a8 and c64 as far as games and usage. opened the door to new customers. sadly for Atari Ste was too late and Atari was screwing dealer in the US like me. no supply. Heck I had to mail order at times and sell at a loss.(make it up on peripherals and games) just to have product. A season of that and it was over in the US for ST.

[OldAtarian]

The original Mac was during Jobs' first tenure.

 

Yeah, he worked there. So it was his creation? He was running the show and not CEO John Sculley? I thought Jobs was just a pitchman.

 

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple. Jobs didn't just "work there".

[kool kitty89]

True on those specs.. 85 really only had st available in limited numbers i.e. dev,user groups mainly untill end of year. 86 was really the 1st full marketing year. a500 didnt really make an impact till 89. that 85 headstart and price advantage,plus clear mono display (yes mono,think mac) really helped sell it. A1000 had some following,but was very high priced from a consumer viewpoint and initially (longer than st 2week wait for tos roms) had o/s/kickstart and lack of memory issues. just too rushed. fixed in a few months but started later than st and a higher price as well as initially (note initially) did not do it's claim to fame without crashing. the rep it developed wasnt fixed till a500. That machine sold to an entirely different customer. Gamers! very mainstream like old a8 and c64 as far as games and usage. opened the door to new customers. sadly for Atari Ste was too late and Atari was screwing dealer in the US like me. no supply. Heck I had to mail order at times and sell at a loss.(make it up on peripherals and games) just to have product. A season of that and it was over in the US for ST.

The Amiga was still cheap compared to the MAC and most PCs (Tandy's clones being among the exceptions) and obviously much more capable than either (but so was the ST... just not as extreme), so both were better values than most (if not all) 16-bit contemporaries. Not just from a hardware standpoint, but in terms of the OS with GEM being crippled by Apple for the PC release (oddly leaving the ST unscathed) and Windows 1.0 being pretty crap. (I think Tandy's Deskmate may have been a good bit better than early 16-bit Windows and came pack-in with their machines -and far cheaper than Windows when sold separately)

 

The 640x400 mono monitor package was mainly for business stuff though and a great deal (the package obviously aimed most squarely against the Mac), but early on the only options for color were RGB monitors, right? (or were there external composite video encoders and RF modulators -no built-in composite or RF on some early model) And a problem was that most games didn't support the mono mode.

Hmm, were there options for cheaper grayscale RGB monitors? (I know there were CGA/EGA/VGA compatible mono/grayscale monitors for PCs, so I'd imagine so, even if they weren't offered by Atari, at least as an aftermarket option to go along with standalone ST packages)

 

I know there were composite monitors for the Amiga too as the low-end option (odd since RGB monitors of similar quality should actually be cheaper to build with the lack of composite to RGB decoding, unless it was due to quantity production and common use with TV components and composite only computers), but I'm not sure if the ST offered that once the RF capable models arrived. Composite always has the issue of blurring/artifacting, but had they been thinking ahead (ST or Amiga, or others) they could have had a switchable grayscale mode with colorburst disabled (video about as sharp as RGB) as IBM did with CGA and Tandy included for all their expanded video modes. (very important given the common pack-in of a composite monitor, thus allowing nice 80 column text and 640x200 graphics in sharp grayscale or blurry/artifacted color modes as well -including taking advantage of CGA specific games using artifact colors for composite, though most of those had Tandy/PCjr specific versions as well so it mattered less)

 

 

 

 

On ST expansion specifically: how much did service centers offer and how much was only possible through voiding the warranty? Was the piggyback RAM upgrade offered by licensed Atari dealers/centers?

 

Thinking on the issue in general, in spite of the early ST's closed architecture, that really shouldn't have stopped official upgrades from being offered... but would just mean they would be more costly to add depending on the case. But it didn't matter so much as it was given how long it took to even upgrade things... and the manner in which they did it. (though the BLiTTER probably could have been added to older STs via modification, probably facilitated more with upgrade kits and the BLiTTER on a riser board with necessary jumper lines already there for easier connection... perhaps designed to piggyback on the CPU -sort of like some A500 upgrades did, but a bit different as the ST's CPU was soldered in rather than socketed) A YM2203 upgrade would likely piggyback on the YM2149 (not sure about pinout similarity, so possibly a fair amount of jumpers, and again likely on a riser board -with DAC onboard as well- to make the upgrade simpler)

Upgrading to a faster CPU might be tougher though as the bus speed would probably need to be changed as well, or at least the GLU and possibly MMU would have to be replaced to account for it, or other things. (asynchronous overclocks can be a bit odd and you could probably simple have the CPU faster than the rest of the system, especially with the 68k's slow bus accesses, but I'm not sure what sort of stability problems that would cause in the ST -and it could vary depending on the program running as well)

Some upgrades would get to the point where it would be cheaper to buy a new machine anyway. (upgrading to a new CPU of similar clock speed OTOH might be more straightforward... 68010 probably wouldn't be worth bothering with, but maybe (EC)020 or '030 upgrades would make more sense, especially for 16 MHz 68k machines -though they would still be stuck to the 68k address and data buses)

 

A bit dirtier than had an expansion port been used (and/or more socketed chips), but a single expansion port would also me limited. (either using piggy-backing modules -which would cause problems if more than a couple were used- or requiring an expansion module box to carry more slots -like the 1090XL, but that could get a bit awkward)

 

 

 

Again, as Crazyace suggested, upgrading the SHIFTER itself with scroll registers (even after the fact) should have been possible far sooner than the BLiTTER and could have been added as a clip-on/piggyback upgrade (like some Cyrix 486SLCs) and then allow production to shift to the new SHIFTER. (there would be contention with ramping up production of the existing ST and switching to the SHIFTER, but using a similar pinout to fit on the same boards would have helped a lot so that as soon as production of the SHIFTER-2 allowed, it could simply replace the SHIFTER without other changes to manufacturing while the upgrade kit would bridge the gap for early adopters)

After doing that, they probably didn't even need to worry about a proper blitter as such, but more towards pushing faster CPUs, better sound, and upgrading the shifter again (larger palette, chunky pixel support, 256 color modes, higher res mono/4/16 color modes, etc).

That and in parallel, pushing higher-end units like the MEGA, but with more features/flexibility. (faster CPU out of the box, optional FPU, optional internal HDD, etc)

 

I may be mistaken, but as it was it seems like Atari was a bit more for promoting hard drive use than CBM with the Amiga.

Edited November 4, 2010 by kool kitty89

[+wood_jl]

The original Mac was during Jobs' first tenure.

 

Yeah, he worked there. So it was his creation? He was running the show and not CEO John Sculley? I thought Jobs was just a pitchman.

 

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple. Jobs didn't just "work there".

 

Since you're so knowledgeable about Jobs, why don't you detail - quite specifically, please - exactly what it is he did, or created? I don't think we need to get into what Woz did, but you can reassure yourself by looking at an Apple II.

[kool kitty89]

Oh I forgot on the Tandy comparison to mention that like the ST (and eventually Amiga), many Tandy 1000 models had DOS built into ROM and thus booted extremely fast. (I'm not sure on which models included that though)

[atarian63]

Oh I forgot on the Tandy comparison to mention that like the ST (and eventually Amiga), many Tandy 1000 models had DOS built into ROM and thus booted extremely fast. (I'm not sure on which models included that though)

We used to have the occasional tandy 1000h user come in, they were always looking for elusive stuff. tandy joysticks, software support for thier better graphics.(ea maybe,also some activision?) nothing wrong with the machine just made our red headed stepchildren of st and amiga appear mainstream. too bad someone other than radio shack did not have the product.it would have done better.

memory is a bit off,just had rotator cuff surgery yesterday and am on lots of dilaudid..

[kool kitty89]

Oh I forgot on the Tandy comparison to mention that like the ST (and eventually Amiga), many Tandy 1000 models had DOS built into ROM and thus booted extremely fast. (I'm not sure on which models included that though)

We used to have the occasional tandy 1000h user come in, they were always looking for elusive stuff. tandy joysticks, software support for thier better graphics.(ea maybe,also some activision?) nothing wrong with the machine just made our red headed stepchildren of st and amiga appear mainstream. too bad someone other than radio shack did not have the product.it would have done better.

memory is a bit off,just had rotator cuff surgery yesterday and am on lots of dilaudid..

It did a lot better than the PC Jr at least. (though had the PCJr been more like the Tandy 1000, the Tandy itself probably would have gotten a lot more support and others might have pushed compatible clones as well)

And even if just used as a CGA PC it was a pretty good value compared to contemporaries. (and was expandable... though the console HX/EX models used proprietary "plus" card connectors rather than ISA slots -without using adapters at least)

Though later models were more or less average lower-end PC clones besides the fact that they retained the Tandy graphics and sound.

 

It seems a fair amount of EGA games supported Tandy graphics modes (which were identical in color and resolution in the vast majority of cases). I was surprised that the 1990 King's Quest remake supported it actually: http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/HXEX.html Unless there were patches to allow EGA games to run in Tandy mode. (I don't think that would have worked due to the CGA packed-pixel based tandy video vs bitplane based EGA video)

I think the Plantronics Colorplus card may have been very similar to the Tandy/PCJr graphics, but apparently those enhanced CGA modes were rarely supported and not supported by the BIOS (and the cards didn't come with replacement BIOS ROMs). Not sure if there were any DOS drivers or patches to allow Tandy games to use that card on other PCs. (it certainly wasn't popular enough to garner lasting support with backwards compatibility... though some early EGA clones apparently emulated it; then Again EGA modes weren't always fully emulated by VGA clones and SVGA cards -especially the 640x350 mode)

 

I think I might have been off on the composite monitor comment though... I think I may have assumed Tandy used Composite monitors like IBM did with the PCJr, but maybe they tended to use normal RGB/grayscale CGA monitors -and later EGA or VGA monitors for models with EGA or VGA cards bundled. (I saw a mention that the onboard composite video out on some models was monochrome only -like the Amiga 500- so that would seem to indicate that I was mistaken and that the presence of the non-colorburst CGA modes or artifact colors wouldn't matter for the Tandy machine as even the composite video out was already luma only)

If I'm not mistaken, one plus of the A500's grayscale composite out was that the picture was crisp. (so text and graphics could be seen clearly without blurring/bleeding/dot crawl but without color... though that would also automatically make the default workbench graphics scheme look more professional and not "fuzzy" in either sense )

Edited November 4, 2010 by kool kitty89

[atarian63]

Oh I forgot on the Tandy comparison to mention that like the ST (and eventually Amiga), many Tandy 1000 models had DOS built into ROM and thus booted extremely fast. (I'm not sure on which models included that though)

We used to have the occasional tandy 1000h user come in, they were always looking for elusive stuff. tandy joysticks, software support for thier better graphics.(ea maybe,also some activision?) nothing wrong with the machine just made our red headed stepchildren of st and amiga appear mainstream. too bad someone other than radio shack did not have the product.it would have done better.

memory is a bit off,just had rotator cuff surgery yesterday and am on lots of dilaudid..

It did a lot better than the PC Jr at least. And even if just used as a CGA PC it was a pretty good value compared to contemporaries. (and was expandable... though the console HX/EX models used proprietary "plus" card connectors rather than ISA slots -without using adapters at least)

Though later models were more or less average lower-end PC clones besides the fact that they retained the Tandy graphics and sound.

 

It seems a fair amount of EGA games supported Tandy graphics modes (which were identical in color and resolution in the vast majority of cases). I was surprised that the 1990 King's Quest remake supported it actually: http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/HXEX.html Unless there were patches to allow EGA games to run in Tandy mode. (I don't think that would have worked due to the CGA packed-pixel based tandy video vs bitplane based EGA video)

I think the Plantronics Colorplus card may have been very similar to the Tandy/PCJr graphics, but apparently those enhanced CGA modes were rarely supported and not supported by the BIOS (and the cards didn't come with replacement BIOS ROMs). Not sure if there were any DOS drivers or patches to allow Tandy games to use that card on other PCs. (it certainly wasn't popular enough to garner lasting support with backwards compatibility... though some early EGA clones apparently emulated it; then Again EGA modes weren't always fully emulated by VGA clones and SVGA cards -especially the 640x350 mode)

 

I think I might have been off on the composite monitor comment though... I think I may have assumed Tandy used Composite monitors like IBM did with the PCJr, but maybe they tended to use normal RGB/grayscale CGA monitors -and later EGA or VGA monitors for models with EGA or VGA cards bundled. (I saw a mention that the onboard composite video out on some models was monochrome only -like the Amiga 500- so that would seem to indicate that I was mistaken and that the presence of the non-colorburst CGA modes or artifact colors wouldn't matter for the Tandy machine as even the composite video out was already luma only)

If I'm not mistaken, one plus of the A500's grayscale composite out was that the picture was crisp. (so text and graphics could be seen clearly without blurring/bleeding/dot crawl but without color... though that would also automatically make the default workbench graphics scheme look more professional and not "fuzzy" in either sense )

yes, thats what i remember, kings quest (sierra) was the big title. neat machine. yes,one of the amigas had a b/w composite mode which looked quite nice!

[kool kitty89]

yes, thats what i remember, kings quest (sierra) was the big title. neat machine. yes,one of the amigas had a b/w composite mode which looked quite nice!

Oh, I know the 1984 version of King's Quest supported Tandy (it was PCJr first then Tandy shortly after, then PCBooter, all in '84, then later ST, Amiga, Apple, and a 1987 EGA port), but the version on that webpage is the 1990 enhanced version using updated 320x200 graphics (also less limited by RAM/drawing limitations -with the original game intended to work in 64k on a 4.77 MHz 8088) and Adlib support. I'd thought the later version was EGA only, but that site seems to point to otherwise. (unless he's got an EGA card in it -but that wasn't mentioned)

 

I think many if not most Sierra games supported Tandy graphics and sound (they went out of their way to supported a very broad array of standards including the IBM music feature card and Gameblaster -and of course MT32), and I think Lucas Arts did a fair amount too, and Origin. (who worked closely with Sierra in many cases)

 

But only selling at Radio Shack would have limited things a lot (maybe mail order too), not horribly given RS was not uncommon, but the sales people would vary widely compared to proper computer retailers (no worse than machines sold in department stores though). That probably hurt all of Tandy's products sold in that manner from the TRS-80 Model 1/3/4 to the Model II range to the CoCo. (the latter may have ended up lumped in with the VIC-20 as a joke, but it did stay on the market a surprisingly long time... but given the low-end context, it probably should have been marketed more broadly like Commodore and Atari were doing in department stores as well as computer retailers -tech wise it was more or less competitive with the Apple II but actually sold at a price much closer to that simple hardware albeit without the expansion of the Apple II and nowhere near the software support)

[atarian63]

yes, thats what i remember, kings quest (sierra) was the big title. neat machine. yes,one of the amigas had a b/w composite mode which looked quite nice!

Oh, I know the 1984 version of King's Quest supported Tandy (it was PCJr first then Tandy shortly after, then PCBooter, all in '84, then later ST, Amiga, Apple, and a 1987 EGA port), but the version on that webpage is the 1990 enhanced version using updated 320x200 graphics (also less limited by RAM/drawing limitations -with the original game intended to work in 64k on a 4.77 MHz 8088) and Adlib support. I'd thought the later version was EGA only, but that site seems to point to otherwise. (unless he's got an EGA card in it -but that wasn't mentioned)

 

I think many if not most Sierra games supported Tandy graphics and sound (they went out of their way to supported a very broad array of standards including the IBM music feature card and Gameblaster -and of course MT32), and I think Lucas Arts did a fair amount too, and Origin. (who worked closely with Sierra in many cases)

 

But only selling at Radio Shack would have limited things a lot (maybe mail order too), not horribly given RS was not uncommon, but the sales people would vary widely compared to proper computer retailers (no worse than machines sold in department stores though). That probably hurt all of Tandy's products sold in that manner from the TRS-80 Model 1/3/4 to the Model II range to the CoCo. (the latter may have ended up lumped in with the VIC-20 as a joke, but it did stay on the market a surprisingly long time... but given the low-end context, it probably should have been marketed more broadly like Commodore and Atari were doing in department stores as well as computer retailers -tech wise it was more or less competitive with the Apple II but actually sold at a price much closer to that simple hardware albeit without the expansion of the Apple II and nowhere near the software support)

I think you are spot on about RS ( and the rest for that matter) good items,spotty staff, countered by a store everywhere..

Did see trs80 model 1 etc in the military frequently,complete with cassette adn anti keybounce program. Yes those popolar genres of the time did support tandy and I recall that driving sales. we even sold some of those to tandy folks and they were happy to have it. Software being less available back then unlike today with Best buy slutting it out everywhere.

[LoTonah]

The original Mac was during Jobs' first tenure.

 

Yeah, he worked there. So it was his creation? He was running the show and not CEO John Sculley? I thought Jobs was just a pitchman.

 

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple. Jobs didn't just "work there".

 

Since you're so knowledgeable about Jobs, why don't you detail - quite specifically, please - exactly what it is he did, or created? I don't think we need to get into what Woz did, but you can reassure yourself by looking at an Apple II.

 

Why are you so angry?

 

Jobs was important to Apple, believe it or not. He "created" quite a few products... not with a soldering iron, but by leading engineering teams. Jef Raskin started the Macintosh project, but when Steve took over as head of the project, it really turned into what we know as Mac (under Raskin, it was still a 6502 then 6809 based computer, with menus instead of a GUI). Steve was also responsible for the look of most of Apple's early projects, from the look of the case, to the manuals, to even the way the circuit boards were laid out).

 

Steve was also instrumental in getting venture capital funding, working trade shows, setting up a dealer network, and working with suppliers. He also studied the way that other companies built things, like Sony. Because of that, the Apple assembly lines ran quite efficient. It not only made a better product, but improved their bottom line.

 

So... just a pitchman? No.

[kool kitty89]

 

Why are you so angry?

 

Jobs was important to Apple, believe it or not. He "created" quite a few products... not with a soldering iron, but by leading engineering teams. Jef Raskin started the Macintosh project, but when Steve took over as head of the project, it really turned into what we know as Mac (under Raskin, it was still a 6502 then 6809 based computer, with menus instead of a GUI). Steve was also responsible for the look of most of Apple's early projects, from the look of the case, to the manuals, to even the way the circuit boards were laid out).

 

Steve was also instrumental in getting venture capital funding, working trade shows, setting up a dealer network, and working with suppliers. He also studied the way that other companies built things, like Sony. Because of that, the Apple assembly lines ran quite efficient. It not only made a better product, but improved their bottom line.

 

So... just a pitchman? No.

Regardless of that, you've got to wonder how far they might have gone had they continued pushing the Apple II and pushed it further. Granted they could have expanded far more into the mass market by the early 80s as it was had they introduced low-cost consumer/home market oriented versions on top of the fully expandable higher-end versions, but regardless there was huge potential for a broad clone market to form around it and expand as a defacto standard. Of course the rather limited enhancements to the system held it back as well. (rather late introduction of an 80 column text mode/add-on, very late introduction of faster CPU -should have had 2 MHz models out by '80 at least and the 1MHz models could have become low end -and then push further with 3 or 4 MHz 6502s before moving on to 65C02s or '816s -you could argue in favor of fast R65C02/W65C02Ss over 65816s keeping to external bank switching/mapping rather than the somewhat funky multiplexing of the '816 -and they could have later integrated the bank switching logic with a custom CPU ASIC)

The graphics could have been upgraded in general as well, as could the OS, and the IIgs was great in that respect, but it was a big jump without any interim changes. (ie upgrades by '83/84 with full 280/560x192 16 color modes and pushing for a more capable OS with a GUI and perhaps a simple DAC set-up like the MAC, or even something simpler)

 

With the Apple II's relatively simple hardware should have made it rather practical to consolidate and tack-on for compatibility if building onto it with evolutionary successors proved impractical.

 

Other than unlicensed clones, they could have pushed for licensing (and actually profit from it while greatly expanding their market), but Apple seemed rather averted to any of that until long after Jobs left. (with the licensed Mac clones)

Without licensed production they'd have a harder time competing with mass market competition with larger production and distribution resources... but at least they could take advantage of the relatively simple/cheap hardware (at least once the discrete logic was consolidated into LSI chips). They wouldn't have the overhead of buying off the shelf parts either as they'd own the IP and only have to pay for manufacturing. (unlike the CoCo which was fully off the shelf... and a low-end Apple II probably would be rather similar in cost to the CoCo in 1980 at similar configuration -they could have gone for as small of a board as possible and used a simple edge connector for expansion rather than internal slots -perhaps offering simple modules as well as an expansion system to add slots like Atari's 1090XL... -maybe a cheaper keyboard too, but not to cheap as to be really unattractive -the early coco was pushing it but at least it was better than membrane keyboards) Imagine a 4k apple II at $400 or 16k at $500 in 1980. (or 48k at about $600)

Edited November 5, 2010 by kool kitty89