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What's so fantastic about Atari 8 bitters?


SIO99

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I don't think it would have done well. The TI has a simple language built into ROM called "Graphics Programming Language" and TI BASIC converts to that, which is then interpreted (so BASIC goes through two interpreters).

Yup, but I think it was in the Creative Computing test.

TI is a company of engineers and I think the computer team was perhaps a bit too technical and not design-oriented enough.

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They made compromises that slowed the machine down.

 

But you have to remember - there wasn't exactly a lot of competition around when the TI-99 was in design phase.

 

Apple II - 1 MHz, TRS-80 Model 1 - 1.78 MHz which is glacial pace for a Z80, C= Pet - 1 MHz, Atari 800 - quick but in a higher price bracket.

Edited by Rybags
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They made compromises that slowed the machine down.

 

But you have to remember - there wasn't exactly a lot of competition around when the TI-99 was in design phase.

 

Apple II - 1 MHz, TRS-80 Model 1 - 1.78 MHz which is glacial pace for a Z80, C= Pet - 1 MHz, Atari 800 - quick but in a higher price bracket.

Well, lets see... (if memory serves)

The engineers wanted to design their own CPU and TI didn't want to produce another CPU. So engineers said, hey, lets emulate our CPU in software thinking they would eventually get their CPU.

 

Engineers were expecting to use a CPU with the 16 to 8 bit buss interface built in... but the initial CPU design was hosed and it wasn't available on time. Ultimately they went with what could be considered a development prototype instead of the intended final product. The part count, the board size, etc... were all greater than originally planned. FWIW, when a new engineer came in and fixed the new CPU, he made it faster than the 99000. It was just too late.

 

The machine tried to lock developers into paying TI and using that crappy language.

 

Keyboard, no internal expansion, high chip count, most RAM accessed through the GPU...

 

Just how many mistakes can you make and expect to survive?

 

If the intended CPU had been on time, they had dropped GPL, and offered full internal RAM expansion... I think it would have been one hell of a competitor.

 

 

BTW, the TRS-80 was actually designed for a faster clock but they chose a slower one for whatever reason. Maybe some of the RAM wasn't reliable or it was just to be safe. Hacking the machine to go at the faster speed is easy.

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At the time, Ram rated to run at the higher speed would have been pretty pricey.

 

Those benchmarks - I tried the first one and the listed speed seems to be wrong (too slow).

 

I tried the first 2 with the Fastmath Rom and Basic XE (not in Fast mode) - it gives an indication of what could have been, way quicker than default.

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Applesoft BASIC is the Floating Point version, Integer BASIC is the version without floating point. And thanks to the language card, there were several patches to Applesoft to add features.

 

Applesoft is actually a Microsoft BASIC, so the math should be pretty much the same as Commodore, Tandy, Atari Microsoft BASIC, etc... because Microsoft usually took the same approach. There may be minor differences due to optimizations for specific implementations.

Atari BASIC would have different results because it's non-Microsoft, same thing with the Spectrum, BBC Micro, Oric, etc...

Accuracy info is included in the benchmark thread.

 

If you get different numbers on the benchmarks, blame whoever did the benchmark. I only did the IIc Plus and maybe IIgs versions. Why I didn't do the standard IIc speed benchmark I have no idea.

As I said before, you could do some POKEs or something to speed up results on Atari. If all you were doing is number crunching that would be very beneficial.

 

 

There are several things that benchmarks don't tell you.

 

BASIC compilers bypass parsing, so a BASIC with a flawed parser will get a huge speed gain from being compiled. Some BASIC features do things while being interpreted that a compiler couldn't reasonably support, so a compiler can't be 100% compatible. And BASIC compilers that supported all relevant keywords were pretty rare. One advantage to a simple BASIC would be that it's easier to compile.

 

The use of PASCAL was actually common on the Apple, so many apps were written in it rather than BASIC. And Apple Pascal is a P-Code Interpreter that could automatically swap code in and out of memory so you effectively had some of the same benefits as virtual memory. You could write huge games or applications that ran very fast. The P-Code interpreter and compiler could actually use some optimization, so there was even room for improvement.

 

Action was an alternative to BASIC on the Atari. Not quite as good for large apps as Apple Pascal but it's fast.

 

Many of the Color Computer's applications were written in Pascal, C, or BASIC 09 running under OS-9. Several of the commercial games were definitely written in BASIC 09.

I believe Ahl's benchmark under BASIC 09 was faster than any other tested version.

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Well, lets see... (if memory serves)

The engineers wanted to design their own CPU and TI didn't want to produce another CPU. So engineers said, hey, lets emulate our CPU in software thinking they would eventually get their CPU.

Interesting. I found an interview with Karl Guttag of TI where he states the same thing:

 

The 9940/9985 was achitected with an 8-bit data path -- essentially it was an 8-bit processors emulating a 16-bit processor (the problem was it took almost as much hardware as a full 16-bit design so it cost too much and had lower performance). Meanwhile, the home computer group was "ordered" (by the then TI president J. Fred Bucy -- or at least that is how the story goes inside TI) to use a TI processor. So the 9985 was chosen (it may have been that the 9985 coversion was done expressly for the home computer). But as I say, the 9940 and thus 9985 didn't work! But .... the home computer group had already designed the home computer around the 9985. So in the hope that eventually the 9985 would be fixed, they took the 9900 and ADDED hardware around it to make it look like an 8-bit bus 9985 -- thus they paid for a 16-bit processor and hobbled it to an 8-bit bus. BTW, you may also note that the 9985 was to have 256 bytes of SRAM on-chip, and that is the RAM that was put next to the 9900 (all other RAM on the 99/4 was off on the other side of the 9918 (and thus slow to access). Regarding GPL, the story goes that what the home computer designers really wanted was their own, more Z80 like CPU that would run an opcode set called GPL (originally Games Programming Language, later re-cchristened Graphics programming language). Well ... in hope (boy they had a lot of hope) that they would eventually get the CPU of there dreams (ala one that executed GPL directly), they interpreted EVERTHING into GPL. THUS when you ran BASIC, a BASIC instruction is fetch from the 9918's memory over an 8-bit bus, then converted into GPL, then converted into 9900 assembly code. The other engineers at TI at the time used to say, "The TI has the best bag of parts of any home computer, they just put them together wrong"

BTW, the TRS-80 was actually designed for a faster clock but they chose a slower one for whatever reason. Maybe some of the RAM wasn't reliable or it was just to be safe. Hacking the machine to go at the faster speed is easy.

I wonder if they had problems with FCC approval at the higher speed.

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The quickie test I did was with Applesoft, standard 1Mhz //e. It's faster than Atari basic, but I didn't characterize how much. (the benchmarks are there anyway)

 

IMHO, the integer BASIC is considerably faster. Don't have it setup on my machine. There was some program on the DOS master that would fire it off... But, my memory of it was at least a 2X performance increase over Applesoft. Hmmm... Never thought about a port, but why not? Well, we've got other options now, so that's why, but it's still an interesting thought.

 

PASCAL on the Apple ran very nicely. Great environment for the time, IMHO. I've not done anything with PASCAL in so long...

 

BTW, the impact of DMA on overall computer speed is significant. When crunching fractals, turning the DMA off in the Atari really boosted it up. It could basically keep up with a fast Color Computer. One simple thing we did was write a program in assembly to count numbers on the screen.

 

The Apple runs flat out, getting the full 1Mhz, because it's video circuit operates in parallel with the CPU, not interrupting it to fetch display data. Woz stretched the timing a bit, and it all worked out great. The CoCo does a similar thing, with both machines fast / clock. That one fact is why the Apple got as far as it did with 1Mhz, IMHO. And it simplified add-ons, making CPU cards viable for a lot of reasons.

 

On the Atari, with ordinary 40 byte DMA, the number counting program was a little slower than the CoCo 2. Strip that down to one row of text, with everything else quiet, and it would go quicker. Never tried it on the C64, but I suspect it would not beat the Apple... Anyway, that's one of the awesome things about Atari computers! Lots of options. Just run the fast program with a minimal display list, one color big text, and it would just scream! Or, turn it all on, graphics / DL / DLI / VBI, and it would run rather slowly, but offer a lot of services too. Beautiful.

 

Re: BASIC 09. Yeah, fast. For just computing the Tandy 6809 computers were just fast all around. Crappy graphics on the 1 and 2 though.

 

I always wondered about the low clock on the CoCo. Everybody just poked it faster, and in that mode, it was very clearly the quickest 8 bitter I had access to.

 

Re: Simple BASIC compiled.

 

Yes. Just look at the Batari Basic. IMHO, that kind of thing makes a ton of sense given the modern PC's we have today. Since I worked with it, I've had a desire to see it on other platforms, and newer micro-controller type chips. Wish I had compiler skill, because I think that framework Batari made is just golden, and it's easy! Ordinary people have produced some great works. Very impressive, IMHO.

 

For machines that have sprites 'n sound, do it the way it's done on the VCS. There will be limits, but there will be a lot of speed and ease of use. Can you imagine the 7800, or C64, Atari 8 bits? Damn cool potential, if you ask me.

 

On other machines, like Apple, CoCo, etc... a basic kernel with blitter support in ASM would operate in similar ways, with similar results. Deffo would love to see this happen someday.

Edited by potatohead
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I already had my Tano Dragon out so I ran the benchmark on it.

standard .895 MHz 148.1

POKE 65495,0 107.6

 

The Dragon is slightly faster than a CoCo 1/2 because the BASIC was rewritten to have Extended BASIC commands from the start rather than as an upgrade.

Note that this high speed POKE only runs the CPU at double speed when accessing ROM. The CoCo 3 always runs at high speed when double speed is enabled.

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I had the interesting perspective. I wanted a brand new at the time Apple IIc. Instead I got an Atari 1200XL and 1010, mainly because they were closing out the 1200XL to make way for the 800XL. Quickly I found myself wondering why I wanted an Apple IIc in the first place, aside for the lack of an 80 column text display. I ran into the memory limits pretty quick (Trying to write your own command line OS can do that) so when the price was right I went to a 130XE, and learned how bad a keyboard can be.

 

But eventually what you want to do eventually outstrips the hardware you're trying to do it with and such, so from there I went to the Amiga 500, admittedly because between the A500 and the 1040ST, only the A500 was available locally.

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I had the interesting perspective. I wanted a brand new at the time Apple IIc. Instead I got an Atari 1200XL and 1010, mainly because they were closing out the 1200XL to make way for the 800XL. Quickly I found myself wondering why I wanted an Apple IIc in the first place, aside for the lack of an 80 column text display. I ran into the memory limits pretty quick (Trying to write your own command line OS can do that) so when the price was right I went to a 130XE, and learned how bad a keyboard can be.

 

But eventually what you want to do eventually outstrips the hardware you're trying to do it with and such, so from there I went to the Amiga 500, admittedly because between the A500 and the 1040ST, only the A500 was available locally.

I originally asked my dad for a VIC-20 because I saw one running a Space Invaders game. He got me an 800. :)

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I asked my dad for 'a computer' and he got me a commodore 16 because 'They were cheap and colourful, and the spectrum looked shit.' (direct quote from him there).

 

In hindsight I'm surprised I didn't actually end up with an Atari around 1986 instead because it would've fit his criteria. Probably something to do with the commodore fanboy he worked with who taught me to program in the first place...

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I had the interesting perspective. I wanted a brand new at the time Apple IIc. Instead I got an Atari 1200XL and 1010, mainly because they were closing out the 1200XL to make way for the 800XL. Quickly I found myself wondering why I wanted an Apple IIc in the first place, aside for the lack of an 80 column text display. I ran into the memory limits pretty quick (Trying to write your own command line OS can do that) so when the price was right I went to a 130XE, and learned how bad a keyboard can be.

 

But eventually what you want to do eventually outstrips the hardware you're trying to do it with and such, so from there I went to the Amiga 500, admittedly because between the A500 and the 1040ST, only the A500 was available locally.

I originally asked my dad for a VIC-20 because I saw one running a Space Invaders game. He got me an 800. :)

 

You had such a lucky escape there! I'm so happy for you!!!!

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LOL!!

 

That is one of the things that's not awesome about the 8 bits! SLOOOW tape. Seriously slow. For most BASIC programs, it was ok, so long as one didn't have a ton of DATA. If there is an excuse to have a program generate as much as it can, that's a good excuse. I don't think I owned a slower tape system. Maybe the Apple. Never wrote out a tape. Might have to, just for fun.

 

Best tape was CoCo. 1200 Baud stock, and double that with a few changes. I stuck with the stock, but a friend was into the faster loading. Cool feature: Filenames! A C15 could hold a few programs, and it was actually viable to just rewind and ask for one, no worries about the counter. Atari would take a file name, but not actually act on it. Does anyone know whether or not the file name actually ends up on the tape? Can't remember, though I do distinctly remember supplying them.

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The filespec usually actually ends up in the file when you do SAVE "C:Filename", a side-effect of how Basic Save works - it also saves the "dummy line" generated by whatever immediate command was entered.

 

Not much use knowing the filename by that stage, it's already completely loaded.

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LOL!!

 

That is one of the things that's not awesome about the 8 bits! SLOOOW tape. Seriously slow. For most BASIC programs, it was ok, so long as one didn't have a ton of DATA. If there is an excuse to have a program generate as much as it can, that's a good excuse. I don't think I owned a slower tape system. Maybe the Apple. Never wrote out a tape. Might have to, just for fun.

I seem to remember watching an Apple load a BASIC Star Trek program from tape once. It wasn't a pleasant experience.

 

Best tape was CoCo. 1200 Baud stock, and double that with a few changes. I stuck with the stock, but a friend was into the faster loading. Cool feature: Filenames! A C15 could hold a few programs, and it was actually viable to just rewind and ask for one, no worries about the counter. Atari would take a file name, but not actually act on it. Does anyone know whether or not the file name actually ends up on the tape? Can't remember, though I do distinctly remember supplying them.

Actually, the CoCo's tape interface was 1500 baud and around 3000 at double speed. That's faster than the C64 tape drive at default speeds.

Filenames were awesome! You could just number revisions of a program you were working on and then CLOAD the version you wanted.

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I'm gonna do it this weekend. Just never have, so why not?

 

I stand corrected. You've mentioned that before, and I think you've mentioned it in response to me being fixated on 1200 baud too. (it will sink in at some point)

 

Revisions were exactly the great use. So were utility programs. Used to have some stuff that would generate data, save a screen, assemble, etc... Pop in the tape, ask for one, run it, pop in the data tape, write out the data, etc... Data tapes were nice as well, because several datasets could be on it, with few worries, other than overwriting one.

 

Best tape system hands down. That friend actually used it and the EDTASM cart to remove the copy protection from Tandy Chess. We borrowed it, wrote the image out to tape for "education" on his 64K CoCo. He had some C90's, and would just take his time. Load it (from the multiple images on the source tape there to avoid rewinding, swap tapes, modify, write out, run. Repeat. Go down a bad path? Fetch the branch that made sense, write it to a fresh start tape, continue. Wasn't bad actually. He got it in a coupla weeks. 6809 has so many devious ways to corrupt an image too... Always thought that was seriously bad ass. I was there for some of it, the two of us tracing what happened, parsing instruction after instruction... Brutal.

Edited by potatohead
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I made game compilation tapes, utility tapes, etc...

Just start the CLOAD, go get a drink or something and it's loaded by the time you get back.

Cracking copy protections can be brutal. 'Time Bandit' was evil! I got through 4 different disk loaders, each nastier than the last one, and finally said the hell with it.

 

It was a great game. FWIW, the Sanyo MBC 550 is probably best remembered for it's version of 'Time Bandit'.

 

Hmmm, 'Time Bandit' would be awesome on the Atari 8 bit.

http://www.giantbomb.com/time-bandit/61-14511/

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Actually, the CoCo's tape interface was 1500 baud and around 3000 at double speed. That's faster than the C64 tape drive at default speeds.

Filenames were awesome! You could just number revisions of a program you were working on and then CLOAD the version you wanted.

I meant to say "That's faster than the C64 disk drive at default speeds."

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I started programming on an TRS-80 MC-10 color computer, then on the MSX 1 and 2, then on atari 800XL/130XE. I ended up becomming an MS-Access 2.0/95 specialist, programming VBA and Visual Basic.

 

On the MC-10 i made hundreds of games and utils. Ranging from a drawing/paint program,word processor, database to a lot of conversions from the MSx and C64 machines. On the Atari i only made some demos and some utils, such as a cracking program (mastercrack II and III, Atari-MS-DOS emulator,etc.). On the MSX i made some small games and demos.

 

I have to say, that the basic variants of the MSX and the color computer where a bit easier to program with. Especially using string variables. The Atari was not as easy.

 

The Atari had a lot of cool games, but the MSx had Nemesis/Salamander and the rest of the Konami games.

 

The MC-10 had only a pinball game and 6 basic games. I made 200+ games for it.

 

So, its just what you like. All old home computer systems have their own charming things and disadvantages.

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