Find me somebody to love

[youki]

 

Probably mostly known in Europe, but I would have included the Amstrad CPC 464 in the table (a.k.a. Schneider in Germany and the Arnold in France). This was the computer I went for after the TI, in 1984. It was Z80 based with 64K RAM, and it came with a color monitor as standard and a built-in tape drive. It had three bitmap modes (640x200 - 2 colors, 320x200 - 4 colors, and 160x200 - 16 colors (out of 27)). It had a great Basic in ROM and easy access to machine code. The sound was also pretty good, but could not compete with the C64. I think its biggest problem was the lack of sprites and scroll registers, and the decision to use non-standard 3" floppy disks.

 

Amstrad in France, not Arnold

 

it was extremely propular in France, mainly the CPC 6128 version (128k+ integrated 3 inch disk drive). Unfortunaly this machine suffured from lazy spectrum portage. And never been really exploited.

imho It could not compete with the C64 , but that's a good machine.

 

Look for instance R-Type that have been remake in 2012

 

Here what the CPC got in 1988 (a speccy port...)

 

 

here the 2012 version :

 

[JamesD]

Probably the ONE thing that would have made the TI more viable was to add CPU RAM to the console in the 4A revision. Had they done that (Even just 8k into the lower RAM section), history may have turned out differently. Add a memory mapper so you could do paged amounts of RAM and the sky would have been the limit.

 

Mind you, it's hard to remember at times that the TI-99/4 architecture was designed in the late 70's. The Commodore 64 benefited from coming years later, when RAM had gone down in price considerably and you could afford to stick 64k in machines.

 

The TI-99/8's design (paged memory, refined CPU, 128k base) shows they KNEW what they needed to do; the TI-99/4 and 4a were just their throwaways. They just took too long and the market crashed before they could get it out. Pity.

I think the TI team operated in a bit of a bubble and ignored the outside world.

With the 99/4A released in 1981 I think that was plenty of time for them to adapt the design for more CPU RAM.

 

I think what they really needed was something with up to 64K RAM.

Memory mapping would have been nice but in 1981 128K or more memory wasn't standard on any 8 bit machines.

The Apple IIe was probably the first 8 bit with a factory 128K upgrade and it came out in 1983.

 

The P-CODE card wouldn't have been needed at all if the machine had come with up to 64K of CPU memory.

Apple certainly did fine with it's version and the language card.

For that matter, a native 9900 code compiler would have been better.

It was certainly done on 6809 & Z80 machines and there were also native code compilers for the 990 mini computers.

I guess TI was too stuck on the idea of controlling the software available for the machine.

 

In the end the TI-99/4A was a more costly design to produce than a C64 as it was and TI would have had to sell their machine at an even higher price. TI had the sales numbers but not the profits. It would have been better to sell fewer machines and stay in the black. If they had stayed profitable TI might not have axed the system.

[JamesD]

I just noticed I accidentally deleted some text from my comments about versions of BASIC. This is roughly what I said.

 

The CoCo's Extended Color Basic was probably the best one out there with almost everything from Level II BASIC (minus integers and double precision)

but with added support for graphics and sound. It also benchmarked rather fast in spite of numbers all being single precision, probably due to the 6809.

GW-BASIC was almost identical.

The CoCo 3's version added additional commands including the ability to print text on bitmapped graphics screens. People quickly figured out how to make it print custom fonts. You could also use the new keyboard interrupt instead of polling which gives programs a significant speed boost. You can disable keyboard polling on some other BASICs with some hacks but you have to re-enable it to read the keyboard on those machines. (FWIW this amounts to a 20%-30% speed boost depending on the machine)

 

The Plus/4 had a much better BASIC than earlier Commodore systems and supported up to 60K of program memory. ELSE, DO WHILE, DO UNTIL, graphics commands, etc...

It certainly supported the most BASIC RAM out of the box of any 8 bit I know and rivaled Extended Color Basic in features.

The one possible drawback is that some things ran slower due to the extended memory handling which offset the higher CPU performance a bit.

However, the Plus/4 hardware design did employ a feature to help speed things up. Writes to ROM areas also wrote to underlying RAM so no page flipping was needed to write to RAM under ROM. A patch to make other computer BASICs use RAM under ROM would require page flipping between RAM and ROM for writes as well as reads.

It's a simple hardware trick but no other machine has it.

[sometimes99er]

Writes to ROM areas also wrote to underlying RAM so no page flipping was needed to write to RAM under ROM. A patch to make other computer BASICs use RAM under ROM would require page flipping between RAM and ROM for writes as well as reads.

It's a simple hardware trick but no other machine has it.

 

I was unsure about this on the C64, but found several references saying you can do just that on the C64. Even the Programmers Reference Guide, page 261 (first edition, third printing).

 

I had a brand new Plus/4, believe it was 1985 at about $50. Flagship or not, it was going out before it came in (at least around here). As I recall, 128 colors, no sprites and supposed to be faster than the C64 (uses 8501 instead of 6510).

 

[youki]

I was unsure about this on the C64, but found several references saying you can do just that on the C64. Even the Programmers Reference Guide, page 261 (first edition, third printing).

 

I had a brand new Plus/4, believe it was 1985 at about $50. Flagship or not, it was going out before it came in (at least around here). As I recall, 128 colors, no sprites and supposed to be faster than the C64 (uses 8501 instead of 6510).

 

 

Yes, as far i remember the c64 can do that.

 

the Plus/4 is a interresting machine , but except the better basic et the 128 colors ( 121 in fact .... they count only one shade of black). Is not as good than the C64. And in matter of speed it is the same thing.

 

concerning the basic, there is cartridge on C64 that enhance the basic , and back in time i had the Simon's Basic which was really really great.

 

For me , the best machine will stay the C128 , unfortunaly the "128" mode have neither been really exploited. But that was a wonderfull machine, great basic , and on 128D you could even have 128 colors (i remember well) , there was more memory on the second vdp. (not the VIC2 , the other one ) . you could work with 2 screen in parallal , there was 2 processors , 128k of memory , you could turn the machine in "Fast" mode , 80 column display..etc..etc..

[JamesD]

The C64 does support writes through ROM, I stand corrected.

[JamesD]

There is an old thread on this forum about BASIC benchmarks you might want to check out.

http://atariage.com/...sic benchmarks

 

I also found a program that calculates the first 500 prime numbers as a benchmark along with some results here:

http://www.retroprog...benchmarks.html

 

Notice the speed difference between the Apple II and C64. The Apple has a keyboard chip and doesn't need to spend as long polling for key presses.

 

I ran the prime benchmark on a VZ emulator and found that Amstrad BASIC is around 30% faster than Microsoft BASIC on a similarly clocked Z80 machine.

MS BASIC clearly wasn't the fastest BASIC around but it had a lot of features and was easy to use.

Edited May 22, 2013 by JamesD

[Opry99er]

Not surprisingly, nobody has mentioned the Jupiter Ace. This was a fascinating machine, if for no other reason than it's lack of BASIC. It ran Forth as it's native tongue and could pull off some surprisingly cool tricks, seeing as it only had 1k of RAM!!!! It is a very rare machine, and I have been searching for an inexpensive one for years... To no avail. Take our TI.... A console typically goes for 10-20 bucks on Craigslist or EBay... I have never seen a functional Ace for under $400!!!!

 

A goofy little set up, it had rubber buttons and a very odd keyboard layout, as they go. No disk drive was ever developed for it, as it only loaded from tape. It had no colors, as it was white on black only.

 

Willsy's "Dark Star" game in TurboForth is an indirect port of an Ace game, IIRC.

 

It has a small and dedicated community who meet daily in an IRC chat room and talk about the system, preservation and archiving, etc... Im proud to call myself a member, although I am not very active anymore.

 

There is a good DOS based emulator called ACE32 which makes for a fairly decent development platform. No "paste" like Classic99, but you CAN write code in NotePad and "spool" it to the emulator for testing... It's not the best development environment I've ever used, but certainly serviceable for someone wanting to try their hand at writing games in AceForth.

[youki]

Not surprisingly, nobody has mentioned the Jupiter Ace. This was a fascinating machine, if for no other reason than it's lack of BASIC. It ran Forth as it's native tongue and could pull off some surprisingly cool tricks, seeing as it only had 1k of RAM!!!! It is a very rare machine, and I have been searching for an inexpensive one for years... To no avail. Take our TI.... A console typically goes for 10-20 bucks on Craigslist or EBay... I have never seen a functional Ace for under $400!!!!

 

A goofy little set up, it had rubber buttons and a very odd keyboard layout, as they go. No disk drive was ever developed for it, as it only loaded from tape. It had no colors, as it was white on black only.

 

Willsy's "Dark Star" game in TurboForth is an indirect port of an Ace game, IIRC.

 

It has a small and dedicated community who meet daily in an IRC chat room and talk about the system, preservation and archiving, etc... Im proud to call myself a member, although I am not very active anymore.

 

There is a good DOS based emulator called ACE32 which makes for a fairly decent development platform. No "paste" like Classic99, but you CAN write code in NotePad and "spool" it to the emulator for testing... It's not the best development environment I've ever used, but certainly serviceable for someone wanting to try their hand at writing games in AceForth.

 

there was another 8 bits machine with the Forth instead of the basic in Rom.

 

the Hector HRX , the Hector/Victor computers are computers i love. (only the HRX has Forth in Rom , other are in Basic (a very good one))

[Stuart]

Not surprisingly, nobody has mentioned the Jupiter Ace. ,,, No disk drive was ever developed for it, as it only loaded from tape.

 

[Pedant Mode On]

Not quite true. A disk drive for the Ace was developed and sold by MPE in Southampton who done lots of other Forthy things. At least one is/was known to exist, but they are rarer than rare.

www.jupiter-ace.co.uk/hardware_JetDisc.html

[Pedant Mode Off]

[unhuman]

Wrong thread.

Edited May 22, 2013 by unhuman

[Opry99er]

Thanks for that info, Stuart... I was unaware that any of these were actually manufactured. I knew there was "talk" of them, but I hadn't ever seen one or heard of anyone owning one.

 

I love this little machine... It's quirky and crazy enough to make me want it... The guys at the forums there have given me specs to build my own, even offered to supply ROMs... But I have neither the time nor talent to take on a task like that. I still haven't installed my F18A yet!!!

 

I have been playing with some demos in AceForth, trying to get it to do what I want... I'd thought about (and posted a few times about) porting Lemonade Stand to the Ace, but I have been so tied up at work and with life that I barely have time to do anything TI-related, much less for any other systems... Keeping up on Atariage is about all I have time for during the day. =)

[JamesD]

Forth isn't exactly easy for beginners and I don't think even the most fanatical Forth fan can claim these machines had as many features built in. If you don't mind building things from scratch then they were great, otherwise... not so much.

[am1933]

I will try and give an honest and short opinion of the ones I owned/still own,

 

ZX81-decent introduction to computing/Basic, bad keyboard, no sound, no colour-and don't dare touch the rampack when typing in a large program.

TI99/4a-Excellent build quality, shockingly slow Basic but reasonably easy to use, hardware and software were too expensive and availability was terrible(in the UK).

VIC20-Never felt very sturdy,piss poor basic,limited resolution and sound, keyboard was decent(on some models),well supported by 3rd party and Commodore.

ZX Spectrum-Good value,quickly supported by 3rd party development, display quality dubious, sound was terrible, keyword entry a pain, good Basic,some excellent software given limitations.

Atari 800xl-Great system, Initially expensive for hardware and software, Limited Basic, initial models had high build quality, sound,graphics/colour pallette were excellent.

Jupiter Ace-Interestingly based around the Forth language, case is very flimsy, tiny inbuilt memory and poor sound,poorly supported-only really sold to the hobbyist market.

Oric-lady luck and rushed design conspired against this, bugged ROM, notoriously fiddly tape loading, excellent sound from very big internal speaker, limited keyboard, decent Basic.

Mattel Aquarius-WHY?

Newbrain-Decent enough machine but due to launch delays was never able to find it's niche, good build quality, good range of interfaces(non standard).

Colour Genie-Another excellently constructed machine with a handy in-built tape level display, graphics limited,a bit like a colour upgrade of the original TRS80.

Tandy CoCo 1&2-As big a failure over here as they were a success in the U.S, still have a soft spot for them though-It helps if you like the colour green!

Dragon 32-Other than better cosmetic styling, pretty much a CoCo in disguise.

Enterprise 128-If only it went to market when announced-it could have changed the face of computing, excellent Basic, Very Hi Res, good sound(Envelope control),non standard interfaces.

BBC Micro-If programming was your thing, this was the best, great Basic and assembler, amazing range of inbuilt interfaces, open architecture, memory limitations were a pain.

Acorn Electron-a mini BBC micro but with only 1 sound channel and no teletext mode,seriously lacking in built in interfaces, excellent build quality.

Camputers Lynx-Another blink and you miss it machine, decent enough machine but no support-display quality good but not really suited for games.

Memotech MTX 512-Beautiful machine, almost an MSX(famously appeared in Wierd Science)nice machine with some unusual features(Noddy).

Spectravideo SV318/328-Another almost MSX, famously played Colecovision games with adapter, good version of Basic-excellent sprite control, support seriously lacking.

Sord M5-another wannabe MSX,next to no support and to access any decent functions required additional cartrdges, good solid build quality-like a bigger classy spectrum.

CBM16/+4-CBM took on board the complaints about CBM Basic and rectified them then made almost everything else about the machine sub-standard to the 64.

CBM64-Good all rounder, sound excellent, graphics ok, colour pallette washed out, huge range of software and hardware, Basic-as bad as the VIC20.

CBM128-WHY?,an expensive C64,no support for 128 mode, CPM was already on it's way out when released, it is however- a prized collectors piece and tollerant of upgrading.

 

The only reasonably big seller that I have never owned is the Amstrad CPC464/664/6128 range

[+hloberg]

Learned computers on the TI-99. love ExBASIC but couldn't afford to expand it beyond tape. OK graphics, good sound, bad keyboard, painful joysticks.

then got both an 1200XL then 130XE which were both great computers. Great graphics, fast i/o, lots software, just ok sound. learned a lot about assembler on those too.

Graduated the the Atari 520ST which was just a, meh, machine. It just wasn't powerful enough to make a really good GUI based pc. But great looking case and keyboard, excellent sound.

Now i'm back to TI-99/4a as a hobby.

What goes around...

Edited January 18, 2014 by hloberg

[rivercityrandom]

The only early 80's home computer I experienced first hand was the TI-99/4A, which I was lucky to receive for free from a friend of my mother's back in the early 90s. It came with the 32K expansion, the Peripheral Expansion Box, a disk drive and a bunch of other goodies. The system was easier to program for than the others, especially Extended Basic with its built in sprite graphics commands. I also loved programming in TI Logo, which gave you even more control of sprites. I mostly used the TI-99/4A to create short demos with animated graphics and 3-channel music for my high school's weekly television broadcast. I was able to learn everything from the included manuals and from the programs printed in the 99'er magazines that I owned. Sadly, there weren't very many people selling anything for the TI in the early 90's, and before the internet and eBay came along, there wasn't a lot of information available to me. So I traded it to a friend for some NES cartridges when we upgraded to a 286 PC. *sigh* I wish I still had my TI.

[RobertLM78]

Working on a Commodore 64 in MESS makes me realize how much of good machine we had with our TI-99/4As . (I know there is the whole learning curve thing, but the C64 just doesn't seem as well put together as the TI, IMHO).

[Retrospect]

Working on a Commodore 64 in MESS makes me realize how much of good machine we had with our TI-99/4As . (I know there is the whole learning curve thing, but the C64 just doesn't seem as well put together as the TI, IMHO).

One thing that didn't help the C64 was the fact it had PET basic which wasn't suited to the 64 since there were no quick commands for it's enhanced graphics and sound capabilities .... even redefining a character takes ages to type in and takes a heck of a long time to run!

 

I don't know about assembly programming on the 64, maybe that was an arse too?

[Imperious]

One thing that didn't help the C64 was the fact it had PET basic which wasn't suited to the 64 since there were no quick commands for it's enhanced graphics and sound capabilities .... even redefining a character takes ages to type in and takes a heck of a long time to run!

 

I don't know about assembly programming on the 64, maybe that was an arse too?

 

That was Jack Tramiel's fault, it was explained in the book "Commodore, a Company on the edge" that He had no understanding of the value of software at that time, the "If you can't see or touch it, it doesn't seem real" kind of mentality.

The c64 was sent out as a prototype with basic v2 installed (exactly the same version the vic-20 had) and shown at computer faires at the time, and despite objections from the machine's programmers that v2 basic wouldn't cut it,

Jack's mind could not be changed. The PET had a more advanced basic than the c64.

 

Anyway, what to some might be seen as an achilles heel, probably forced programmers to dig deeper to get anything out of it, hence why even to today there is a very active scene for the c64

Edited April 12, 2014 by Imperious

[aftyde]

Learned programming on the TRS-80 (in the Radio Shack store - I was a persistent kid), and later on the Apple ][ in a summer course offered by the school. Worked that summer in a flea market to save the $ required - looked at all the computers out there and determined that the TI-99/4A was the best value (16K whereas all others has 8K at most). Learned BASIC, and Extended BASIC. Led to my first programming job at Aardvark Softrware in Walled Lake MI.

 

Moved on to the C-64, then Apple ][+ (clones) and finally a genuine ][e (running CP/M and DOS 3.3). Eventually I bought a Leading Edge Model M PC as I didn't like the Mac (no slots, and non-obvious way to program / hack the OS). Then moved on to OS/2 and programming in REXX (mainframe also); so it's basically been Intel for the last 20 or so years. These days I run a mix of Linux, Win and OS/X.

 

And I also run my TI-99/4A again... These days it runs my TI-BASE Database, acts as a console for my Xenserver machine, and occasionally I call out to BBS's with it.

[Willsy]

Mattel Aquarius-WHY?

 

HA HA! LMAO! Why indeed! It's actually true that a Mattel Aquarius is actually less use than a brick! Why? Well, you see, a brick can be used as a brick, whereas a Mattel Aquarius can neither be used as a brick, nor a computer!

 

IIRC it was Z80 based. Imagine you are a Z80 with dreams of being used in a TRS80, or a ZX Spectrum, or, if you study hard at school, one of those posh Z80 CP/M machines, then some bastard picks you up out of the parts bin and solders you into an Aquarius!

[Retrospect]

 

HA HA! LMAO! Why indeed! It's actually true that a Mattel Aquarius is actually less use than a brick! Why? Well, you see, a brick can be used as a brick, whereas a Mattel Aquarius can neither be used as a brick, nor a computer!

 

IIRC it was Z80 based. Imagine you are a Z80 with dreams of being used in a TRS80, or a ZX Spectrum, or, if you study hard at school, one of those posh Z80 CP/M machines, then some bastard picks you up out of the parts bin and solders you into an Aquarius!

lmao!

 

I saw one for sale in the Ridings Shopping Centre at Wakefield where I live, (a charity shop was selling it) it was 60 quid and the missus was looking at it asking me about it. I just said "move on, it's crap" .... I had an emulator for it, and hated that. It didn't have bitmap graphics, it didn't have the ability to even redesign the character set, it had standard characters for games, so each and every game that came out had the same protagonist. The aquarious is the only computer that makes my blood boil thinking about it! lol

Edited April 15, 2014 by Retrospect

[am1933]

 

HA HA! LMAO! Why indeed! It's actually true that a Mattel Aquarius is actually less use than a brick! Why? Well, you see, a brick can be used as a brick, whereas a Mattel Aquarius can neither be used as a brick, nor a computer!

 

IIRC it was Z80 based. Imagine you are a Z80 with dreams of being used in a TRS80, or a ZX Spectrum, or, if you study hard at school, one of those posh Z80 CP/M machines, then some bastard picks you up out of the parts bin and solders you into an Aquarius!

You had better hope none of the Aquarius fanboys see this-they can be quite millitant!-but there is no getting away from the truth-THAT THE MACHINE WAS SIMPLY THE MOST FETID TURD EVER TO CARRY A KEYBOARD!!!!!

[am1933]

lmao!

 

I saw one for sale in the Ridings Shopping Centre at Wakefield where I live, (a charity shop was selling it) it was 60 quid and the missus was looking at it asking me about it. I just said "move on, it's crap" .... I had an emulator for it, and hated that. It didn't have bitmap graphics, it didn't have the ability to even redesign the character set, it had standard characters for games, so each and every game that came out had the same protagonist. The aquarious is the only computer that makes my blood boil thinking about it! lol

60 EFFIN NICKER???????, my older brother foolishly bought one from asda many moons ago complete with 16k ram pack and data recorder for £49, after about 3 minutes and 14 seconds of operation he discovered the same thing I discovered in half the time-that this was a complete roaster of a machine thats only practical purpose was to use as an implement for killing baby seals-well you could try but the baby seals usually died of excessive laughter before you got a chance to club them.

I should add-that I still infact have the machine

[Retrospect]

60 EFFIN NICKER???????, my older brother foolishly bought one from asda many moons ago complete with 16k ram pack and data recorder for £49, after about 3 minutes and 14 seconds of operation he discovered the same thing I discovered in half the time-that this was a complete roaster of a machine thats only practical purpose was to use as an implement for killing baby seals-well you could try but the baby seals usually died of excessive laughter before you got a chance to club them.

I should add-that I still infact have the machine

It's like Willsy said , that Z80 must have felt shame being housed in that thing. It was bad from the word go. Few computers I have ever despised, but that ones' the exception. I'd have a ZX81 over one of them anyday. And that's with Rampack Wobble too!

 

One computer that doesn't come up much in the sales is the TI99/4 (1979). I've always wanted one just for the originality of it, but it has more drawbacks than a 4A with the 9918 not having bitmap mode. That said, I think Matthew180 may have inadvertantly fixed that problem for anyone who owns one - the F18A should plug into it, and if it does, that means it * should * be able to play Parsec and all other bitmap mode games (?)