Omega-TI Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 On my TI-99/4A it's got be that damn logo/advertising screen that does nothing other than get in the way and slow me down. Sometimes I just wish there was a plug in device that would allow me to bypass it. Let's face it, advertising sucks, but if you already own the computer, what's the point? First you turn on the computer or simply reset it after running a program and continually get... So you have to press "ANY KEY" to begin... Then you get... another menu... Now if there were more than a single option I could understand this screen. Why not just default to the cartridge that is inserted? And then FINALLY what you wanted.... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 I had a CoCo as a kid and the lack of palette registers on the 6847 really sucked. 9 colors (even those) would have been enough if you could choose which ones to use and change them at any time. On the Apple II it would be the screen memory map. Games could have been faster and easier to program. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 Apple II it would be the screen memory map. Games could have been faster and easier to program. Seconded Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 I posted this tongue-in-cheek response in a similar thread: [The single worst thing about my classic computer is that] ... it never pesters me! I've become so conditioned by modern Windows computers that, if I'm not always being forced to check for updates, scan for viruses, upgrade my plugins, reboot, troubleshoot some errant process that's eating the computer alive from the inside, or some other maintenance task that somehow always pops up and bothers me while I'm working, it's very disorienting. Put me in front of a classic computer that does one thing at a time, that does it well, and that never interrupts me, and suddenly I can't remember what I'm looking at, what I'm doing, or even who I am anymore. I start getting fidgety within five minutes, because somehow, I just need to check for updates!!! For the Mattel Aquarius computer (the vintage computer I'm working with the most right now), I'd say the single biggest flaw is the lack of reprogrammable character graphics. That's something I intend to fix at some point, but for now it imposes some pretty strict limits on what one can do with the machine. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickR Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 C64 - the horrible slow disk drive. Even a modern SD card disk device is slow. There are fast load carts and other tricks...but COME ON! CoCo2 - who picked that puke green default screen color? Ugh! C64 - Why don't all games use joystick port 1 as the default for games? Switching back and forth is just aggravating!C64 - No graphics or sound commands built into BASIC? Commodore, you cheap cheapskates! Get a better version of BASIC!Can't think of any complaints for the TI or Atari computers I have. Bravo to them. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 Atari BASIC string handling and slow math libraries. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickR Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 Oooh, I forgot the VIC-20. -3.5K RAM. Are you kidding me? -Cartridge port on the back that takes way too much force to insert or extract cartridges. Did you say to limit it to ONE complaint? Ooops. Sorry. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr SQL Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 I had a CoCo as a kid and the lack of palette registers on the 6847 really sucked. 9 colors (even those) would have been enough if you could choose which ones to use and change them at any time. Agree, the low res CoCo modes that were lost/disabled on the CoCo 3 (other than 64x32) were pretty awesome Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 The non-standard P1/P2 C64 joystick complaint is waaaay up there in the annoying department. But the single biggest complaint I have is a toss up between nearly none of the computers at the time evolving from the 2600 style single button joystick and all of the horrible conversions we got thanks to developers/publishers NOT taking advantage of superior hardware when they clearly should have. Can't decide which pisses me off more. BTW: I rather like the TI's splash screen. Seems more friendly and personable vs. simply turning on a computer, only to be presented with a DOS prompt or worse: being asked for the date and time! lol 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 Agree, the low res CoCo modes that were lost/disabled on the CoCo 3 (other than 64x32) were pretty awesome Well, they were also a bit awkward to program due to the pixel layout. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
am1933 Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 On my TI-99/4A it's got be that damn logo/advertising screen that does nothing other than get in the way and slow me down. Sometimes I just wish there was a plug in device that would allow me to bypass it. Let's face it, advertising sucks, but if you already own the computer, what's the point? First you turn on the computer or simply reset it after running a program and continually get... So you have to press "ANY KEY" to begin... Then you get... another menu... Now if there were more than a single option I could understand this screen. Why not just default to the cartridge that is inserted? And then FINALLY what you wanted.... Now normally I am in agreement with most of what you say-BUT, the reason I love this screen is because no other systems had anything like it, How many other 8 bit machines looked that good when you switch them on? Try switching on a Sinclair Spectrum(sorry-no switch,try plugging in the power cable)-then witness the monochrome horror complete with dot crawl!!!!, I bet you would soon fall in love with the TI title page if you had to put up with it. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
am1933 Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 With the TI99/4a it has always been the long winded method of trying to get anything like some decent graphics out of the basic console without having to resort to piecing together a load of re-defined characters. Ohhhh for a Draw,Line,Plot,Circle and fill command. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted July 12, 2014 Author Share Posted July 12, 2014 Now normally I am in agreement with most of what you say-BUT, the reason I love this screen is because no other systems had anything like it, How many other 8 bit machines looked that good when you switch them on? Try switching on a Sinclair Spectrum(sorry-no switch,try plugging in the power cable)-then witness the monochrome horror complete with dot crawl!!!!, I bet you would soon fall in love with the TI title page if you had to put up with it. I see your point! You know, the most aggravating thing about not being able to just go into XB when the power was turned on was with the old BBS systems back in the day. If you had a power glitch, the BBS was offline until the SYSOP got home to manually make two simple button presses. PC's and some other systems did not have that problem. If the TI could have just dumped into XB and executed DSK1.LOAD automagically, there would have been no problems. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted July 12, 2014 Author Share Posted July 12, 2014 With the TI99/4a it has always been the long winded method of trying to get anything like some decent graphics out of the basic console without having to resort to piecing together a load of re-defined characters. Ohhhh for a Draw,Line,Plot,Circle and fill command. Console Basic! Eeeeeeeech! Dog Freakin' Slow! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 Whiners whiners whiners, I'm tell'n ya! These were the features that made the classics CLASSICS! Having said that, I disliked the lack of graphics and sound commands in BASIC on the C-64. I'm sure the defenders of the machine will cite development costs, but be real, a multi-media powerhouse (of the day) being crippled as such? Pfaaggghhh.. You know it sucks! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
am1933 Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 Whiners whiners whiners, I'm tell'n ya! These were the features that made the classics CLASSICS! Having said that, I disliked the lack of graphics and sound commands in BASIC on the C-64. I'm sure the defenders of the machine will cite development costs, but be real, a multi-media powerhouse (of the day) being crippled as such? Pfaaggghhh.. You know it sucks! You could always buy the Simons Basic cartridge and the programmers reference guide(see what Commodore did there) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 I always liked the T.I. startup screen. It's a badge of honor. A proud display of what it is! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John_L Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 CoCo2 - who picked that puke green default screen color? Ugh! All CoCos, not just 2 had that green screen, and I think it goes back to when the VDG was being designed. The plan was to create a cheap VT100 terminal farmers could use to access a service called "Agvision". I think the green screen was chosen because of that. There were several companies out there producing cheap terminals designed to access a larger network for services, it was thought that this was going to be big (which it eventually was when the internet came along). These terminals could be used with such systems as Compuserve and dial up BBSs even. But the big push within Radio Shack was to market this unit especially to farmers although it had other uses. These units were basically VT100 terminals designed for home use rather than commerical, and so Radio Shack developed the VidTex terminal and CoCo around the same hardware. The VideoTex system never really got very big, and CoCos could emulate one using their VidTex cartridge, so most people opted to get the Computer rather than the cheaper terminal because it could do much more than access online services, so I think the CoCo itself (along with the fact that very few bought any sort of terminal anyway) helped kill the VidTex system at Radio Shack, so this left us with a great computer that had that aweful green screen. I will say though, I can pick out any computer using a VDG because that shade of green and that character set are so burned into my head, I can pick it out anywhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ravard Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 I think my biggest complaint is we are all collecting this stuff and it is getting expensive. I don't know if that is a valid complaint or not. It bothers me though. ravard Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Ripdubski Posted July 13, 2014 Share Posted July 13, 2014 That its all currently boxed away due to needing the house cleaned up while its for sale. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John_L Posted July 13, 2014 Share Posted July 13, 2014 (edited) The Color Computer lived on long enough to see a 3rd version, by the time CoCo3 got there, alot of CoCo's issues that it had with the first models that rolled off the line were solved either by CoCo 2 or CoCo 3. CoCo 1 Had a difficult to use "chicklet" style keyboard Highest resolution 256x192 x 2 colors No Palette registers VDG didn't support CPU high speed mode, the machine would speed up, but you'd loose the display. Color synchronization would randomly sync to either the rising or falling ramp of the clock causing issues in the (never officially supported) 4 color hack for PMODE 4. No lower case characters. 32 column, 16 row text screen 9 colors 64k RAM OS9 Level I only CoCo 2 Had an improved keyboard, better but not great. Still technically a chicklet keyboard made to look more like a real one. This didn't last too long, and a full travel keyboard finally arrived. VDG was the same, but would not glitch out when high speed CPU mode was invoked. Color sync issue persists Character set could now be toggled between inverse video and true lower case characters text mode and colors the same, still no palette registers 64k RAM OS9 Level I only CoCo 3 Always had the best keyboard and also added Control, Alt, F1 and F2 keys. VDG, SAM were combined into one chip that emulated both chips, plus provided new higher resolution text and graphics modes and MMU management for support for up to 512k RAM and improved overall performance. Color Sync issue was resolved, machine would always boot to rising ramp, or if F1 was held during reset, falling ramp. Full 32,40,64, and 80 column text modes (although 64 was never supported, it was there in hardware) Higher resolution text modes (40 & 80 column) supported multi color, blink and underlined text. Displayable colors went from 9 to 16 out of a palette of 64 colors Higher resolution display modes 320x225x16 and 640x225x4, although resourceful coders have pushed the 320x225 mode to 256 colors (with no fancy page flipping or palette swapping) by playing tricks with the color sync. 512k RAM OS9 Level II support which brought a true, full, multi user, multitasking windowed environment with support for up to 4 simultaneously connected terminals. Yes a full blown Unix/Linux style OS. So you see, by the age of the CoCo 3, most of the issues that plagued earlier systems were ironed out by the 3rd version. However, this thread is about what it lacked... so if push came to shove.. although BASIC, and by BASIC I mean color basic, extended, color basic, super extended color basic and disk basic...whew was adequate. In recent times I've been studying the code, and they had alot of room for improvement, and microware blew 6k on a digital photo for their easter egg. If BASIC were optimized and the full amount of ROM space was used, it could have been a beast. Edited July 13, 2014 by John_L 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DZ-Jay Posted July 13, 2014 Share Posted July 13, 2014 (edited) C64 - No graphics or sound commands built into BASIC? Commodore, you cheap cheapskates! Get a better version of BASIC! This always annoyed me, and I found it to be an evil twist of fate: An affordable computer with one of the best sound synthesizers and some of the best hardware for video graphics at its time, it was such a powerful machine--and it didn't have any usable interface to access any of that power, except by arcane low-level hardware programming! Not even a single graphic or sound command in its built-in BASIC interpreter! To me, it always felt as if they have given you a car with a rocket engine, but the instructions show that the stick shift only goes from first to second gear, and the fuel injector is too small for any speed faster than that. If you're smart enough to recognise the rocket engine in the back, you could crack into the transmission and hook up your own gear shift manually. The fact that many did just that, and went to produce some of the most advanced games and iconic 8-bit music of the time, shows you how moronic that decision was--and how versatile the little machine actually was! You could always buy the Simons Basic cartridge and the programmers reference guide(see what Commodore did there) I had the programmer's reference guide, that's how come I knew I could hack the SID and VIC II chips to do more than just, hmmm, sit there inertly. And then, you had to type in your own Machine Language monitor (or buy one); for other than PEEK and POKE, there was absolutely no way to touch those chips! WTF?! Still, even the stupid Intellivision ECS computer (which I had first) had sprite manipulation and tone playing commands in what I consider the worse version of BASIC evah! See what I did there, I gave you two "single worst things about my classic computers" for the price of one: C=64: no way to access the powerful multimedia capabilities of the machine ECS: crappiest version of BASIC evah! (2K RAM in 1983? Slow as molasses? Manual "errata" almost as large as the manual itself? All commands truncated to four characters--WTF is "PRIN" and "INPU"? Edited July 13, 2014 by DZ-Jay 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Usotsuki Posted July 13, 2014 Share Posted July 13, 2014 ECS? Anyway, my biggest beef would be, I have an Apple //e, and its floppy disk capacity is a piddly 140K. Yes, I know Atari 800 users have it even worse than that. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DZ-Jay Posted July 13, 2014 Share Posted July 13, 2014 ECS? Anyway, my biggest beef would be, I have an Apple //e, and its floppy disk capacity is a piddly 140K. Yes, I know Atari 800 users have it even worse than that. Yes, the Mattel Electronics cop-out for turning the Intellivision Master Component into a computer: the Entertainment Computer System or ECS. Built-in crappy BASIC Chiclet keyboard with weird lay-out 20 Hz underlying engine, so keyboard scanning occurred three times a second--better press those chiclets hard and long! Slow interpreter About 2K of RAM left for your programs Disc, you say? Pffft! We had the ability to use cassette tape, unreliably! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland p Posted July 13, 2014 Share Posted July 13, 2014 Whiners whiners whiners, I'm tell'n ya! These were the features that made the classics CLASSICS! Yep: slow tapes > you selected only the games you really want to play. slow download / expensive telephone lines > you only download the stuff that seemed really important. one tv in the house > everyone was part of the experience (we actually had two and the modulated signal could also be received upstairs) Nothing bad about floppies. Compared to tapes, floppies seemed to be the a quantum leap in computer technology . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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