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Plus/4--worth picking up?


BassGuitari

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Just sort of an idle question. Does the Plus/4 (or C16, I guess...either of the TED systems) offer a gaming experience appreciably different enough from the C64 to make it worth trying to pick one up? They seem like interesting--if not especially great--systems, but nobody talks about them. :P

I know the datasette and joysticks are proprietary, but it's 1541 compatible. There doesn't seem to have been much software released in North America, while there were more releases in the UK and Europe. There does seem to be homebrew activity, at least.

Those of you that have one, what do you like or dislike about it?

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I have a Plus/4 and I think it is worth picking one up if you want to experience some of the things it offers.

 

For me it was:

 

BASIC 3.5 which is much much better then the C64 limited BASIC.

128 colors advertised but really 121 which makes some games and many demos much more colorful.

 

Of course the sound is terrible although there are some games and demos that use it to good effect.

 

The reliability factor is bad too with the CPU failing often followed by the TED. I had two Plus/4's that were given to me dead and both had bad CPUs. Make sure you use a saver if you use the original PSU or better yet get a custom PSU from Ray Carlsen or a C128 and fit a Plus/4 connector to it.

 

That said I have had fun with mine and yeah in the USA they were a major dud but they are interesting none the less.

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The video chip's more like the VIC 20 where everything's character based because there's no sprites. There is a much larger palette though.

 

I'd take a look at something like the Top List at Plus/4 World to decide if any of the games looked interesting to you, then look for videos on YouTube to get a better feel for them. I did notice that only 1 of the top 10 supported NTSC...

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I had both a Commodore 16 and a Plus/4 back when they came out. At the time, I loved my Plus/4 and the 1551 drive that came with it. The built in software was rubbish but I had a word processor cartridge that was pretty good and I wrote a book on it. The games were decent. I loved the styling of the Plus/4 and think they are worth being a part of any retro collection.

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I'd agree the C16 is worthless but the Plus/4 is not that bad. Has a great BASIC and built in machine code monitor. Some of the games were decent but yes, compared to C64 gaming it's a (distant) second. That 1551 drive though... so much faster than the 1541.

 

Biggest issue is the TED chip and it's likelyhood of just turning up its toes.

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I have a CIB, nearly new looking C16 that I paid next to nothing for ($10 IIRC) about 22-23 years ago. I don't have any software or peripherals for it, so I never really did much with it.

 

I think I'll get the uIEC/SD out this weekend and download some games for it.

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Just sort of an idle question. Does the Plus/4 (or C16, I guess...either of the TED systems) offer a gaming experience appreciably different enough from the C64 to make it worth trying to pick one up? They seem like interesting--if not especially great--systems, but nobody talks about them. :P

 

I know the datasette and joysticks are proprietary, but it's 1541 compatible. There doesn't seem to have been much software released in North America, while there were more releases in the UK and Europe. There does seem to be homebrew activity, at least.

 

Those of you that have one, what do you like or dislike about it?

The good.

Contrary to some comparisons to the VIC20, it really isn't much like the VIC20.

Unlike the VIC20, the Plus/4 has support for high-res bitmapped graphics in addition to user definable characters, and you have 121 colors to choose from.

In other words... graphics wise it does everything a C64 can do except hardware sprites, but with more color choices.

The Plus/4 has an excellent built in BASIC, unlike the VIC20 and C64 which didn't really have any upgrades over the PET.

The BASIC supports bitmapped graphics, sound, and it has additional looping commands like DO WHILE. Sadly, it lacks software sprite support.

It's BASIC is also capable of using more RAM than any machine at the time of it's release. So you can write larger programs.

The Plus/4 was one of the fastest 6502 machines at the time of it's release. Many C64 games have been ported to the Plus/4 and they run faster on the Plus/4 than the C64.

The Plus/4 version of Elite was ported from the C64 and it is one of the best out there.

The port of the Asteroids emulator looks quite good.

It has several hardware timers built into the TED which could be quite useful for a programmer.

The Plus/4 keyboard has a pretty good feel to it. The arrow keys are a bit odd though.

 

The bad.

No sprite hardware, no SID... which C64 fans will tell you is evil. I'm not one of those people though.

The sound is similar to the VIC20. With some care it can sound pretty good... good enough anyway. People have made SID card add ons that many new games use.

The bitmapped color is assigned through separate attributes rather than being two bits per pixel. This leads to color clash.

It also means the bitmap is arranged in a character oriented byte order. It makes drawing lines and such more complicated due to the address calculations required.

The software library isn't as big as many other platforms.

Overheating. You'll want to rip off the heat shielding and stick some heat sinks on the TED and CPU.

 

 

Personally, the Plus/4 is one of my favorite machines to tinker with.

But that's just me. A lot of the old game library is shoddy like this travesty

 

But more recent games are pretty good

 

 

There is a pretty decent Plus/4 site/forum here:

http://plus4world.com/

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I would call the TED sound far more boring than the VIC-I sound, and I've written music routines for both. Actually the TED sound reminds me of a SN76489 but with two square wave oscillators removed and no support for the LFSR sound. I don't know if the TED has counters you can wait for to change the timbre of the square wave just like those "Viznut waveforms" on the VIC.

 

VIC-I

3 square wave oscillators, ordered one octave from eachother

7 bit frequency resolution in each oscillator

1 independent noise channel

1 volume register

 

TED

2 square wave oscillators, tuned to the same octave

10 bit frequency resolution starting at 110 Hz

1 of the two oscillators can optionally play white noise instead of square wave

1 volume register

 

SID

3 voices with selectable waveforms and individual envelopes

16 bit frequency resolution

Filters, ring modulation, synchronization etc

1 volume register on top of the envelopes

(this spec could be explained more in detail)

 

Part of my scepticism about the C16 and Plus/4 comes from my love of the VIC-20, as the TED series came to replace the VIC in a time where it barely didn't need any replacement. Also the project must've cost far more in R&D than it ever brought in sales, which means Commodore surely took a financial cut from developing and releasing these computers. One of many wrong decisions the Commodore management made over the years, although nowhere as bad as the CDTV many years later.

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Agreed on them being fragile. I bought a boxed Plus 4 for next to nothing at a garage sale a few years ago. I fired it up, and was messing with the built in word processor for literally two minutes before it died on me. Either the CPU or TED chip fried because all I could get was a black screen after that.

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Thanks for the input, guys. I'd been kind of hemming and hawing over getting a Plus/4 for a while because I like obscure systems. I have read that they're more trouble than they're worth and the games aren't really anything to write home about, and you've essentially confirmed that for me. :-D Both the hardware and software seem to lack the charm and quirkiness of otherwise worthless systems like the Timex/Sinclair or Aquarius.

Besides, I have a fairly sizable C64 collection (though it's surely peanuts compared to some of yours!) and I've developed a pretty nasty VIC-20 habit lately, and getting a new system runs contrary to this "downsizing" thing I'm trying to do. :P So thanks for talking me out of it. :-D

The Plus/4 (and C16) will remain a nonessential footnote in Commodore history for me. Now, a PET on the other hand...

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I like my Plus 4 but it is tough to find NTSC programs. I wish it could use PAL files on a PAL display but that is a no-go with NTSC only systems. There is a ton of PAL software!

Commodore Plus/4 PAL-NTSC Switch Installation

http://www.fascinationsoftware.com/FS/html/Plus4-videoswitch.html

Edited by JamesD
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From what i've been told, a C16 with 64K and heat sinks is more reliable than a Plus/4... i do need to get myself one, the only C16 i've owned was cannibalised for parts and scrapped well before i got it so the keyboard lives on as part of a C64C whilst the case is wrapped around a C64 board now.

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Thanks for the input, guys. I'd been kind of hemming and hawing over getting a Plus/4 for a while because I like obscure systems. I have read that they're more trouble than they're worth and the games aren't really anything to write home about, and you've essentially confirmed that for me. :-D Both the hardware and software seem to lack the charm and quirkiness of otherwise worthless systems like the Timex/Sinclair or Aquarius.

...

Well, it's not for everyone I'm sure.

It's pretty obvious that Commodore should have just upgraded the C64 to have a fast mode, more colors, and an Extended BASIC... but that's not what happened.

Frankly, I feel the same way about the VIC 20 as many people do about the Plus/4.

Ultimately, like with any of these old machines, I suggest you try it out with emulation first. If you find something really cool... then it was worth the effort. If not, you didn't waste any money.

 

One advantage of the Plus/4 over other brands of computers, is that it uses most of the same SD drives, meaning all you need is another SD card rather than another drive.

The Plus/4's support for a parallel drive potentially could lead to an IDE or SD interface that is much faster.

A board has been demoed that shows video playback, but it's not for sale. It does show the possibility though.

 

It doesn't really take a lot to make the TED machines reliable, so I'm not sure I agree with the more trouble than they are worth argument.

Heatsinks and thermal tape cost under $20, and I'm guessing a lot of the failures are due to the power supply rather than heat.

I've seen the same problems with the C64, but it's clocked slower so I'm sure there are fewer heat related chip failures.

When you add the NTSC/PAL switch mod I linked to above, you can also run anything.

But then all that does require some time and you have to decide if it's worth it.

 

 

From what i've been told, a C16 with 64K and heat sinks is more reliable than a Plus/4... i do need to get myself one, the only C16 i've owned was cannibalised for parts and scrapped well before i got it so the keyboard lives on as part of a C64C whilst the case is wrapped around a C64 board now.

 

I'm not sure an upgraded C16 is any more reliable than a Plus/4. I've seen the claim, but it's not like anyone is gathering data to see if it's true.

The C16 does have fewer parts and you'll be sticking in new RAMs to upgrade it, so I guess from that standpoint it might be slightly more reliable.

Replacement parts are getting hard to find, but at least one person has supposedly recreated the Plus/4 in an FPGA.

 

It's only a matter of time until there is a drop in replacement for the TED.

I'm sure they will throw in the SID and other mods while they are at it.

 

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My opinion is that an upgraded C64 had only fragmented the market and undermined Commodore's relative success. Should we make games for the 1982-83 model or the 1984 model, and will there be a 1985 model next year? The fact that some people thought the TED line would be an upgrade to the C64 probably was due to once Commodore realized their targetted retail price of $49 was impossible to reach and the development took more time due to instabilities, they suffered feature creep (speech synthesis anyone?), added a real keyboard and additional memory to the C116, code named C232, C264 and C364 to make it look like something else than it once was meant to be - a ZX Spectrum killer (*).

 

The VIC-20 is considered by many people to have been a stop-gap measure while waiting for development of the "real" home computer, the one that would stand a chance against the big boys at Atari and even Apple. Sure, but without the stop-gap Commodore would've been stuck as manufacturer of somewhat aging PET personal computers until mid-late 1982, trying to convince the market they made fun gaming computers as well.

 

By March 1984, a C64 sold for somewhere in the range of $200-$220, and the aging VIC-20 was below $70 at those resellers who still carried it. If Commodore really had wanted a cheaper option, I think they should've released a 32K model of the C64 in the spring of 1983, which would've been mostly compatible with the C64. Games developers just had to stick to a particular memory map and limitation on memory usage to have their games run on both.

 

Furthermore I've been told that membrane keyboards like the one in the C116 was much cheaper to manufacture than the full size keyboards in nearly every PET/CBM, VIC and C64 to that date, which sounds like a mystery to me as a manufacturer with those volumes should get a rather good discount compared to the startup costs to manufacture a completely different kind of keyboard.

 

(*) The C116 at best would've been released in the UK at a point where the Speccy already had 1.5 years of sales, software library and user groups to fight against. The Oric failed, the Dragon 32 was at best a loan computer for those whose Speccys broke down, apparently the VIC-20 was both too expensive and not powerful enough to keep up with the Spectrum. The Amstrad CPC to some part may have taken sales from Sinclair, but not to the point it wiped it off the market, which I think was Jack Tramiel's idea with ruling Britannia with an ultra low cost Commodore computer.

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JamesD wrote:

> It's pretty obvious that Commodore should have just upgraded the C64 to have a fast mode, more colors, and an Extended BASIC... but

> that's not what happened.

 

Heh, Commodore 128.

 

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
June 10-11 Pacific Commodore Expo NW -
http://www.portcommodore.com/pacommex
July 29-30 Commodore Vegas Expo v13 -
http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex

Edited by RobertB
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My opinion is that an upgraded C64 had only fragmented the market and undermined Commodore's relative success. Should we make games for the 1982-83 model or the 1984 model, and will there be a 1985 model next year?

....

By March 1984, a C64 sold for somewhere in the range of $200-$220, and the aging VIC-20 was below $70 at those resellers who still carried it. If Commodore really had wanted a cheaper option, I think they should've released a 32K model of the C64 in the spring of 1983, which would've been mostly compatible with the C64. Games developers just had to stick to a particular memory map and limitation on memory usage to have their games run on both.

...

I think you identified a problem with a 32K version of the C64 in the first line. At least an upgraded C64 might run all the existing software... might.

 

The market changed radically in a short time. As you say, the VIC 20 was probably stopgap. Commodore was caught off guard by the quick changes in the market.

The VIC was just too limited to stay in the market. 22 characters per line? Not exactly good for home word processing. At least on my CoCo the word processors could display text with graphics for 51 or 64 characters per line.

 

I think Bill Herd said the real keyboard was only another $10 over the membrane, but at that price point, that's huge.

And I thought the ZX-80/81/TS-1000 was the original target of the C116, not the Spectrum.

At least that's what Bill Herd held up in his video where he talks about it. But then he might not have had a Speccy.

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JamesD wrote:

 

> It's pretty obvious that Commodore should have just upgraded the C64 to have a fast mode, more colors, and an Extended BASIC... but

> that's not what happened.

 

Heh, Commodore 128.

...

Except the 128 mode is completely separate and it's not as good for games.

You can't have a game detect which machine it's on and use a better color palette and more speed.

A Plus/4 can change the palette as the screen is updated, letting you display more than 16 colors at a time.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYLZjZxuMe4&t=4m0s

Edited by JamesD
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One advantage of the Plus/4 over other brands of computers, is that it uses most of the same SD drives, meaning all you need is another SD card rather than another drive.

Most of the SD2IEC variants take power from the cassette port, that's different on the 264 series so they'll need either modification or replacement (i can't use my SD2IEC on the C64 i have in a C16 case for that reason).

 

I'm not sure an upgraded C16 is any more reliable than a Plus/4. I've seen the claim, but it's not like anyone is gathering data to see if it's true.

 

The C16 does have fewer parts and you'll be sticking in new RAMs to upgrade it, so I guess from that standpoint it might be slightly more reliable.

That's pretty much the argument i've heard when asking around yes, that and the larger case perhaps helping with airflow; i suspect that the case leaves a bit more room for heat sinks on the most fragile parts as well?

 

A Plus/4 can change the palette as the screen is updated, letting you display more than 16 colors at a time.

There are a couple of colour registers ike the C64 has for background and multicolours but values for the 121 colour palette can be selected directly from the colour RAM. The default mode that the machines power up into can do forty one colours per character line, one per attribute cell over a shared background colour.

 

The video you've linked to is actually showing FLI variant images and those force more colour RAM into play on the fly so, although they increase the amount of colour in an attribute cell, they don't actually increase the number of colours that can be accessed because the base mode already has access to all 121 of them.

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Except the 128 mode is completely separate and it's not as good for games.

You can't have a game detect which machine it's on and use a better color palette and more speed.

Actually... you sort of can; there aren't many examples "in the wild" but games like Alleykat and Uridium Plus will detect a C128 running in C64 mode and flip to 2MHz mode in the upper and lower borders to do more per frame.

 

The 40 column colour palette is, officially at least, the same between the C64 and C128 but there are a few other options for the latter on that front available by (ab)using the VIC-IIe test bit and those work from C64 mode as well; no games use it but the demo Up The Limits 2 by Antic does. This doesn't work unless the C128 is connected to a CRT and there's no emulation of it right now.

 

The only things disabled when in C64 mode are the Z80 and the MMU so it's a flat 64K of RAM, but the 80 column VDC display is still available and there are a few C64 mode tools which use the VDC RAM.

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According to what I've read, Commodore had previously (late 70's) designed the 6560 chip and were looking to improve it to get 40 columns. Due to time constraints and that fast enough SRAM was too expensive, they released the VIC-20 with the original 6560, and developed a PAL version 6561 which got quite delayed meaning the same computer released in Japan in the fall of 1980, didn't get to Europe until very late 1981 or even early 1982.

 

It appears to me that the VIC-20 was superior to the ZX-81/TS-1000 in all categories except number of characters per line and retail price. You might be right that the C116 was aimed to become the cheapest computer on the market, let it compete against any other brand (including the C64, obviously) but if the project was initiated early 1983, the ZX-81 was quickly becoming a non-threat anyway. I've got this TED Developer prototype board that is stamped August 1983. Unfortunately it doesn't work and at least one or two chips are missing, but supposedly it should represent an early incarnation of the C116 so software made with the board should run on the production model, if it had not been delayed and suffered feature creep so it took well into 1984 before it was ready to go into mass production.

Edited by carlsson
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Actually... you sort of can; there aren't many examples "in the wild" but games like Alleykat and Uridium Plus will detect a C128 running in C64 mode and flip to 2MHz mode in the upper and lower borders to do more per frame.

 

The 40 column colour palette is, officially at least, the same between the C64 and C128 but there are a few other options for the latter on that front available by (ab)using the VIC-IIe test bit and those work from C64 mode as well; no games use it but the demo Up The Limits 2 by Antic does. This doesn't work unless the C128 is connected to a CRT and there's no emulation of it right now.

 

The only things disabled when in C64 mode are the Z80 and the MMU so it's a flat 64K of RAM, but the 80 column VDC display is still available and there are a few C64 mode tools which use the VDC RAM.

The machine has been around for over 30 years and you pointed out a total of 1 demo and 2 games.

I'm suggesting something a little easier to do.

Like the mode mentioned here?

...

There are a couple of colour registers ike the C64 has for background and multicolours but values for the 121 colour palette can be selected directly from the colour RAM. The default mode that the machines power up into can do forty one colours per character line, one per attribute cell over a shared background colour.

 

The video you've linked to is actually showing FLI variant images and those force more colour RAM into play on the fly so, although they increase the amount of colour in an attribute cell, they don't actually increase the number of colours that can be accessed because the base mode already has access to all 121 of them.

I've only used one bitmapped mode with my code, so you obviously know more about it.

But I'm guessing you can change the palette on the fly with bitmapped graphics.

 

Most of the SD2IEC variants take power from the cassette port, that's different on the 264 series so they'll need either modification or replacement (i can't use my SD2IEC on the C64 i have in a C16 case for that reason).

...

FWIW, mine has it's own power supply, power switch, and display.

Adding a power supply to a cheaper model should be pretty easy and cost under $10. We are just talking about 5v(?) and GND signals.

 

Edited by JamesD
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The machine has been around for over 30 years and you pointed out a total of 1 demo and 2 games.

It really isn't rocket science though; detection is just a matter of blanking the screen, engaging fast mode and seeing if a loop takes X or X/2 scanlines to complete and after that you just need to swap in C128-specific versions of the code for using fast mode or indeed palette "mangling".

 

It was uncommon in the wild (but more common than three releases) because, assuming they programmers had access to the hardware in the first place, commercial programmers were working to strict deadlines and doubling up the effort like that wouldn't have been sensible financially; something written for the C64 would run anyway, why waste time putting in bells and whistles for C128 owners if nobody was making it worth their while?

 

Demo coders shied away for various reasons including the old favourite about sticking to a standard platform, although many of the tools i used in the 1980s had 2MHz from C64 mode support baked in and that's why my main development machine was a battered C128D for close to a decade.

 

I've only used one bitmapped mode with my code, so you obviously know more about it.

But I'm guessing you can change the palette on the fly with bitmapped graphics.

You can use a technique like FLI to force more colour fetches to happen so attribute cells go from being 4x8 or 8x8 pixels to 4x2 or 8x2 respectively and, perhaps, split one of the colour registers on each line as well (it depends on how good your FLI routine is and if you're in multicolour mode) but these techniques use every scanline where the picture is enhanced so they're not much use past still images.

 

FLI is an option on the C128 (the name comes from the C64 scene) but only in sixteen colours.

 

FWIW, mine has it's own power supply, power switch, and display.

Adding a power supply to a cheaper model should be pretty easy and cost under $10. We are just talking about 5v(?) and GND signals.

That change is still more than many users are going to be able/willing to make though, and the majority of these devices for the C64/VIC tend to ship with the tape port as power source. i need to convert mine in part because i've never been happy with the cheap way it was made, but since i have a 1541U2 and Turbo Chameleon there's no real rush...

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