Aple II vs Amstrad cpc vs TRS-80 (all models)

[2600problems]

1: BASIC: how easy was it to implement and how powerful was it?

2: games: this falls into two categories: strength and weaknesses. 1 game that shows a strength of the computer and one game that shows a weakness, no ports allowed.

3: sound: how well it sounded, Did it use an internal speaker of MIDI

 

for #2, show an example, either a link or video

[JamesD]

1: BASIC: how easy was it to implement and how powerful was it?

2: games: this falls into two categories: strength and weaknesses. 1 game that shows a strength of the computer and one game that shows a weakness, no ports allowed.

3: sound: how well it sounded, Did it use an internal speaker of MIDI

 

for #2, show an example, either a link or video

When you say TRS-80 all models... there's the I, II, III, IV, Coco 1, 2 3, Pocket Computer, 100, etc...

[2600problems]

for simplicity's sake, the model 1

[Keatah]

Then there are several classes of Apple II.

 

II

II+

//e

//e enhanced

//e platinum

//c

//c+

IIgs

 

..and performance can change for each model depending what add-in cards are being used.

[darthkur]

The CPC will have the clear advantage being that it was released in 84, 7 years after both the original Apple ][ and the TRS-80 Model 1.

The Model 1 had only 4K of RAM, monochromatic video output and no sound, although people did manage to "hack" an audio solution by attaching a small amp to the cassette port. It could not display true bitmap graphics and instead utilized text semigraphics. Even with all of those handicaps there is still a vast library of games available for it. The Apple ][, although able to generate color graphics, had it's base model come with a RAM allotment of only 4K. Sounds are produced by an on board speaker. The Amstrad CPC 464, while oddly enough still utilizing an on board speaker for sound, did possess 64K of memory and far superior graphics abilities, poor Speccy ports not withstanding, to the 1977 iterations of the aforementioned computers. A more balanced comparison would be the Tandy CoCo 2 and the Apple ][e against the CPC 464.

Edited March 23, 2017 by darthkur

[JamesD]

I'm not going to say any one machine was the best, everyone's needs are different.
There are some things to consider.
The Model I was discontinued years before the Amstrad was even released. In fact, Tandy was on the Model IV before the Amstrad was released.
The IIe had many hardware upgrades long before the Amstrad came out and an already massive software library.
The CoCo 3 and IIgs were only a couple years away by the time the CPC came out and they were much more capable machines than any Amstrad short of the plus models.

They all had games, the more game worthy the machine, the better the games. The larger the installed base, the more games.

Sound is pretty obvious out of the box.
The Amstrad has a sound chip, the others don't.
The TRS-80 and Apple II were even if you plugged an amplified speaker to the TRS-80 cassette port.
The best sound was from an Apple II with a Mockingboard upgrade.
There were also DAC based upgrades for the TRS-80 and Apple that could produce good music, digitized sounds, and speech.
Producing sampled sound or speech through an AY chip is a bit more complicated than a DAC, but it is possible and can sound quite good thanks to recent developments.
Back in the day AY sampled sound was mostly 4 bit rather than 8 though and it's a bit rougher sounding than a DAC..


TRS-80 Model I
I'll skip Level I BASIC as it was a stopgap measure lasting a very short time.
Level II BASIC is a very good standard BASIC. It doesn't have graphics or sound beyond SET, RESET, and POINT.

You could buy Level III BASIC to draw lines and software sprites, but it wasn't very popular.
IF THEN ELSE is supported.
It has excellent string handling.

Numeric variables can be integer, single or double precision, which is unique among the three. This is arguably one of it's best features since you can make programs faster or results more precise as needed. Loop counters and array indexes could be integers for speed, single precision could be used where decimals are required but not a lot of precision, and double could be used for where you need a lot of accuracy.
Apple and most other BASICs only offers numeric floating point accuracy in between single and double precision as sort of a compromise between speed and accuracy, and integers are nowhere to be found..
PRINT USING is included.
It has good file handling capabilities on cassette or disk.
PEEK, POKE, and USR() let you directly manipulate RAM and use machine language.
Between the math, formatted printing, and file I/O capabilities, it makes for an excellent business platform.
Throw in a BASIC compiler (there were several including one published in a magazine) and it performs quite well in spite of the 1977 RAM speeds.
The machine could be easily hacked to run faster if you had RAM that supported the higher clock speed.
There was a hi-res upgrade you could build for the Model I, but it wasn't compatible with the III/IV boards that came later, and none of the graphics boards were directly supported by BASIC other than through a USR function call..
The biggest downside of the machine wasn't the BASIC, it was the hardware expansion. You had to buy an external box to even upgrade RAM, then you had to take that apart to plug in boards, and the external box was connected to the main computer via a ribbon cable. Crashes related to the connectors oxidizing are partially where the term trash 80 came from.
The Model III eliminated the reliability issues, was mostly compatible with the Model I, came clocked at a higher speed, included lower case support from the factory, and made it an excellent all in one package for business. But you still had to tear it apart to plug in upgrades. Still, the machine has my all time favorite keyboard.
The Model III had an optional official hi-res upgrade board.

The Model IV took things even further into the business world with CP/M support, a higher clock speed, and it could also have hi-res through an upgrade. It is fully compatible with the Model III.
The Model III/IV supposedly laid the groundwork for a color machine (model V) but that never came.

 

Apple II+/e
Applesoft II is a Microsoft BASIC, so it has a lot of similarities to Level II BASIC, but it is an early Extended BASIC so it also has some additional graphics commands.
You can draw lines, but it has no sound features. It supports "shape tables" but the built in support is rather limited. Shape tables are sort of an early version of the much easier to use DRAW command found on the Color Computer's Extended Color BASIC.
String handling is good.
It lacks PRINT USING.
It supports PEEK, POKE, and CALL so you can manipulate RAM and use machine language.
Applesoft II has some significant and unique deviations from Level II BASIC. Some for compatibility with the earlier Integer BASIC on the Apple II,
File handling is very unusual and unique, but certainly usable. ProDOS is pretty powerful and a recent fan update makes it very useful for all Apple IIs..
IF THEN is supported but not ELSE. Beagle Brothers did have a utility to patch Applesoft II to support ELSE, but it was at the cost of the cassette routines and you had to set up a disk to load the custom BASIC into the language card. And you would need the patched BASIC to run any code that used ELSE.
The language card was initially a hardware add on to let the Apple II run floating point Applesoft BASIC.
On the II+ it allowed you to run Integer BASIC and from that machine on, several other languages. It's really just an expansion to 64K than overlays ROM with RAM.
This became built in on machines IIe and newer, and you could upgrade to 128K + 80 column mode + double hi-res.
This ended up being used to extend machines to 256K, 512K or even larger.
The 80 column support, RAM expansion, and slots ended up making it an excellent business system, but not really for it's BASIC, where BASIC was the strong point for the TRS-80.
The IIc makes it fairly portable, and the IIc+ makes it the fastest 8 bit from a major manufacturer.
IIe and later machines had special characters for mouse & GUI support.
The IIgs throws in features from the 16 bit world, and if Apple had actually supported it, the II series could have lasted longer than it did.

 

CPC
I've never used the Amstrad, but a quick look at shows a fairly complete Extended BASIC.
It has graphics and sound commands
It also seems to have a fairly complete set of standard BASIC functions.
IF THEN ELSE helps make programs smaller and faster.
The string handling features seem pretty good.
PEEK, POKE, and CALL are supported here as well.
And it has some unique features I haven't seen in other BASICs.
MAX and MIN for example, could prove quite useful, and there are several other new commands.

It also has WHILE WEND looping which only seems to be found on BASICs released after 1982.
One potentially significant omission is PRINT USING, which is very useful for business applications, but I can't say if it's replaced with something else.
It was clearly aimed at the home market with the built in tape and no internal expansion, but it was a good home computer.
The plus versions make for a rather impressive home or game machine... if they had been released in 1986. Amigas had 68030's in 1990.

Edited March 23, 2017 by JamesD

[Keatah]

I'm not going to say any one machine was the best, everyone's needs are different. There are some things to consider.

File handling is very unusual and unique, but certainly usable. ProDOS is pretty powerful and a recent fan update makes it very useful for all Apple IIs..

 

Indeed. What do you think was unusual and unique about the file handling? I found it to be rather straightforward and simple. To me as a kid, it just worked. Coming from cassette and tape systems, this was a godsend. All I had to do was type something and it loaded! No futzing with tapes, no messing with volume controls or finding the program spot via counter..

 

[JamesD]

 

Indeed. What do you think was unusual and unique about the file handling? I found it to be rather straightforward and simple. To me as a kid, it just worked. Coming from cassette and tape systems, this was a godsend. All I had to do was type something and it loaded! No futzing with tapes, no messing with volume controls or finding the program spot via counter..

 

Actually... it's just different. I'll leave it at that rather than argue.

Edited March 23, 2017 by JamesD

[Keatah]

Not on the TRS-80. no.

[elmer]

It's definitely a bit unfair to compare machines from such a wide time-period and price range (partly time, partly customer-base).

 

CPC

...

It was clearly aimed at the home market with the built in tape and no internal expansion, but it was a good home computer.

The CPC, with its 80-column text mode, really came into its own as a "semi-serious small-business contender" in 1985/1986 with the floppy-disc models and the upgrade to 128KB of memory.

 

It was the cheapest CP/M machine that you could buy at the time in the UK, at a time when the IBM PC was still too expensive for anything but larger businesses.

 

 

The plus versions make for a rather impressive home or game machine... if they had been released in 1986.

The plus models were too-little-too-late, and included the failed attempt to turn the CPC into a game console (GX4000).

 

 

Amigas had 68030's in 1990.

And IBM PCs had an 80486 in 1990 ... so?

 

Amiga's didn't actually ship with anything better than an 8MHz 68000 until 1992.

[JamesD]

It's definitely a bit unfair to compare machines from such a wide time-period and price range (partly time, partly customer-base).

 

 

The CPC, with its 80-column text mode, really came into its own as a "semi-serious small-business contender" in 1985/1986 with the floppy-disc models and the upgrade to 128KB of memory.

 

It was the cheapest CP/M machine that you could buy at the time in the UK, at a time when the IBM PC was still too expensive for anything but larger businesses.

 

 

 

The plus models were too-little-too-late, and included the failed attempt to turn the CPC into a game console (GX4000).

 

 

 

And IBM PCs had an 80486 in 1990 ... so?

 

Amiga's didn't actually ship with anything better than an 8MHz 68000 until 1992.

The last update to CP/M was in 1983. It was rapidly being replaced as a go to OS by DOS and then 68K machines.

In the US, CP/M was pretty much on it's last legs by 1985.

The university I went to had dumped the last of their CP/M systems by 1984.

I'm sure plenty of 8 bit machines were still used for mom & pop stuff or small business, but as a % of the market it was fading fast.

I guess the European market was several years behind the US.

 

80 columns gave the CPC had a clear advantage over machines like the Spectrum, and the Oric, but those were designed to be cheap,

By 1986 most popular machines could display 80 columns. Apple IIs had 80 column boards since the 70s, the TRS-80 Model IV had 80 columns, the CoCo 3 had 80 columns, the C64, Atari, and Plus/4 could display 80 columns with graphics. Bankstreet Writer on the Apple II was even graphics.

80 columns was critical in the 70s when nothing had hi-res graphics. Once people figured you could use graphics? Not so much.

The word processor on my CoCo could display 64 columns when you were typing and could display page layout as 80.

I've even written 64/80 column drivers that work on a bunch of machines!

 

So?

So a Z80 is no competition for the 16/32 bit machines.

Maybe the Amiga 500 was only shipping with an 8MHz 68000 in 1990, but In the US, Amiga 2000s had been shipping with 68020 boards for over a year, and 68030 boards had been shipping for months. I had a 33MHz 68030 based A2000 before 1990. The Amiga 3000 shipped in 1990. There were also 14MHz 68000 accelerators for the A500 by 1990.

Where did you get 92? The 1200?

 

 

Did you know the TRS-80 Model IV was originally designed to take the Zilog Z800?

It would have been able to run Model III software, Z80 CP/M, and then newer 16 bit software, probably a Z800 CP/M or TRSDOS.

Tandy had seen the writing on the wall in 1982 when the Model IV was in design, but Zilog didn't release the Z800 and Tandy was stuck with a Z80 machine that was only a little faster..

The Z800 was eventually released as the Z280, in 87, but Tandy had moved on.

The Z800 was supposed to address 16MB RAM using an MMU, it was a pipelined architecture, had a supervisor mode, and it's what the R800 CPU in the MSX Turbo R was supposedly derived from..

That is what this comparison would be against if Zilog hadn't flaked. The other two machines wouldn't have even been close for speed or expandability..

[elmer]

The last update to CP/M was in 1983. It was rapidly being replaced as a go to OS by DOS and then 68K machines.

In the US, CP/M was pretty much on it's last legs by 1985.

The university I went to had dumped the last of their CP/M systems by 1984.

I'm sure plenty of 8 bit machines were still used for mom & pop stuff or small business, but as a % of the market it was fading fast.

The OP started the thread asking about specific features of specific model-ranges of 8-bit-generation machines, and I was trying to answer in the same vein, and to point out that the Amstrad CPC wasn't purely considered a home-machine at the time, and suddenly you're switching the topic to sales figures and the 16/32 bit transition, and a processor that didn't even ship.

 

Errrr ... I'm really confused.

 

I don't need the history lesson, I was around then, too. And yes, there weren't any CP/M machines at my university in 1984, either, as far as I can remember.

 

As darthkur said ... if you're wanting to include the CPC in an 8-bit machine comparision, then the CoCo2 or CoCo3 and Apple IIe would seem to be better machines to compare it to.

 

 

Maybe the Amiga 500 was only shipping with an 8MHz 68000 in 1990, but In the US, Amiga 2000s had been shipping with 68020 boards for over a year, and 68030 boards had been shipping for months. I had a 33MHz 68030 based A2000 before 1990. The Amiga 3000 shipped in 1990. There were also 14MHz 68000 accelerators for the A500 by 1990.

Yes, you're right, I was forgetting about the Amiga 2500 that shipped with a factory-installed 68020 board in 1989, sorry ... I was overlooking the professional range of Amiga systems since the topic seemed to be about different consumer-level machines.

 

So, yes, I was thinking about the Amiga 1200.

[JamesD]

The OP started the thread asking about specific features of specific model-ranges of 8-bit-generation machines, and I was trying to answer in the same vein, and to point out that the Amstrad CPC wasn't purely considered a home-machine at the time, and suddenly you're switching the topic to sales figures and the 16/32 bit transition, and a processor that didn't even ship.

 

I'm saying it's a home machine and business had mostly moved on.

 

*edit*

BTW, in the US, we didn't really classify the 2000, 3000, and 4000 as professional.

Edited March 24, 2017 by JamesD

[Casey]

 

Indeed. What do you think was unusual and unique about the file handling? I found it to be rather straightforward and simple. To me as a kid, it just worked. Coming from cassette and tape systems, this was a godsend. All I had to do was type something and it loaded! No futzing with tapes, no messing with volume controls or finding the program spot via counter..

 

Not to speak for JamesD, but to answer with my own opinion, as a person who has used Applesoft BASIC, Commodore BASIC and TI BASIC...

 

Interactive DOS commands issued in Applesoft BASIC were quite straightforward and obviously superior to tape. Using DOS commands to manipulate files within BASIC were quite different than most other contemporary machines. Most machines' BASICs of the era included file handling commands. Applesoft in ROM did not - DOS patched them in in an unusual manner, looking for a carriage return, then a Ctrl-D and then a DOS command. It isn't harder or easier than other computers' BASICs - it was just different.

 

As an example - to open a sequential file and write 10 records:

 

Commodore BASIC:

10 OPEN 1,8,8,"0:TEXT FILE,S,W"

20 FOR I=1 TO 10:PRINT#1,"RECORD #"+STR$(I):NEXT I

30 CLOSE 1

 

TI BASIC:

10 OPEN #1:"DSK1.TEXTFILE",OUTPUT,INTERNAL,VARIABLE

20 FOR I=1 TO 10

30 PRINT #1:"RECORD #"&STR$(I)

40 NEXT I

50 CLOSE #1

 

Applesoft:

10 D$=CHR$(4)

20 PRINT D$;"OPEN TEXT FILE"

30 PRINT D$;"WRITE TEXT FILE"

40 FOR I=1 TO 10:PRINT "RECORD #"+STR$(I):NEXT I

50 PRINT D$;"CLOSE TEXT FILE"

Edited March 24, 2017 by Casey

[elmer]

I'm saying it's a home machine and business had mostly moved on.

In the USA ... absolutely!

 

In the UK and EU, things like this ...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_PCW

 

... kept CP/M alive in the home and mom-and-pop businesses for a while longer.

 

The CPC 6128 with a green-screen 80-column monitor was something that you'd occasionally see in a mom-and-pop outfit, because they could run their CP/M word-processing and accounting apps on it, and still play games if they were bored.

 

Sure, anyone with a serious business, or serious money was using a PC instead.

 

What's surprising to me, is the OP even asking about the Amstrad CPC in the same question as one of the Tandy or Apple 8-bit machines.

 

Different times ... different places.

 

AFAIK, the CPC computers were pretty-much-unknown and entirely-unwanted in the markets where the Tandy and Apple machines thrived.

 

Living in the UK at the time, I always wanted a CoCo3 with OS/9 ... but could never justify the price.

 

Then the 16/32 bit era machines became affordable, and the CoCo3 just seemed out-of-date.

 

Different countries ... different worlds.

[JamesD]

TRSDOS had random access files where you could GET or PUT records by #, and you could set up FIELDs in the record buffer so they are loaded into variables.
LSET and RSET placed data in the fields in the buffer, either left set and padded with blanks on the right, or right set with blanks on the left.

You could keep an index into the file in an array, then just GET records based on a key in array. Then write out your index to a separate file when you are done.
Then to sort your data, you just sort your index in RAM and records don't have to move.

There were formatting commands for converting different numeric types to strings and vice versa (MKI$, ???)
Then there were CVD, CVI, CVS... Convert to double, int... ????
It's been a long time.

Sequential file access is very similar to the other machines.

[JamesD]

In the USA ... absolutely!

 

In the UK and EU, things like this ...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_PCW

..

The PCW supposedly came to the the US, but I never saw any. I've never even seen a US version on ebay.

Honestly, that was enough power for a word processor and a lot of other things for most people.

 

[JamesD]

Sequential on TRSDOS

10 OPEN "O",1,"FILE/TXT"

20 FOR I%=1 TO 10:PRINT#1,"RECORD #"+STR$(I%):NEXT I%

30 CLOSE 1

[youki]

I have programmed on the 3 machines.

 

In term of Basic, the Locomotive Basic of the CPC is IMHO the best one. It is a really really good basic . Comparable with Microsoft Basic / GWBasic on IBM PC in term of power.

 

And the 80 column mode of the CPC is really great.

 

In term of games , the CPC could seem weak. Because he got mainly lazy spectrum port. But if the machine is well exploited you reach very good result. For instance :

 

 

 

 

 

In term of Music , it is like an Atari ST.

 

 

But despite all his quality , i have to admit , i still prefer the APPLE 2 . (my favorite 8bits being the C64 ).

 

the Apple 2 has a 6502 which i prefer. I love the casing . And the number of extension for that machine is incredible.

 

And despite limitation of the machine, there are tons of very excellent games.

 

The TRS 80 , first one, is a very good machine for its time , but does not compare to the 2 others i think.

[JamesD]

I tried looking up the file I/O features of the CPC and couldn't find any good examples.
But PRINT USING may be supported in CPC Locomotive BASIC.
I didn't see it on the first reference page I looked at, but it appeared on another page.
I'm just not sure if it's in all versions.

Edited March 25, 2017 by JamesD