oky2000

Come down, emkay. SID can also play clean analog waves, and on top of that it offers lowpass, bandpass and highpass filters. It can generate four basic waveforms instead of the simple digital output of POKEY. It lacks a fourth voice, but except that, it's a pretty damn good design. Oh yeah, I own two 800XLs and no C64, ever. You should try to broaden your perspective a bit - try to look at this from the engineering perspective. I don't say that you can run some advanced hackery on the POKEY, but the chip wasn't engineered to do that. It was engineered as a simple chip to generate game sounds and music, and not to generate complicated analog waveforms or play resp. immitate instruments. Yeah, you can sample every musical score at 4 bits resolution and play that using most of the CPU time on POKEY, but that is not the point. The point is what the chip was designed to do, and it was designed as something considerably simpler than SID. So long, Thomas As far as a computer connected to a TV there is no issue with the C64 sound wave output. However I know for a fact you can NOT recreate an electric guitar sound (the most difficult sound to reproduce without samples) on the Pokey but you can on the SID. You may get some 'noise' from the actual motherboard BUT that's a bit rich to mention when some A8 models can't even display a clean picture on the TV screen As for the extra channel comment later (can't be bothered to double edit emkays posts any more) the simple fact is having speech/sample sound AND 3 SID channels AND running a 50fps game is not a problem. Mega-Apocalypse is a classic example where obviously it does NOT use excessive CPU time at all. So having sampled drum tracks in tunes like Arkanoid is not an issue and anyway it's no different to using DLIs on the A8 to get more colours on screen. Feature of the machine sorry, try again emkay Sure the speech is nice on Berzerk but everything stops while the sample is played Oh and EVERY soundchip has some ADSR control the pokey has nowhere near the same level of control over individual attack/decay/sustain/release. Cumulative Ring mod and sync AND pulsed phased waveforms together. SOUND CAPABILITY: Three Tone Oscillators (0 - 4 kHz Range) / Four Waveforms per Oscillator (Triangle, Sawtooth, Variable Pulse & Noise) / Three Amplitude Modulators (48 dB Range) / Three Envelope Generators (Attack Rate: 2 ms - 8 s, Decay Rate: 6 ms - 24 s, Sustain Level: 0 - Peak Volume, Release Rate: 6 ms - 24 s) / Oscillator Synchronization / Ring Modulation / Programmable Filter (Cutoff Range 30 Hz - 12 kHz, 12 dB Octave Rolloff, Low Pass, Band Pass, High Pass, Notch Outputs, Variable Resonance) / External Audio Input emkay you are looking REALLY stupid with your Pokey is technically better than SID bullshit really. We get this all the time, you are the only idiot in the world still trying to push this lie on your fanboy posse dude. Enough already the whole world WITH A BRAIN knows the SID is one level above Pokey AND AY soundchips simple facts.

yeah but in most cases, and if you use common sense, people prefer "stuff" which is better. it's an academic refute. dont applies to real world in most cases. I strongly disagree. the 8 bit freq places very heavy restrictions on the melodies/apreggios, no slides possible, a lot of tones will be mistuned, etc. (you have 2 channels 16 bit freq, or 3 chanel 1 16 bit, 2 8 bit, or 4 channel 8 bit.. ugh) http://plopbox.net/ filter to YM tunes, and check out the ones made by scavenger.... (oh no pokey listed on this site... hmm.. ) Couldn't disagree more, I would rather listen to an album by Tangerine Dream than the latest rubbish clogging up the top 40 charts because people buy crap like the Spice Girls and Nsync and make those idiots rich because most people are idiots. Same with cars...the Toyota Corolla is the worlds best selling car...it's a total piece of crap only good for my dog to pop on its tyres if you ask me...my car sells nothing like that but I can lose my licence instantly with it You are confusing the happy situation of commercial success and technical excellence that the C64 enjoyed with the real world wolfram I know what the SID can do, and the Yamaha chips though but thanks for the link. No two people have the same favourite chip tunes anyway, but I have no problem with that at all dude. My favourite SID tunes of all time are on a demo game (not in the full release) which you can watch here on Sure not everyone will like it but that's music for you eh

You are right, but the samples are not representative. It's not just me who has evidence this a cheaper (lower quality) machine. I also had some PETs and they never stopped working and that stuff was heavy duty and prior to C64. You have to buy some hardware to protect your 6526 (CIA) chips: http://www.oldsoftware.com/6526.html You can see some parts yourself-- open up the machine and there's the aluminum foil shielding, some white "glue" on some of the chips, etc. Heck, I can even repair the "Out of Memory" error on this particular C64 machine as most of the chips are non-socketed. OKOK, I had only problem with your reasoning: 1. You told your observations 2. You conclude that C64 is crap (I mean low quality) 3. You told that your conclusion is based on unbiased observation Okay, that word should be "can't" not "can". I can't even repair 'Out of Memory' error due to non-socketed chips (too much soldering/desoldering). My conclusion is based on the 4 C64 machines I have (none work currently). Yeah, I can't experience all the C64s on the planet but have to rely on reports from others. If it was a logically proveable point, I wouldn't have to rely on other people's reports. Don't worry, your conclusion is correct, I was and am a retailer and sold Atari and Commodore throughout the period. Distibutors would fly me in to CES each year. Until the 64C all the other units were crap with cheap parts and a high failure rates. For those of you who might have gotten lucky, I can tell you having had to do the weekly RMA/Returns on them, they were awful! Not Xbox360 awful but for the time very bad. If you want to have 10 units to sell in a week you had better order 17 to 18 as that was what the failure rate was during the warranty period, over half of that was bad out of the box. Keyboards, power supplies, bad video, smoking when turned on. That is not to say Atari pre Tramiel did not have failures but when we sold 300 units per month(we had retail and mail order) of 800xl(800 before that) we might have 4-6 and most of those were loose socketed chips. 800xl had a little higher rate than the 800 but still very low. We were selling maybe 40-60 c64's per month in 83 and early 84 so that was nearly 100 units ordered to get 60 units to stay out the door. Vic disk drives were terrible too, not as bad as the machine but 4 times the rate of an 810 or 1050.C64 problems continued though improved somewhat in mid to late 85. After Jack Tramiel introduced the XE machine failure rates went up. (Keyboards,some video issues) but never as high as the old c64 days. To be fair the 64C was a much better machine, low failure rates, usually only the power brick but if it went usually so did the machine. It was nicely made but also too little to late as Amiga and St were coming. Everyone wanted to dump their 8-bit. We accepted trades and C64/C128 people as well as Atari people dumped like crazy and software sales dropped through the floor on both machines,late 1985 all through 86. So how comes then I own THREE fully working Commodore 64 machines from 1981 with the original motherboard/keyboard/6510/VIC-II/SID all labelled 1981 and serial numbers between 10,000 and 22,000? They could not have been repaired as all the chips are date stamped for the same year as the motherboard on them all. Actually I have 23 commodore 64 machines here (I sell them) and all the ones that I bought as working never had a problem nor did any others I have sold. I wish the STs I bought were as reliable or the 800s (XL/XE is ok so far) as they always get funny weird faults too. But I put that down to luck except for the STs loose TOS roms problem which is a bad design. So unless someone wants to show me OFFICIAL statistical sample results for a minimum of 10,000 units on returns in warranty period I call bullshit on ANY reliability claims anyone here wants to throw in the thread from now. Lets keep the facts HIGH and the emotions low thanks (PS The aluminium shielding as you put it is either cardboard for RF frequency reduction which is a requirement by US law. Or the heatsink for the VIC-II which runs at 18mhz so no suprise there then!)

Well, thank you, and it takes one to know one....unskilled that is, and we established that you are quite some posts back already. "takes one to know one" is kinda cheap. Like a C64 perhaps? They seem to thrive on 'cheap'. Obviously a troll who doesn't read anything other than fanboy Atari posts and skips the rest. The C64 may have been $599 not $799 and the reason why is...dun dun dahhhh....Commodore OWNED MOS Technologies, MOS employees designed the VIC-II and SID for FREE, and produced the chips at COST PRICE for Commodore. The real price of producing the C64 for any other company would have been double the price. These are facts...please pay attention or you will just get ignored for ignorant trolling thanks The reason why Jack Tramiel was the ONLY businessman in the world to ever screw Bill Gates over in business (he didn't pay Microsoft any royalties until the Commodore 128 version of Basic) is because he is clever, and because he was so damned clever in business he bought MOS Technologies with Irvine Gould's money so he would never get screwed over again by a 3rd party chip manufacturer after Texas Instruments screwed him on calculator chips. He did to everyone else with the C64 hardware and MOS ownership what Texas Instruments did to him with calculator chips. What is cheap without a doubt is the horrible spongey 65XE/130XE keyboards (800 and 800XL had great keyboards)...now that was a cheap and nasty machine to type on for sure compared to the C64 frenchman...feel free to try and hurt my feelings with dumb nonfactual off topic insults about that though man LOL

GOD /o\. its not about music, its about the SID, which was (IS!) CAPABLE of making popular music. pokey is not. He stated that the reasons you gave were not suitable and for that I agreed with him man. I didn't get upset when Ariston used the Gameboy version of the Robocop soundtrack and NOT the C64 version, the Gameboy has a pretty iffy soundchip...the Spectrum and Amstrad version of the Robocop tune is pretty close. Pokey is better than the AY chip in the Spectrum and Amstrad really so there you have it. Warhawk by Hubbard on the A8 is pretty good tune I think, better than most Yamaha AY chiptunes and yet there are still great tunes on the ST (which uses a similar chip) like Xenon 1 soundtrack by David Whittaker. I even remixed that tune using the AY sounds myself and to me it sounds better than the SID version but that has nothing to do with the fact the SID is better than the ST AY styel Yamaha chip. All I'm saying is quantity is not quality as Marius1976 said, but I also said for technical reasons the SID is one of the best analogue synth chips ever made. As anyone with an interest in professional music equipment will know Bob Yannes designed the SID in a couple of months, even he says in interviews he could have made it even more sophisticated BUT Commodore refused to let him complicate the design even more as they needed it FAST and the yields needed to be reliably high in production. Jack Tramiel wanted the C64 out there before the competitors copied the VIC20. Bob Yannes designed the soundchips for the very famous and very capable Ensoniq synthesizers, and his genius shows in the SID.

And it doesn't come close to tieing. As you agreed before, marketing is a field by itself nothing to do with inferior/superior technology. The fact is C64 selling more means worse for the people in general since they are saturating the marketing with an inferior product and thus gave people less of a chance to get the best computing had to offer. Calling the c64 an 'inferior product' while labelling the Atari 'the best computing had to offer' is a pretty steep claim. (Just to be clear, you are talking about the Atari, right?). Perhaps you'll tell me you have proved this many times over in this thread? And while you might argue that "marketing is a field by itself nothing to do with inferior/superior technology", when it comes to marketing technological products, you can bet the various technological strengths of those products are on the table to some degree at least - maybe they'll be distorted by the marketing, maybe many details will go over the consumers' heads, but the consumers are sure to have some interest in what they're getting for the money, and the marketers won't ignore that. In my case, I was all set to get a vic-20 (thanks to some guy at school trying to sell me his one) until I read some guff about the c64's 'arcade-like' sprites. Mind you, I'd agree that the Atari doesn't come in a tie with the c64. It's good to see that we can agree on some things. (Warning: This is a light-hearted joke!) As long as you don't resort to name calling and take back all your name calling, I'll reply to my factual claim: "The fact is C64 selling more means worse for the people in general since they are saturating the marketing with an inferior product and thus gave people less of a chance to get the best computing had to offer." Interesting, trying to sneak in a fake win just by writing your machine is superior in the sentence. lol that's classic seriously. Inferior in what way? This thread is far from over.. In 1982...less memory, slower unmodifiable tape loaders, less sophisticate soundchip, less sophisticated sprites. ... Atarian already answered your point regarding engineering quality. It's not a fake win; I also answered you several times but you never replied (or saw the replies). I did say the same earlier in the thread that Atari is overall superior hardware after doing many hardware comparisons (pages 1..114). I don't mind repeating, but you have not shown me that we are having a two-way conversation. If I take a week off and the thread topic grows by 40 pages I don't read every single thing no true. A8s have a less sophisticated soundchip (please don't make fools out of yourselves on this one, just read the technical specs for both chips and accept it once and for all) 64k games that take 30 minutes to load from tape is not superior hardware in any way either. The player missile arrangement is an older technology and bigger compromise than sprites again simple plain facts. I am not claiming either machine is 100% superior in every possible aspect but that post AND the fact that not one single piece of code running on a stock A8 that is AS GOOD as my Enforcer II level 2 game video proves as a games machine it is hardly superior by any margin. let me put it this way before the flame wars continue (and for those who missed me saying this 80 pages ago!) The C64 can not run Rescue on Fractalus as fast as an 800XL because we don't have a screen resolution lower than 160x200x4c and we don't have a CPU faster than 1mhz. I already admitted this, that game is a fine showcase for the A8 simple as that, no denial, no fanboy theoretical machine code/assembler listings. But at the same time the A8 will never play an electric guitar sound without resorting to sample playback (which on Ghostbusters is nearly identical and excellent quality on both) OR so accurately recreate the instrumental soundtrack of the movie Rambo as closely as the SID does in the C64 game of the same name. And finally I am very skeptical that the A8 can do anything like enforcer II level 2 demo I posted a youtube video link to 95 pages ago, and ever since doing so this descended into a flame war and very little impressive game videos being linked in response. I own an 800, 800XL, 130XE and 65XE...why would I want them to be rubbish? As I have said many many times I own ALL 8bit machines ever made available in europe, I have them here I have 1000s of games all over the house for them all. So why in gods name would I want the machine to be rubbish? I'm open minded when looking at Atari stuff, and try as best I can to stick to facts BUT I expect the same sort of response in return, and if I don't get it then quite rightly I will assume fanboyism AND ignorance. If you could ALL JUST GET ALONG and actually say "yes that's a great piece of coding on [commodore/atari] it is incredible what can be done with talented programming!" instead of posting non factual rants at each other. Sure it is an Atari forum BUT if I was stupid I would have got a Mac and NOT an ST in 1986, I don't blindly follow any machine at all I stick to the software or technical specifications as much as possible and regardless of price the ST was a whole lot better than the Mac even GEM vs Mac OS so if I was a real Commodore fanboy I would never have got an ST at all and been happy with just a C64 and Amiga and got a Mac instead of an ST for work and left it at that. Peace out people, take a deep breath and look at the whole picture. It's not a war, but you can't expect us to be factual and fair if we don't ALL act the same way.

That people doing stuff like that, does not mean SID is better. *DEEP SIGH* If 1 million people say something stupid, it STILL is stupid. Do you get that? If millions of people follow a certain leader, does this mean that this leader is good? History has proven the opposit. You are using false arguments, to prove you are right. Please stop doing that. Thanks. oh so there's a lot of dumb people on the c64 side because they go to dedicated SID parties to celebrate SID music. the orchestras playing SID music are dumb aswell. the people using SID as an instrument on its own (various SID midiboxes!) are dumb aswell. the commercial people using SID music in their works are dumb aswell. the SID fan bands playing SID music live are dumb aswell. People remixing SID music are dumb aswell. and the a8 people are dumb aswell because the pokey is better still they dont do none of these. something they just hold them pack. some misterious force. and let me just ask you, do you listen to pokey music for entertainment? I do. not so often these days, but some years earlier lke every day I put in sid music for hours. that period lasted like 10 years in my life. I actually agree with you there Marius1976. What wolfram posted has nothing to do with the quality of the sound chip at all. However Martin Galway producing both an almost perfect reproduction of an electric guitar without using samples just stock SID waveforms is 1. A very very close rendition of the Rambo movie soundtrack in the C64 game again using no samples just the SID waveforms/effects built in is 2. And the trancey/trippy/electronica type tune in both Miami Vice another so 3. Also after listening to Ghostbusters on both A8 and C64 using real hardware today I noticed that the sampled speech on the C64 is ever so slightly better so the claim that pokey does better samples is not really accepted, at best they are the same (the SID 8580 is another matter!). And the samples on Tempest Extreme are really horrible and scratchy on the A8. That doesn't make the Pokey a bad soundchip though, there are worse ones I can think of. I think wolfram gets too excited sometimes and takes an extra unrelated step in his excitement that's all. The most popular music is not always the best, look at all the Bruce Springstien crap we had to listen to in the 90s haha but there is just far too many facts technically speaking (ADSR,frequency range,variable filtering,and cummulative synchronistation and ring modulation) that do point to the better piece of silicon....the fact that 4 or 5 really talented musicians worked on the SID is just a nice coincidence.

Better than no A8 game showing the "power" of the A8 chipset. I presume emkay is talking about Metal Dust on SCPU and I have already posted a superior game video running on a stock C64 that is impossible to reproduce on the A8, despite his protests there is still a complete lack of video examples from emkay to prove otherwise even from a demo so I wouldn't worry about his trolling too much dude. It's just pro-fanboy trolling as usual from emkay (Metal Dust mostly uses the SCPU for streaming sampled music tracks whilst playing the game, it's not really an impressive game at all compared to Enforcer II which doesn't even need extra ram or a 16/32bit CPU upgrade)

I see your scanline migraine inducing jerky slow scroller and raise you Alleykat is full screen (less the usual border expansion to allow for rows of graphics at the top between pixel scrolls) runs super smooth (yes I know youtube can't do 50/60fps videos so tough but any C64 owner will back me up) and incredibly fast all with multicolour. So your dumb comments about reduced screens is a bit lost now. Don't know why I didn't think of this game before....mostly because I don't play vertical scrollers usually. Really emkay that video you posted looks nothing like a 1986 arcade game played on MAME like you inferred could be done on the A8. and you wonder why we don't believe your posts. It looks horrible, is jerky as hell and the colours are an amazing shade of grey it's not much better than VIC20 games really and moan and bitch about the other games I posted as much as you like but Terracresta and Slapfight are both better than any other A8 vertical scroller I have seen so far dude.

I need two keyboards, both mine are dead Might check ebay.de seeing as I can pop the key caps of another keyboard And enjoy to the original poster, the Mega ST is a lovely machine, which is why I have 2 of them The keyboards are especially nice to type on too, and they look so damned sweet and stylish too.

The Atarisoft conversions (on both machines) are pretty pathetic, the '87 version is a UK production from Ocean licenced from Nintendo and is the closest to the arcade. If you are saying the output of a man who didn't even like Donkey Kong let alone play it enough to replicate it is 'perfect' then what you like is NOT Donkey Kong at all but some bastardisation. Forgive me (and the rest of the world with a brain) for laughing at more of your pathetic ramblings to suggest that that person at Atarisoft is MORE of a game designing genius than Shigero Miyamoto The animation and gameplay is laughable, there is no fluidity to the character movements, it's like a computer listing you type in from a magazine pretendin to be Donkey Kong (on both machines). The most accurate conversion of Donkey Kong on 8bits is on the Coco 3 or Amstrad/C64 version released in 87 by Ocean UK. If you don't like those versions it's not actually Donkey Kong you like my little man LOL this is pure comedy gold.

I'm not going to code anything But, really, all those vertical shooters look odd! So we're stuck with the inferior A8 Turrican engine damn And I suggest you see a doctor if they look odd too, they certainly look a lot more like arcade games than Screaming Wings did on the A8 haha. To be honest I was half expecting you to make an effort and mention Warhawk, which is similar on both really...ho hum better not distract you any more from theorising some more Amiga/MAME levels of vertical scrolling shmup game development you will never be implementing hey.

And it doesn't come close to tieing. As you agreed before, marketing is a field by itself nothing to do with inferior/superior technology. The fact is C64 selling more means worse for the people in general since they are saturating the marketing with an inferior product and thus gave people less of a chance to get the best computing had to offer. Calling the c64 an 'inferior product' while labelling the Atari 'the best computing had to offer' is a pretty steep claim. (Just to be clear, you are talking about the Atari, right?). Perhaps you'll tell me you have proved this many times over in this thread? And while you might argue that "marketing is a field by itself nothing to do with inferior/superior technology", when it comes to marketing technological products, you can bet the various technological strengths of those products are on the table to some degree at least - maybe they'll be distorted by the marketing, maybe many details will go over the consumers' heads, but the consumers are sure to have some interest in what they're getting for the money, and the marketers won't ignore that. In my case, I was all set to get a vic-20 (thanks to some guy at school trying to sell me his one) until I read some guff about the c64's 'arcade-like' sprites. Mind you, I'd agree that the Atari doesn't come in a tie with the c64. It's good to see that we can agree on some things. (Warning: This is a light-hearted joke!) As long as you don't resort to name calling and take back all your name calling, I'll reply to my factual claim: "The fact is C64 selling more means worse for the people in general since they are saturating the marketing with an inferior product and thus gave people less of a chance to get the best computing had to offer." Interesting, trying to sneak in a fake win just by writing your machine is superior in the sentence. lol that's classic seriously. Inferior in what way? This thread is far from over.. In 1982...less memory, slower unmodifiable tape loaders, less sophisticate soundchip, less sophisticated sprites. It's far from proven with a few comments about theoretically using x y z combination of features to do some kind of graphics sound routine. As we have still not got a single piece of coding that looks as impressive as my Enforcer II level 2 youtube video OR a demonstration of a rendition of the most difficult sound for any sound chip to replicate (electric guitar) without going out of tune or using samples I can't really let that dumb ass comment slip by sorry

Concerning "cycles" it doesn't matter if you scroll vertical or horizontal. I think horizontal shooters were more common because of R-Type spawning a lot of similar games. There must be some handycap in vertical scrolling on the C64. Even in Turrican, you see less "graphics" where the screen has to scroll up and down. But in pure horizontal levels, C64 seems like a "winning" machine. Hm... Thinking about the fact that a re-using of sprites vertically is not possible, and that horizontal sprites re-using cost CPU power by DMA cycle stealing... this might go the way... On the A8 it takes one command, to scroll the whole screen content up or down. After DLIs were set to multiplex Players and Missiles, it acts itself on the following scanlines. No further software control is needed. Heck. Thinking about a v-scroller . 240 lines high and 32 bytes wide, with full PM multiplexing... good lord. This would look like a "MAME" Arcade emulated game, at full vbi speed(50/60 fps) Erm well apart from the VSP scrolling bug which moves the entire screen also just like a Sega console using VIC-II Youtube videos of the following games.... SWIV Tiger Mission Not to mention 8 way scrolling games like Z by Rhinosoft, and of course Commando which is fast and smooth (and the DSE crack has the extra levels from the arcade added which removes the only advantage the A8 version had) When you writing a new Turrican engine btw emkay?

Can you PLEASE stop saying this? It's NOT a 16 color bitmap mode no matter what you say or think. It's a tile based system. It's not the same. can you please correct me in what I've really stated, and not correcting me in something I havent stated ? "A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man I think he misread your post. There is a difference between the "c64 could display 16color off the shelf" and "c64 CAN display 16color off the shelf" (which is not true, otherwise we could say that the Atari can display 256 color off the shelf too ) c64 can display all of its colors without having to help with the cpu. its a very hard fact. a8 is not able to do more than 5 at 160x200, and having to use 80x200 brick resolution to display 16 different color... which are still limited by hue/chrome. c64 charmode without cpu help: it just looks better. c64 gfx modes doesnt need cpu help to make up for the a8, its vice versa. that tells a thing or two about the gfx HW. That's a point of view,.... other point of view I can said is: - C64 waste a lot of more CPU when do scrolling on this game - C64 reduce his colors to 9 when mixing hi-res and med-res in this game Instead Atari have: 14 colors 16 colors 14 color - Have more cpu for triple parallax scrolling effect - Have more color even to simulate transparency effects - Real solid colors, not textures to give the appearance of more colors And if there is in Crownland something you don't like, maybe it could fixedx if you had been on the team development. But that wasn't happen. Actually I do like Crownland, think it's a good Mario type game. The graphics are nice too (only video on youtube has no sound so dunno about sound) It's not tripple parallax though, it is a forground and a background layer only, the background layer has variable speed scrolling below the cloud layer but there is no overlaid graphics in the background layer between the tree tops and clouds. Mayhem is incredibly fast more like Sonic the Hedgehog and it does have dual parallax layers in places. Both are colourful, does it really matter how? I could equally say the 'sprites' on crownland are a bit too small just as easily mind. But nope, I like Crownland looks ok, will have to hunt this down for a little bit of a session. That was the whole point of this, find me nice games! More please As for three layer parallax, Beyond Forbidden Forest has three overlaid playfields in parallax and characters moving between all three parallax scrolling overlaid layers...now that was damned impressive for 1986 for a machine with no parallax or dual playfield support. Beyond FF Youtube As for non overlaid parallax Nebulus has a really nice bonus stage with about 10 levels of multiscroll speed parallax (non overlaid, raster type split horizontally)

I sure didn't read it that way. The implied point at hand was that pixel perfect, condition perfect collision isn't a trump all feature. Truth is, the bounding box is used all over the place, largely because many machines don't have the collision bits with the precision the Atari does. Clearly, this is a Jay Miner thing. ... Most applications that I deal with and many atari games require pixel-perfect collision detection. If I have a GUI with circular buttons, I want the buttons to be selected when user clicks on any part of the circle or inside the circle. Bounding box won't cut it (it will be inferior). Pixel-perfect detection is better off in hardware as that algorithm is more complex to implement in software than bounding box. I gave example of Popeye game and also about the having missiles going under someone's arms and through one's legs. Yes, there are applications which can get away with bounding boxes or need them unless you combine multiple sprites. >Honestly, I believe the intent you see and tried to frame up exists within you only. Barnacle didn't demonstrate it in a meaningful way. As I stated, you weren't suppose to read it that way; in order for Chewbacca defense to succeed jury has to get confused (at least for the time being). I already proved it. Perhaps, you did not follow all his posts with me. Calling a spade a spade is all it is-- no framing. It's not worth discussing negativity, name calling, cursing, chewbacca defense, etc. Here's picture of GUI I tried to implement -- this is a PC version snapshot showing circuler buttons: Writing GUIs is great. I think I was 13 or something when the ST and Mac were new and there was no way I was going to get an ST for the price so I sat down with a copy of something called Laser Basic (excellent product by the way) and wrote my own W.I.M.P. front end. It was pretty much a rip-off of the Mac but had a lovely blue tint to it (light blue and black hires work screen). Managed to get as far as opening windows on a desktop and viewing disk contents but no way to actually run the m/c programs. I was really impressed with what you could do on some extended basics at the time. Made me appreciate my ST I bought a year later a lot more after trying to write my own system. Oh and a GUI without a mouse is rubbish Kids are lucky these days, if they do anything like this in their childhood they can just upload it to a free webspace/online harddrive system and never lose it!

I do have a complete unit boxed with polys etc but the shipping will be a nightmare from my country! (Also ditto for Coleco console and many many games)

I have one available if anyone is interested in a working 1050 and complete with PSU and SIO cable etc.

I'm pretty sure I have this, will check to make sure it is complete and let you know

You can get things like Magic Workbench to make 3.1 look a lot more like 3.9 really. Anything before OS4 on the Amiga isn't much more than a collection of add-ons and patches. And OS4...nice as it is...the hardware to run it properly is so rare you have more chance of getting a full working Next Computer colour setup in this lifetime

True, one mouse button is just the kind of crazy idea Apple would come up with I have an Apple mouse from an Intel Mac and it is some stupid design where you press the whole body of the mouse to do a click as there is no mouse button at all, absolutely useless and perfect example of style over function.

If the controllers work *for sure* offer him $40 and settle for no more than $50 and he better have a game to test it out with or even better throw in for free. My thoughts exactly pricewise Working controllers are better than paying less for 'untested' AKA borked controllers on ebay for less surely?

the CPU was only locked to 1 MHz if you used the 40 column display, and it only needed to be locked during 200 scan lines. I normally used my 128 in 80 column mode, so it predominately ran at 2 MHz. However, for the few times I used the 40 column mode, I had written a raster interrupt that would turn on 2 MHz outside of those 200 scan lines. That resulting in an average speed of 1.24 MHz. The 2 MHz raster trick also works while running in 64 mode. 64 mode's ability to turn on 2 MHz is why a 64 few programs don't work correctly on 128s - they'd accidently enable 2 MHz, resulting in a garbled display. I agree it would have been nice if they'd updated the VIC chip to support 2 MHz and a larger palette. The 64's Color RAM was NYBBLEs not BYTES, so it should have been possible to do something there for 256 colors. In other words, it's not a co-processor - all kidding aside, that would have been neat though I recall reading about bus conflicts when they tried to do that. When running CP/M on the 128, the Z80 does hand off some work to the 8502 - but it has to shut itself off during the duration. I think they should have put 2 SIDs in there, for stereo sound. RGB-I is CGA, IBMs first color standard for the PC. Hardly exotic. The monitor I had for my 128 was actually a TV/CGA monitor. After buying my 128, I asked my folks for a new monitor for Xmas, my folks found that and thought it would be better since I'd be moving away from home soon. It's a shame they didn't at least pipe the VDC through the composite out, the ST had 640x200 output on the RF/Composite/RGB-A so it just makes it 1 less usable bit of firmware for games coding and given 2mhz is only available when using VDC it's a real waste. It was so full of components and yet so isolated into 3 different machines with so much locked out. I thought it was a terrible design but then the designers of the C64 had pretty much left (Bob Yannes, Shiraj Shivji etc). If it weren't for the Amiga chipset Jack Tramiel would have crucified them as the C128 was touted as the original answer to the ST in all the PCW and Byte magazine previews. The 128 had a lot of potential if only they had a design that accommodated VIC-2 Sprites & scrolling + 64k VDC bitmaps + 2mhz 8502 + Z80 2nd CPU all working together and outputting to a 40 column standard display not te expensive RGB-I, hell even an RGB analogue would have been useful. The Z80 could have been dedicated to controlling the SID (just like a Z80 is dedicated to controlling the PCM sound on the Sega Genesis/Megadrive) to get better sound especially samples. I have seen demo code that gives 2 or 3 sample channels if you fry the SID by hammering it with the 6510 @ 1mhz and nothing else, then again the SID does lock up for 5-10 minutes randomly if you do so maybe not. But this is how the Super CPU plays back samples with the SID during the game Metal Dust, brute force from the 65816 CPU hammering it and streaming from its megabytes of ram. Lovely machine to use in build quality though especially the 128D in plastic, but I just never felt it realised the potential of the sum of all its parts...and so was too expensive for what it was (same price as an A500 in the end before it was canned) Certainly not the elegant genius that was the C64 design. For me it was a disappointment.

That's not completely accurate. All "traditional" analog TV and CRTs can display both interlaced and non-interlaced signals. Actually they don't care, neither they really know (except some modern TVs) if the signal is interlaced or not. You are correct that the full resolution can't be realized without interlacing (that's why you otherwise need a modern progressive display). But they are more than happy to display a non-interlaced signal as long as the vertical resolution is halved. Which is exactly what classic computers and consoles do. As Barnacle Boy is saying, it is not that the two fields are identical. It is that only one single field is displayed at twice the normal interlaced field-rate. Or if you prefer, you can say that both fields are displayed at the same position. In other words, only odd (or only even) scan lines are displayed. And then, you can indeed change the display and make animations at the full refresh rate (50/60 Hz). Btw, I understand that the C64 (or is the C128 only?) can "now" produce a true interlaced signal, by using tricks somewhat similar to Rybags method. When I mention interlace in those posts I am merely talking about from the PAL TVs low level hardware point of view, not interlace as in the device producing the image like say an Atari or Commodore machine Whatever happens the electron gun on the CRT has no choice in PAL but to re-display each alternate line of [let's call them] hires vertical lines regardless of the resolution of the input signal (be it 256 or 512 lines down etc) every 50th of a second. So if you are on a 320h x 200 or 256v screen on the computer the phosphor dots on the alternating lines are activated with the same 'image' if you like on both fields each 50th of a second, as the pixels on the computer cross over the full PAL resolution. As opposed to when an Amiga in 320x512 or 640x512 mode is outputting it's genuine interlace signal in sympathy with the alternating scanning of the electron beam on odd/even scan lines 50x a second say so then you have truly unique information processed on each sweep of the electron gun. Whichever way you think of it though the TV itself is always displaying an interlaced image for you to look at whether the connected device is sending an image at 160x100 from an A8 or 1280x576 from an AGA Amiga. Get's confusing when you mention the word interlace but I was merely talking about the CRT tube on the TV itself As I understand the problem (from Rybags investigations?) is to get the TV to recognise you are sending an interlace feed to it to process you must create an odd number of vertical resolution? so 320x201 etc? Not sure but someone did say the C64 can't do that specifically but that's not to say you can't swap what is being displayed ever 50th of a second? I think I had a mono emulator for the ST that simulated the Amigas interlaced 640x400 mode using brute force to dosomething like that (and yes it flickered as badly as the Amiga does in 2bit black and white interlace on a normal CRT screen)

Oooh a whole raft of quotes with attitude and all of them make you look like a complete idiot..classic. I shall proceed to answer you even though your IQ of 3 is not worth the effort just to shut your useless mouth up which probably has skidmarks on it due to you talking complete crap the whole way through How many memory banks and of what size? What software is it good for? I guess if you could get good RAMdisk software going and maybe serve some web pages (since that's all the rage these days with C64 according to another Commie). More importantly, you could then put that 2400 baud (300cps) 1541 out to pasture, as long as you have a good battery backup. 32 bit CPU upgrades.? Sure! Why aren't you on the Amiga forums trying to get them to "upgrade" to C64. It's called the Super CPU and it uses a similar technology which the Apple IIGS and Super Nintendo uses, ie it is a 32/16bit version of the 6502 called the 65C816. The memory is in a single bank you twat as it is not an 8bit CPU. The 16mb is addressed by the SCPU hardware upgrade in the same way as 32bit RAM is accessed only on an Amiga 020/030/040/060 accelerator and has nothing to do with the 16bit FAST/CHIP ram on the mainboard..oh dear. It is used for any software written/patched for it. There is a couple of games, some patches for 3D games blah blah but most importantly can be used with GEOS the GEM like OS on the C64 and the extra memory utilized properly. The C64 webserver is an unmodified mk1 bullnose C64 as sold in 1982. google some stuff next time before making yourself look a fool perhaps? As for your stupid comments on 'upgrading' to a C64 well if you haven't got anything factual or intelligent to say why don't you keep it shut and atleast give the temporary impression you have any kind of intelligence? A8 has dual Pokey, but I hardly see the point. Could get a 25 year old Casio keyboard for $10 that sounds better, and then you'd actually HAVE a real synth if it gets you off. The point was a response to one stating you can have TWO Pokeys on one A8 and inferred you can only have ONE SID chip you numbnutz. Oh and exactly what early 80s Casio can produce a perfect reproduction of an electric guitar sound (and in stereo for dual SID setups) hmmm or all the quirky instruments that famous trance/techno/electronica and trip-hop bands want? Yeah thought so, more crap from that skidmarked [a-hole of a] mouth on your face You might no absolutely f-all about music but I have actually been involved with people like the Prodigy on technical projects in my past work. Whoaaa.... 16 megs a paragraph ago, now 512 megs. Isn't it a GAZILLION GAZILLION megs? No you twat, the 512kb is the Commodore ram expansion cartridge, the 16mb is specifically part of the Super CPU system. If you can't be bothered to google and want to keep making a cock of yourself then carry on my friend..... So now a C64 can be used as a web server, 32-bit computer, professional synth, and composer's tool - all in 2009. Who'd have known there was no need to ever manufacture anything newer? What on Earth were they thinking when the ceased production? Why did they even contrive the C128 (or Amiga)? And all this time, I thought it was just being compared to A8. What I want to know, is how I can get a 427 side-oiler or maybe Hemi in there. Or maybe there's a Prius mod so it's eco-friendly. So you now show your complete lack of intelligence again, do you actually know anything about music hardware or anything to do with music production? Do you know what a Midi base station even is? Oh yeah only small groups like Orbital or the Prodigy or the Shamen used bass stations in their music....haha what an idiot you are looking. Poor woody And modern machines have nothing to do with 32bit, the current state of the art for desktop PCs is octet core CPUs of 64bits each....32bit LOL WTF are we in 1993? Oh please; that's boring. Anything (even A8) can do that. You were on a roll above. Does emulating the original disc drive mean it runs at 2400 baud? No we are talking about replacement units that utilise IDE or CF/SD technology to REPLACE the original drives on both. The original comment was the C64 doesn't have any but it has many and they interface in many different ways (IEC/User/Cartridge ports) and ALL can be run at any speed, the speed dependancy to perfectly emulate 1541 timings is the same as when running disk images on an emulator and has nothing to do with the hardware. If the disk image can be run on full speed virtual disks ie the games copy protection is not present then one of these devices can load it as fast as the device can send it not just the minimum speed. You have heard of google right? or maybe you just like missing the point completely all the time and looking a complete twat? The only roll you were ever on in these rambling was a TOILET ROLL dude with all the crap coming from you I have yet to see a 512MB C64 with 32-bit processor and 2 SIDS replacing web servers and professional music equipment. ponder. Maybe because you are blind? A C64 webserver exists, a 16/32bit CPU expansion system exists, a bank switched 512mb and 256mb Commodore cartridge for plain vanilla C64s exists and plenty of music has SID type sounds produced commercially by many groups...like I said a bass station is an essential piece of kit for many genres of music. I have yet to see a single sign of intelligent ON TOPIC replies though from you though however And this is the kind of evasive answer to such a simple request that only an idiot would think was an acceptable response, if you have no videos of code or linkable samples of music that is better then why quote me? Oh yes because you are fleabrained moron LOL Anybody who has recorded with a good VCR and tape from a digital cable box or DTV converter box will be pleasantly surprised at the quality, compared to recording from degraded analog sources as they did years ago. Who really cares about videotapes anymore? I guess a real Sony fanboy could still be sore over Betamax. I hope you're not rooting for Blu Ray to kill DVD soon, or it'll be time to grease the nether regions and bite a pillow when you want a movie. I am not sore over anything, I am a qualified AV engineer, you are a twat, that is the difference and why your comments are so stupid obviously. The point was completely unrelated and was in response to a fly away comment about VHS vs Beta. An analogue input is actually higher resolution (about 4x higher actually) than a cable box...but you probably have a coat hanger for an aerial in a trailer park so you wouldn't know about the fact digital channels = more choice lower quality. Most people I talked to thought it had something do with the longer VHS tapes. Most people didn't care. As long as it worked and didn't look horrible, nobody cared about top range machines and comparisons. Top range machine comparisons are how you compare two formats by using the best possible implementation of both to actually judge the situation. You probably got a VHS machine at Wallmart in the 90s for $25 once the welfare checks came through so doubt you would know quality equipment. V2000 had longer tapes, and no rental sales, and was cheaper than VHS...so by your silly logic that should have won out of the three? Oh wait you probably didn't even know about V2000 LOL Here we have a classic example of someone who would look a lot less stupid if he didn't type @ me. Never mind sonny Jim, better luck next time when you don't post like you have been whoring the crack pipe all night before logging on here haha So there we have it, every single thing you bothered to type in response was out of context, stupid, illthought out, and made you look the prize cock of the board. No point bothering with anything you might post in future. A spastic would look like a mensa candidate next to you my little man