'Amiga-ised' 8bit computers....can you remember any that actually succeeded

[carmel_andrews]

There are a few

 

 

Apple II GS

 

Amstrad CPC plus

 

Commodore C65

 

Sam Coup'e

 

MSX 2+ and MSX Turbo R

 

I suppose you could add the 'colour pet' or ToI as Chuck Peddle called it (was supposed to be the first cbm machine to use the VIC chip)

 

Can't think of any more and of any of the above that actually succeeded, II GS failed because apple's marketing failed it and also apple had a lot more invested in the upcoming Mac series/platform, if it had come out 2 years before and had decent marketing, it might have succeeded and also give amiga and the ST a run for it's money

 

Amstrad cpc+ failed simply because it was merely an extension (sound/gfx hardware wise) from the standard cpc series, problem that amstrad had was that everyone was writing to the base amstrad system and very little support or thought was given to the plus series, the majority of software houses used the classic ST vs STe argument in relation to why they wouldn't support the CPC plus

 

Commodore c65, though it didn't enter the critical stage of mass production/manufacture, about 1000 units were made and most of those went to developers, probably commodore saw what a pigs ear amstrad were doing with the cpc plus and decided against launching the system

 

MSX 2+ and MSX Turbo R, As far as i know these systems were sort of popular in mainland europe and fairly popular in Asia

 

Sam coup'e....or as I like to call it 'souped up speccy'...since it featured a built in speccy mode and was designed around the early zx spectrum series but having better gfx and sound hardware, had limited release because within months of launch MGT (the manufacturer) went bankrupt, ironically MGT was known as a speccy supporter (with it's range of 3rd party disk drives and other hardware for the spectrum) and also MGT's founder was a former sinclair research staffer

 

Anyone know of any more 'amiga-ised' 8bit systems that were'nt

[Curt Vendel]

I thought you were talking about taking the Amiga chips to looking to interface them into existing 8bits, like putting them into an Atari XE or something. It would be a neat idea, except the Amiga chips are 16bit and won't work on an 8bit.

 

I really wouldn't consider something like an Apple //GS to be "Amiga-ized" It was Macintosh-ized.... some could argue that the Atari ST and Amiga were both Macintosh-ized...

 

 

Of course, since the Mac (from the Lisa lineage) stole its very existence from the Xerox Alto and Smalltalk, then if you want to really properly identify what has been "ized" then I guess every computer with a GUI was "Alto-ized" and we should ALL thank Xerox and PARC for creating what would become the modern networked, user-friendly, GUI driven, WYSIWYG computer back in the 1970's

 

 

 

Curt

 

There are a few

 

 

Apple II GS

 

Amstrad CPC plus

 

Commodore C65

 

Sam Coup'e

 

MSX 2+ and MSX Turbo R

 

I suppose you could add the 'colour pet' or ToI as Chuck Peddle called it (was supposed to be the first cbm machine to use the VIC chip)

 

Can't think of any more and of any of the above that actually succeeded, II GS failed because apple's marketing failed it and also apple had a lot more invested in the upcoming Mac series/platform, if it had come out 2 years before and had decent marketing, it might have succeeded and also give amiga and the ST a run for it's money

 

Amstrad cpc+ failed simply because it was merely an extension (sound/gfx hardware wise) from the standard cpc series, problem that amstrad had was that everyone was writing to the base amstrad system and very little support or thought was given to the plus series, the majority of software houses used the classic ST vs STe argument in relation to why they wouldn't support the CPC plus

 

Commodore c65, though it didn't enter the critical stage of mass production/manufacture, about 1000 units were made and most of those went to developers, probably commodore saw what a pigs ear amstrad were doing with the cpc plus and decided against launching the system

 

MSX 2+ and MSX Turbo R, As far as i know these systems were sort of popular in mainland europe and fairly popular in Asia

 

Sam coup'e....or as I like to call it 'souped up speccy'...since it featured a built in speccy mode and was designed around the early zx spectrum series but having better gfx and sound hardware, had limited release because within months of launch MGT (the manufacturer) went bankrupt, ironically MGT was known as a speccy supporter (with it's range of 3rd party disk drives and other hardware for the spectrum) and also MGT's founder was a former sinclair research staffer

 

Anyone know of any more 'amiga-ised' 8bit systems that were'nt

[Mirage]

Plus, the IIgs used the 65816, which was 16-bit.

 

EDIT: I think I understand your point to be that the 8-Bit Apple ][ was "Amiga-ized" though I would myself never think of any of those computers as being "Amiga-ized", but I'd agree with what Curt said above. All those computers were just given GUI's, but certainly not "Amiga-ized" in any way I can see.

[carmel_andrews]

I used the term 'amiga ised' to refer to any pre mac/st/amiga system that included updated or enhanced sound/gfx hardware, therefore giving that system 'amiga alike' capabilities and at the same time having backwards compatibility with that companies previous systems (i.e apple IIGS= Apple II and variants, C65= c64, cpc+ = cpc and so on)

 

Also I recall the PR that amstrad were putting out about what became the 'cpc+' as the 'amiga basher' (shame it did'nt quiet work out that way)

 

I read somewhere that the original intention of the amiga/lorraine C/S was that it was 650x and 68000 compatible (or that they were making a 650x compatible version)

 

In regards to Mirage's point, Apple marketed the IIGS as being compatible with the rest of the Apple 8bit series (i.e Apple II/IIc and IIe etc)

[Mirage]

Okay, gotcha. I have no idea then.

[kool kitty89]

The title really is a bit off, but I see what you mean: basicly you're asking if any of the significant 8-bit computers had enhanced models (or backwards compatible successors) which were relatively close in capabilities to the 16-bit computers that were relatively popular.

The Apple IIgs is probably the closest to that overall, the MSX2/2+ is a bit of a different beast, but fairly comperable in some respects (much enhanced video hardware, sometimes sound upgrade, but similar CPU). The CoCo 3 was a significant upgrade in terms of graphics, but wan't really comperable to Amiga era level advancement. Of course, PCs came a long way in terms of graphics and sound by the late 80s, but that didn't really start as an 8-bit platform, or a "home computer" in general. (8088 is only externally 8-bit, somewhat like the 65816)

 

I wouldn't say it was marketing that was the IIgs's major problem, but the entire company as a whole, with Jobs heavily favoring the MAC team and there being general discontent over the IIgs, which was Wozniak's baby if I'm not mistaken. The IIgs was a little late, but had the MAC never existed, I think it might have done well in its place, even given the later release. Other than the weaker CPU, the IIgs was generally more advanced than the MAC, decent color video hardware (ahead of ST, but a good bit weaker than Amiga -weaker than ST in terms of software rendering as well) and iirc the OS was more advanced than the contemporary MAC OS. (genuine preemptive multitasking) Hell, had it gotten the kind of attention the MAC was getting, they probably could have added a blitter to accelerate the graphics and make the relatively weak CPU less of an issue. With the 65816 arhitecture it may have been a bit worse off than the MAC in terms of future CPU options, but that could have simply meant switching to a RISC architecture earlier than they did with the MAC. (perhaps ARM)

 

Neither the Atari 8-bit nor the C64 really had a proper chance for a good, relatively clean, backwards compatible successor. Commodore opted to go with a 3rd party design (though the C128 would have been quite a poor example of a successor as well), and Atari Inc was sold an dsplit up, with TTL's RBP design being brought over as the ST, so it didn't have anything in common with the 8-bit anyway. Although, I don't think Atari Inc's own designs were oriented towards providing a fully compatible 16-bit successor to the 8-bit line either, at least going by what I've read on their 16-bit designs in the works. (granted, th eformal articles have not yet been added to atarimuseum, so there's doubtlessly a lot more information I don't know anything about and I'm also assuming there weren't other plans for enhancement of the 8-bit line, separate from the high-end 16-bit machines)

[oracle_jedi]

 

Anyone know of any more 'amiga-ised' 8bit systems that were'nt

 

From memory:

 

 

BBC Master 128

 

Commodore 128

 

Myarc Geneve (TI-99/4A replacement motherboard for the PEB which implemented many features from the 99/8)

 

Tandy Coco 3

[desiv]

Commodore 128

 

Definitely.

As a side note, the C128 (which I didn't own/don't have) was a great machine.

I think the concept of releasing an 8 bit when the Atari ST, Amiga and Mac were just out was not a good one (and CPM died quicker than I think they expected), but..

 

C64 mode, C128 mode, AND CPM all in one case, and it all worked pretty seamless..

 

That was a great design. Not a design I would have bought at the time (I went 16-bit), but a design I appreciated.

(I suppose you could argue that a great design that no one will buy (OK, not no one, but) isn't a great design, but I mean in the technical sense, not in the "will it sell" sense.)

 

desiv

[JamesD]

I really don't consider any of those (or other upgraded 8 bit) machines to be Amiga-ised. The Amiga used mostly DMA driven hardware, a large color palette, samples for audio, etc. None of the upgraded 8 bits had anything approaching it.

 

The CoCo3, C128, and Apple IIgs sold the best. They had upgraded graphics and speed, the IIgs had upgraded sound, the CoCo3 had OS-9/Deskmate (which had little support), there was GEOS for the 128, and the IIgs had the GSOS/Mac style GUI. But the CPU drove most of the behind the scenes action. The IIgs GUI functioned the most Amiga (Mac) like and had the most support because it was built in.

 

The 65816 has an 8 bit data bus. I'm not sure I'd qualify it as 16 bit and the 24 bit address buss (multiplexed I might add) is little more than an integrated MMU + a handful of instructions. I'd have to rate the 6809 as a better CPU overall even with the 65816 enhancements.

Both the 6809 and 65816 are just 8 bit CPUs with some 16 bit support added (and the 6803 in the MC-10 for that matter).

 

The CPC+ had a large palette, sprites, DMA driven sound (driving the audio chip), but all that slowed the CPU and took away a lot of the advantages it brought. If it weren't for the speed issues I'd say it's closest to the Amiga philosophy as far as hardware goes. Amiga had a dual buss architecture to prevent collisions between the CPU and other hardware once you upgraded the machine.

 

The C65 was never released so how could it succeed?

 

The SAM Coupe had a small fanatical following due to it's speccy roots but it really didn't offer an Amiga-ish upgrade.

 

The MSX Turbo R is a fast MSX machine with a some built in software for a fancy startup screen. Kinda like the +4 with a GUI based menu. It really doesn't provide anything but speed over MSX2 as far as I can see. While speed was probably the one thing 8 bits needed most... on it's own it's not enough. MSX2 didn't really upgrade the graphics as much as the other machines mentioned.

 

The Enterprise 64/128 had a lot of Amiga-ish hardware features but as far as I can tell didn't do anything from the software standpoint and was a sales flop.

 

I think the first three (CoCo3,C128,IIgs) had the most potential but all three were crippled as to what they could have been.

If Motorola hadn't dropped development of their new chipset, the CoCo *might* have been the closest.

The C128 was sort of a hack and didn't really advance the C64 side enough but focused on CP/M... something I've never understood. The C65 was to fix this in a more Amiga like package but it never saw full production. The 64 is what the 128 should have been.

The IIgs and it's built in GUI, faster CPU, and expandability probably put it in the lead. Plus, it has the best sound hardware by far. I wouldn't say it outsold the CoCo3 or C128, but it probably outsold all the others mentioned combined.

 

Ultimately, I think to compete with the the 16 bit machines the 8 bits needed higher clock rates. I think a *minimum* of 8MHz for the 6809/6502 based machines just because MHz wars were already beginning and 8 > 4/3/2 from and uninformed consumer standpoint.

[JamesD]

The 64 is what the 128 should have been.

That should have been C65.

[akator]

"Amiga-ised" suggests that other manufacturers used hardware, software, or both to become more like the Amiga. I haven't read anything vetted to suggest that was ever the case. GUIs were the next big innovation back then, everyone had jumped on the bandwagon because it was logically and recognizably the next stage of OS evolution.

 

As one of many examples: development for GEM was started by Digital Research in 1984, long before it became the Atari TOS. No one at Digital Research had heard of an Amiga in 1984. Therefore, even the Atari ST line of computers was not "Amiga-ised" because the fundamentals of the GEM/TOS interface were based on earlier GUIs like the Xerox Alto, Apple Lisa, Apple Mac, and some "innovative" but mostly forgotten high-end GUIs from 1983-84.

 

The premise of something to be "Amiga-ised" suggests that the Amiga and its OS were the first, which they were not. That doesn't mean the Amiga wasn't an impressive and innovative machine, just that it had a different impact than the term "Amiga-ised" implies.

 

I would suggest that the Amiga had far less impact on the industry than revisionists want to believe. Yes, the Amiga was ahead of it's time, and many of its features didn't show up in other consumer machines for a decade. But that would suggest that the market, both manufacturers and consumers, didn't care as much about the Amiga's special features as people suggest. If those advanced features were in demand, they would have shown up in competing products much, much sooner.

 

For example, the video toaster was awesome. But why did the average person need that in 1990? Video professionals aside, there was little market for video processing when compared to decent office and desktop publishing software. It took the consumer markets another several years for desktop video to be of mild interest, and by that time Avid (and later Adobe then Apple) was doing with software things unimaginable with the toaster hardware just a few years before.

 

The Amiga was an amazing machine. But the phrase "Amiga-ised" just doesn't make any sense to me at all. Even the Apple IIgs, which has been suggested as competition/reaction to the Amiga, was on the drawing board years before the Amiga was released. The IIgs was more of a reaction to the Macintosh than it was to the Amiga...

[+remowilliams]

But the phrase "Amiga-ised" just doesn't make any sense to me at all.

 

Welcome to the club...

[kool kitty89]

The MSX Turbo R is a fast MSX machine with a some built in software for a fancy startup screen. Kinda like the +4 with a GUI based menu. It really doesn't provide anything but speed over MSX2 as far as I can see. While speed was probably the one thing 8 bits needed most... on it's own it's not enough. MSX2 didn't really upgrade the graphics as much as the other machines mentioned.

I don't know why the MSX series hadn't gotten faster Z80s in previous upgrades (MSX2 and 2+), or Z180s (or similar) for that matter, prior to the different CPU upgrade route the TurboR took with the R800. (there were 5.37 MHz MSX2+ models, but that was th elate 80s and by then it should have been faster across th eboard, like 7.16 MHz at least)

As for graphics, the V9938 was a pretty hefty upgrade over the 9928, vertical scroll, more (and more colorful) sprites, 9-bit RGB palette and the 8-bit RGB bitmap mode as well. Also remember that the 2+ added another enhancement with the V9958, finally adding horizontal scroll and utilizing a 15-bit RGB palette, so ahead of the Amiga in that aspect.

 

I think the first three (CoCo3,C128,IIgs) had the most potential but all three were crippled as to what they could have been.

The IIgs was mainly crippeled by Apple's internal conflicting intrests rather than the design itsself.

 

The C128 was sort of a hack and didn't really advance the C64 side enough but focused on CP/M... something I've never understood. The C65 was to fix this in a more Amiga like package but it never saw full production. The 64 is what the 128 should have been.

The C128 designs doesn't make much sense to me either. Had they gone for some limited PC compatibility with an 8088, CGA graphics, etc, that might have made a little more sense at the time, but still would have made it a hacked up C64 hybrid. The C65 really does look like a much more solid design, albeit in 1985 something along those lines would necessarily lack some of those capabilities of the proposed 1990 machine.

 

Ultimately, I think to compete with the the 16 bit machines the 8 bits needed higher clock rates. I think a *minimum* of 8MHz for the 6809/6502 based machines just because MHz wars were already beginning and 8 > 4/3/2 from and uninformed consumer standpoint.

8 Mhz probably would have been a lot easier to atain for the Z80 machines though. In the mid 80s with the NMOS 650x derivatives I think the fastest available at all were 4MHz (and I don't know of any products that used any faster than 2 MHz), then you get the 65C02s and 65816s which go up a good bit faster (but early runs may have been limited in speed -not sure if this explains the IIgs or IIC original speeds), and with the 6809 you're stuck at 2 MHz maximum (I think 4 MHz for the 6309). Marketing could have gotten around that by giving equivelent speed ratings, especially for the 650x and 680x with their short cycle times. If they really wanted to make them look good, a clock per clock comparison against the 8088 would probably be a good idea. (of course, simplified comparisons are misleading, but not really any worse than simply goign by MHz, and it's marketing in either case, not hard performance comparisons)

[frogstar_robot]

Like the others, I agree that "Amiga-ized" isn't a good way to put it. How about "Which enhanced 8-bits competed well against 16-bit machines?" The IIGS had the best chance but since Apple wasn't behind it 100% ..... The fact is that any enhancements to 8-bit lines allowed them to hang on another year or two but the spotlight was elsewhere. For that matter the 16-bit machines had their heyday from 85 to 90 or so. When I was a kid, that seemed like forever with a constant stream of new magic coming out all the time. But it didn't really last long at all and once PCs got the 256 color chunky modes, SB Pro or equivalent, and some sort of optical drive as standard equipment our beloved 16-bits were in the same boat. I remember a lot of "Doom-clones" for them that were really "Wolfenstein-clones" at best. The Amiga itself did the best job of hanging on into the 32-bit era with memory, CPU, and 3rd party video enhancements.

 

What I find more interesting are what we hobbyists are doing today. There's SuperCPU for the C64 and VBXE for the A8. The A8 has had a few small starts with 65816 enhancements with our own Bob's sleeper project showing the most promise. An A8 with VBXE, 7Mhz 65816, a couple MB of RAM, and the wonderful disk IO options we have for A8s nowadays would be a heller. There wouldn't be too many of us that had them but that is a FUN machine to think about.

Edited February 24, 2010 by frogstar_robot

[JamesD]

If the IIgs had included a blitter or had been clocked faster it could have done much better. But then I guess that could be said for all the machines.

The 65816 certainly helped. The larger stack, larger pointers, 16 bit accumulator, and 24 bit buss really made it possible.

Can you imagine trying to build the Apple Mac toolbox on a regular 6502? Eeeeewwww!

Even though the 65816 is a little awkward or even ugly at times with the mode switching, bank switching, etc... a compiler can generate code for it without many of the problems the 6502 has.

 

Since the 6809 already had everything but the 24 bit buss & MMU, the CoCo3 was really close. But the original Motorola chipset had an MMU that addressed a lot more RAM, had sprites, more hardware driven everything and the GIME just had a small subset of the original Motorola features. At 2MHz a 6809 could benchmark close to or faster than the original IBM PC. A 6309 at 4MHz would have made for one heck of a fast CoCo! But DeskMate wasn't anywhere close to as functional as the Apple GUI and it wasn't built in.

 

Someone did write a port of the Apple Mac toolbox for the Coleco Adam. But it filled all available RAM so it wasn't good for anything but a small demo or two. The author also flaked out and it was never really released. Too bad the source wasn't released. Someone might have rigged up a bank switched ROM version and it could have been ported to MSX.

 

Now that I think about it, there were a lot of reasons the 8 bits had trouble competing with the 16 bits.

Many of the 8 bits didn't have built in drives. Internal drives were common on 16 bit machines.

The 16 bitters had 3.5" drives and many of the late 8 bitters used the 3" standard that didn't catch on.

Slow 8 bit CPUs. Machines required moving more data around for more colors but didn't speed up the cpu much or at all to do it.

No built in GUI on most machines.

No hard drive support on most machines.

Most 8 bit machines had 128K and possibly up to 512K but that's where the 16 bitters started and the 16 bitters had more ROM.

 

BTW, the Thomson MO6 and MO8 probably fit in this category but were pretty much isolated to France. The MO6 did make it to Italy as an Oliveti machine. However, the MO8 was closest to the 16 bit experience but Thomson never clocked it's 6809 faster than the MO5 & MO7. 1MHz just doesn't push data fast enough even if it is a 6809.

[Bill Loguidice]

I use the term "Super 8-bit" myself for that final generation of 8-bits, both released (CoCo 3, etc.) and unreleased (TI-99/8, etc.). Though many of these computers were crippled either intentionally (for instance, limiting color modes) or unintentionally (for instance, being able to parse only a certain amount of memory at a time), when taken as islands (not comparing them to systems like the Atari ST, Amiga or IIgs), they're actually very cool. They were powerful, but still had an approachable charm that started to diminish as computers went to 16-bits and beyond.

 

(And even though computers like the TI-99/4a and consoles like the Intellivision had 16-bit elements, I still consider them 8-bit for all practical purposes.)

[JamesD]

I use the term "Super 8-bit" myself for that final generation of 8-bits, both released (CoCo 3, etc.) and unreleased (TI-99/8, etc.). Though many of these computers were crippled either intentionally (for instance, limiting color modes) or unintentionally (for instance, being able to parse only a certain amount of memory at a time), when taken as islands (not comparing them to systems like the Atari ST, Amiga or IIgs), they're actually very cool. They were powerful, but still had an approachable charm that started to diminish as computers went to 16-bits and beyond.

 

(And even though computers like the TI-99/4a and consoles like the Intellivision had 16-bit elements, I still consider them 8-bit for all practical purposes.)

The 99/4a still used 8 bit memory so it was crippled but I thought the TI99/8 was full 16 bit.

[desiv]

The C128 was sort of a hack and didn't really advance the C64 side enough but focused on CP/M... something I've never understood. The C65 was to fix this in a more Amiga like package but it never saw full production. The 64 is what the 128 should have been.

The C128 designs doesn't make much sense to me either. Had they gone for some limited PC compatibility with an 8088, CGA graphics, etc, that might have made a little more sense at the time, but still would have made it a hacked up C64 hybrid. The C65 really does look like a much more solid design, albeit in 1985 something along those lines would necessarily lack some of those capabilities of the proposed 1990 machine.

 

Maybe I'm just "of a certain age" and maybe it was localization, but I remember a fair amount of CP/M out there.

I'm not sure of the timing, perhaps the writing was on the wall for CP/M when the 128 was released, but maybe not when they started the design????

 

I know that I worked with several people who used CP/M (a lot of Wordstar on it) back in the day...

 

desiv

[akator]

Maybe I'm just "of a certain age" and maybe it was localization, but I remember a fair amount of CP/M out there.

I'm not sure of the timing, perhaps the writing was on the wall for CP/M when the 128 was released, but maybe not when they started the design????

 

I know that I worked with several people who used CP/M (a lot of Wordstar on it) back in the day...

 

desiv

 

CP/M was the high-end business standard for many, many years. Even though MS-DOS had stolen most of the spotlight by the mid-80s, there was still a ton of CP/M usage and it was still associated with professional work. They might have chosen CP/M because of that alone, trying to position the C128 as a "more serious" computer.

 

It's also possible that Commodore got a great licensing deal, since DRI was getting crushed by Microsoft...

[kool kitty89]

If the IIgs had included a blitter or had been clocked faster it could have done much better. But then I guess that could be said for all the machines.

Most of what I mentioned would probably have been quite feasible for the gs if Apple really got behind it, but conversely, one could also consider what might have been if the IIgs never existed at all and such work been put on enhancing the MAC instead with such audio, video and OS additions.

 

Now that I think about it, there were a lot of reasons the 8 bits had trouble competing with the 16 bits.

Many of the 8 bits didn't have built in drives. Internal drives were common on 16 bit machines.

The 16 bitters had 3.5" drives and many of the late 8 bitters used the 3" standard that didn't catch on.

Slow 8 bit CPUs. Machines required moving more data around for more colors but didn't speed up the cpu much or at all to do it.

No built in GUI on most machines.

No hard drive support on most machines.

Most 8 bit machines had 128K and possibly up to 512K but that's where the 16 bitters started and the 16 bitters had more ROM.

Yeah, but there were a feq funky (if not funkier) 16-bit flops as well, like the QL. In that case in particular, it seems like it would have been a better idea to work more on continuing the Spectrum line if nothing else. Granted the QL was designed for a different market than the Speccy, but that doesn't mean the Spectrum couldn't have updated in amanner to also push more in that direction. (particularly if th eLoki design was at all realistic -and going by the vague specs, it's not totally unrealistic, the MSX2 fits the vague discription they give of updated graphics)

 

Having shared graphics memory, and continuing to use such on later models, was a problem for soem of the 8-bits using updated graphics, I think you mentioned the CPC Plus in that respect. Adding dedicated graphics memory would obviously have solved that, but also added to cost. (the MSX used such from the begining, so that doesn't even matter -same for any other using the TMS9928 -granted the other couple home computers using that died out -namely the TI 99/4A and the Adam). Outside of dedicated memory, interleaved accessing of RAM might have been an option for some machines, I know it was rather practical to do with 68k based machines as it was always off the bus every other cycle, so you could interleave accesses at 50% of the memory bandwidth without the CPU taking a hit (as the Amiga did, if I'm not mistaken), I seem to recal the Z80 had similar access delays that might have facilitated such, I know the 680x/650x hits the bus every cycle though, so those wouldn't work. (unless ram was clocked 2x the CPU speed -I seem to recall the Apple II did that along with interleaving)

 

The C128 was sort of a hack and didn't really advance the C64 side enough but focused on CP/M... something I've never understood. The C65 was to fix this in a more Amiga like package but it never saw full production. The 64 is what the 128 should have been.

The C128 designs doesn't make much sense to me either. Had they gone for some limited PC compatibility with an 8088, CGA graphics, etc, that might have made a little more sense at the time, but still would have made it a hacked up C64 hybrid. The C65 really does look like a much more solid design, albeit in 1985 something along those lines would necessarily lack some of those capabilities of the proposed 1990 machine.

 

Maybe I'm just "of a certain age" and maybe it was localization, but I remember a fair amount of CP/M out there.

I'm not sure of the timing, perhaps the writing was on the wall for CP/M when the 128 was released, but maybe not when they started the design????

 

I know that I worked with several people who used CP/M (a lot of Wordstar on it) back in the day...

Yes, but it seems an odd route to go with the C64. There were plenty of other options for CP/M platforms, so unless you wanted C64 and C/M oon the same machine, it's a bit odd, and that specific case isn't goign to pop up all that frequently. You mentione business, and yes promoting a greater business emphesis was part of the C128, but that in itsself is a bit off. Really, if they wanted an enhnaced C64 that was not really a good way to go about it. The Amiga was the new, serios high-end machine (including business), things might have been different otherwise, but the C128 is still an odd duck with Z80 and RGBI video.

 

In the context of being anlongside the Amiga however, enhancing the C64 makes most sense in pushing to market it fits in most strongly, the lower end/home computer market, so CP/M wouldn't have been a big factor and things liek a built-in disk drive, updated graphics and sound with more memory and faster CPU are what would be advntageous. Updating the OS and possibly adding a standard GUI could have been good as well. Had CBM really wanted a compatible C64 successor and no Amiga at all, the C128 would still have been off as well. Then again, one can criticize the discontinuation of the PET line when they could have continued that as the business line of computers added real graphics capabilities, color, sound, but that's another issue entirely. (in parallel, or in place of the VIC-20 even)

 

On the CP/M topic though, that reminds me of the TRS-80. (with its Z80) Tandy went from the Model 1 in the fairly low-end/hobbiest range to the Model 3 and completely different CoCo at about the same time. I know the CoCo has features that would have been lacking being tied to the original TRS-80 architecture (namely the CPU), but it still seems odd to split their own market like that. (unlike the higher end model 2, the CoCo was pretty close to direct competition to the Model 3 by comparison) You'd lose the neat 6809 CPU, but it seems to me that with the Model 1 established, it would have made more sense to build on that model with the established software and userbase alone rather than introducing the separate CoCo. So the original TRS-80 line eventually got CP/M (model 4, or earlier with modifications), while the CoCo deviated from that completely. Again, the Model 2 was a bit of a different beast, and in a different niche of the market. (it got CP/M too though)

[thrax]

Can't think of any more and of any of the above that actually succeeded, II GS failed because apple's marketing failed it and also apple had a lot more invested in the upcoming Mac series/platform, if it had come out 2 years before and had decent marketing, it might have succeeded and also give amiga and the ST a run for it's money

 

II GS failed

Despite the political limitations of the GS with its hardware, i would hardly call it a failure. Still had great sales and great software support from the major manufacturers and profitable sales for a while for Apple

 

upcoming Mac series/platform

upcoming? Mac was out before iigs and amiga.

 

also give amiga and the ST a run for it's money

It did give amiga and st a run for its money. The II line (not just GS) lasted longer than Commodore's and Atari's exit from the computer market. Apple even made emulator cards for the LC line of macs well after the fact too. Seems kinda flawed logic to call a machine a failure when the computer line you are comparing too, "re: amiga-ised", disappeared first and came out after apple's own Mac.

[microprocessor]

MSX2 didn't really upgrade the graphics as much as the other machines mentioned.

 

Depends on how you compare things. MSX2 provided 256x212 @ 256 simultaneus color without limitations. Neither the Amiga with OCS could do this ( HAM mode is a sort of compressed mode). Not only i do not known another 8 bit with similar capabilities, but compared with first version is a huge step forward as proved by the amount of video ram used, 128K instead of 16 K of the previous version.

 

The real problem was the speed in managing graphics. having screen of 54K in size is somewhat to big for a standard 8 bit processor at a standard speed, and the internal blitter was slow like a snail...

Edited March 28, 2012 by microprocessor

[Arkhan]

MSX 2+ and MSX Turbo R, As far as i know these systems were sort of popular in mainland europe and fairly popular in Asia

The MSX2+ and Turbo R were only released in Japan, officially. They ended up in Europe via importation, or by upgrading the video chip of an MSX2. "fairly popular" in Asia is a wild understatement, lol. It's more like "holy shit popular".

 

On top of that, the MSX2+ is still a z80 processor. The only thing it offers over a 2 is the v9958 video chip instead of the v9938 and it also offers onboard FM music. This is hardly an attempt to make the thing like an Amiga in any shape or form.

 

The Turbo R didn't succeed at all. By the time it came out, IBM was on top with their PC line.

 

Calling them Amiga-ized is also probably wrong since I don't think Japan really gave two flying shits about the Amiga and were not influenced by it. They marched to their own drum.

 

Depends on how you compare things. MSX2 provided 256x212 @ 256 simultaneus color without limitations. Neither the Amiga with OCS could do this ( HAM mode is a sort of compressed mode). Not only i do not known another 8 bit with similar capabilities, but compared with first version is a huge step forward as proved by the amount of video ram used, 128K instead of 16 K of the previous version.

This was rarely used for anything other than displaying pretty pictures, and doing weird nonsense. The only game I can think of that uses it is Hydlide for MSX2 (the disk version). Most games use the other screen modes, like Screen 5, or one of the tile/sprite modes instead (Screen 4)

 

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/hydlide/hydlide-msx2title.png

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/hydlide/hydlide-msx2.png

 

Screen 5 is better. http://www.vgmuseum.com/end/msx2/a/fray.htm

 

The real problem was the speed in managing graphics. having screen of 54K in size is somewhat to big for a standard 8 bit processor at a standard speed, and the internal blitter was slow like a snail...

No.

Edited March 29, 2012 by Arkhan

[magnusfalkirk]

A really good question here is: If Apple hadn't stolen the GUI idea from Xerox/PARC would we be using GUI on computers now or would it still be all command line interface? Xerox showed no interest in using or marketing the GUI that was developed at PARC. So would it exist if it wasn't for Apple?

 

The one thing I always thought was interesting with the Amiga, though not interesting enough to want one, was that instead of the CPU having to run the entire system it had dedicated co-processors for things like sound, video etc. That freed up the main CPU to do it what needed to to run the program.

 

IMHO the Apple IIGS was an attempt on Apple's part to lure the users of the Apple II line over to the Macintosh, since GS/OS worked exactly like the Mac OS. The GS is a very capable computer, whether you use it with nothing but GS/OS or simply as a souped up Apple II.

[Arkhan]

Someone else would've come up with the GUI idea. It was kind of inevitable.