Is the C64 too different to A8 to ever have meaningful comparison?

[TMR]

Perhaps if more of them formed 'co operatives' (i.e clubbed together to share costs etc) they could have given the big boys a run for their money, after all like these days, not everyone is after a AAA rated game or licvenced properties, tie in's etc, people are and were interested in original content as well

 

And that's what i was asking; why didn't it happen? It seems as though there's a lot of love for the Atari 8-bit here for example, but close to nobody on the UK side of things seems to have picked up an assembler when the commercial software started to dry up.

 

Since we're talking about going back to commercial software's roots a drop in quality on the packaging is to be expected but the cost of producing and mailing out a packaged game would be pretty low so as long as there's a game to be sold in the first place it's certainly viable without having to worry about cost. It wouldn't be about giving the big boys (fnarr, fnarr) a run for their money either, more about showing support and keeping things alive.

 

Something i guerss even you know quite a bit about being a 'homebrewer'

 

To a lesser degree i was one of the people who stepped up and started writing games when the final budget houses moved away from the C64, as well as being co-editor on one of the more popular fanzines of the 1990s and trying to keep C64 games on the shelves in the computer shop where i worked well after all the other 8-bit stuff was gone; that's possibly why i wonder why the same movement wasn't started by A8 fans like yourself?

[Magic Knight]

 

 

Again, it's not that the Atari 8-bit wasn't technologically competitive or in some ways better than the C-64, it was that Atari was unable to drop the price fast enough and get standardized on a higher memory configuration. I think that was the main failing. If Atari was able to play the price game when TI (with the 4A) and Commodore (with the VIC-20) were duking it out, they might have retarded the C-64's future chances at its own successive, rapid price drop and gaining the foothold that it did.

 

Your hit a valid point, the 800s 'then' price even in today's rate of expects living is steep. It's crazy these days to think that you would need to save a few months wages to get a computer, but as it was technologically marvelous compared to before this was a norm.

Edited August 17, 2013 by Magic Knight

[thorfdbg]

2. What I am asking is are the machines too different in the way they go about making games possible through different architecture and custom chips that put the emphasis on different areas of compromise.

From a business perspective, no. They both addressed the same market segment, namely that of home users.

 

It's like the baby brother debate as to the 16bit question was the Sega Megadrive/Genesis too different to the Amiga 1000/2000/500/600/CDTV chipsets.

The Amiga was actually addressing also semi-professional business use (applications, the "boring stuff") whereas the sega was a pure game machine. So that's a different market segment, unlike the C64 and the Atari.

 

 

Today you walk into a shop and you can buy an Intel Mac or Intel/AMD PC......the only hardware architecture difference is the logo of the chips on the motherboard. The only real difference is the OS.

And the design (look and feel), but basically, they are competing products that are only differentiated by the "religion" behind them.

 

 

 

For me the answer is yes they are just too different, and ultimately you bought the machine that did the better job of doing what YOU wanted it to do.

Not really. The user basis was different, but that was not due to technological differences, but due to marketing and the year at which the machines became available. When Atari brought the original series to the market, office use was considered as part of the system profile, but it became more a game machine since that was what most people became interested in. The C64 was designed for this right away (for example, by making more sprites available and at the same time reducing the playfield functionality) so in the end, we had competing products.

 

For the same reason you can't really compare a Sinclair Spectrum to a C64 or A8 either.

Why not? Same market. Neither is a business machine. You make the error and try to differentiate a machine from a technological perspective, but that's the wrong end. You need to consider the use cases (what is the reason people bought those machines) that defines the market. Not the technical solution. And the market segment was all the same back then. Professional users had probably an Apple II or an IBM (then a bit later), which was indeed something different.

 

 

 

Would you agree or do you think it is meaningful to compare them at the hardware level?

Yes, it is meaningful. But a single scale is in so far only relevant as long as you have a use case. How good is the machine for what I want to do? And from that perspective, the C64 was simply better because it had a larger game library, and that was why people bought it. All the technical differences are for that completely irrelevant. It could have been the A8, but Atari was too expensive and could not make use of their earlier appearance in the market. Tramiel had the right business plan by pushing the price. That, and only that was the reason for the success. Forget about all the technical differences, most people are unable to grab the difference anyhow.

[oky2000]

What's remarkable is how well the 400/800, released in 1979, are able to compete with the C64 released 3 years later. They released newer models, but they really only differed from the 400/800 in the amount of RAM, the keyboard style, and video output.

 

Compare the Apple II which was released in 1977. It was a huge success, but graphically never matched the Atari 800 released only 2 years later.

 

Except the 1979 is a handful of machines available to dealers (a lot less than a full launch would have) in December and the VIC-II and SID (which essentially IS the C64 to all intents and purposes) was completed a debugged by mid 1981 approx. So that's around 1 and a half years. So GTIA (required for all the best C64 competing graphics modes) and VIC-II are only months apart.

 

As I understand it however the 400/800 line could have also been launched earlier if the company was run differently too (as could the C64, Chuck Peddle didn't want the VIC20's VIC chip to be their first home computer, he lost the battle but ultimately if he had won the C64 would have been launched in mid 1981 or earlier if HIS team were left to rack up the costs by Jack Tramiel - source The Home Computer Wars)

 

Also I feel that the sprite graphics, which the computing press went absolutely nuts over at the C64 launch as they really were significantly larger, higher in quantity (the 1983 Programmer's Reference Guide at no point says 8 sprites maximum, it specifically tells you 8 sprites per scan line) and more feature rich with the hi-res/multi-colour mixed mode ability on a sprite per sprite basis. As most games in the early to mid 80s were simple 2D sprite based games this is a significant inclusion in the chipset ie powerful independent graphics layer for moveable objects. Like I said Al Charpentier says there is a good reason 80% of the VIC-II chip is used for sprite related work and also why the C64 has such an awkward (hence slowwww) bitmap mode as it is essentially a hack of the char mode display addressing vertical 8 pixel columns in sets of eight per char block and not 320 sequential horizontal pixels like other machines (so now you know why Elite has so much slow down compared to the BBC, Spectrum, Plus/4 etc)

I agree on the timeline, however since Atari had in mind that the A8 was still a strong contender for 'that' time in the market (lets face it - the whole of the 80's) then the comparison is just.

 

Had Atari brought out a next gen model instead of the XL series (which lets face it was the ataris answer to approach the market for the next few years) then i think it would be a different world with this im sure.

 

In the early days (ie 1982ish) the name Atari brand meant a hell of a lot more for leisure market (games consoles, home computers to play games on) but the issue is quite complex IMO. In the USA people went mad for the Apple II for no apparent reason I can see (shit graphics shit sound and just as expensive as A800 48k) so I don't know how that happened. And later for some reason they move to CGA based PC XTs which had WORSE games than the 1982 C64 (as well as still purchasing Apple II and C64 machines). They also completely failed to notice the future of computing was the Amiga 1000 too doh!!

 

In the EU Atari had a fantastic opportunity with the 800XL even as it was, when Jack stock dumped the 800XLs for £129 in the UK they sold out damned quickly. Prior to this a 48k 800 would cost more than double a C64 and the software always cost more and tapes were never turbo loaders too which added to the cost of import games at the time meaning games were about 300% more than C64 and 400% more than Sinclair games(Timex) so I feel that hampered it's market share badly. The NES failed in the UK (very badly actually, like a floating turd of the history of retro gaming here) because of this exact issue....who wanted NES Rocket Ranger for £40 when the C64 version which was better was £15 on disk?! Of course coding for the A8 was a skill software houses were hard pressed to find and even when conversions were done they were not really done that well. For whatever reason (VIC-II/SID/6510?) the C64 always had a bespoke conversion separate to the Sinclair games and a lot of coders early on started to use the potential of the machine like more than 4 colours on screen and more than 8 sprites etc. The A8 in the UK had the same fate as the Z80 based Amstrad CPC and MSX machines which got Spectrum ports, the C64 base code was used for A8 6502 and games not written for A8 chipset features from scratch. (ie CPC, MSX and A8 games more often than not were not done that nicely and the public naturally assumed it was the hardware not the slacker coding to a budget by greedy software houses with Ferrari owning MDs).

 

You can hate the C64 as much as you want for the above situation (the same way rabid Amiga fan boys HATE the ST due to 90% of Amiga games being badly coded rubbish ST ports) but it's not the machines fault it is the greedy software houses fault. Atari didn't help by including FS2 and Bughunt in the XEGS.....WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!?!?! 1 fps flight simulator in the box...wow that must really have got the kids happy they didn't get a master system/nes lol. WTF didn't they put Rescue on Fractalus as the pack in game and had store demonstrator rigs so people could play games an NES could only dream of (and far better than that slow boring Mario crap the US kids got fed lol) The mind boggles!!

 

In the USA customer stupidity reigned (they went from IBM XT to NES to IBM AT VGA....and watching a 1990 issue of computer chronicles they talk of the return of home computers and only the C64 home computer is shown. Home computing is not some shitty PS/1 IBM bollox with a 160x100 pixel icon to click to take you into DOS command line.....for intelligent Europeans the home computer never left...it was called the Atari ST, Acorn Archimedes and Amiga...all light years ahead of PC AT + DOS shit)

 

I used to be as angry as some A8 people when it came to the Amiga (maybe only 4 games ever used the chipset of A1000 to near full potential out of 15,000!) and the only reason I didn't hate the ST ever was I owned one, I even did a one level demo of Salamander in STOS with parallax scrolling.....running at 4fps lol. Didn't like some aspects sure but as an ST owner and user I liked many aspects much more than the other choices (8086 PC etc which I borrowed from school for 8 week summer break....and turned it on once haha).

 

Amiga is not perfect, nor is Atari ST, nor is C64 and neither is the A8. They ALL do things differently with variable percentage of dedicated chips (OK ST's shifter and YM/AY soundchip is not quite the same but more than Mac 128k and PC XT/AT) Once you achieve that Zen like state of enlightenment then you can start to appreciate ANYTHING is better than coming home to a 'powerful modern computer' and pressing the space bar and having to wait minutes for this stupid Windows bollox to wake up! I had enough, pass me my 8 bit SUPERIOR computer so I can play some games that don't crash because 1 file out of 10 million clogging your hard drive is slightly different.....thank you

[Faicuai]

 

In the early days (ie 1982ish) the name Atari brand meant a hell of a lot more for leisure market (games consoles, home computers to play games on) but the issue is quite complex IMO. In the USA people went mad for the Apple II for no apparent reason I can see (shit graphics shit sound and just as expensive as A800 48k) so I don't know how that happened. And later for some reason they move to CGA based PC XTs which had WORSE games than the 1982 C64 (as well as still purchasing Apple II and C64 machines). They also completely failed to notice the future of computing was the Amiga 1000 too doh!!

 

 

...But the reasons are rather obvious: people in general (users and developers) went mad over the Apple II (at its time) because of the simplicity and POTENTIAL it represented (an open system, where multiple apps and HW could be developed for), especially from the enthusiast / general user point-of-view. Then came the IBM PC XT/AT (thanks to Don Estridge and his "maverick" approach) which was backed by nothing less than IBM, who was already a GIANT in business / enterprise computing. With its also equally wide-and-open potential (ALL HW specs. released and public, except some BIOS-code) plus world-wide operations expertise, it finally ignited the next "industrial" revolution, which was personal-computing and productivity, at enterprise-level.

 

All of the above meant one thing: you could definitely make A LOT more money as a developer / programmer for those systems that you could for other platforms (Atari, Commodore, etc.). While these systems focused on OS, productivity, applications, compilers, data-base, etc... well, the Atari/Commodore camp focused on "sprites", "sound synthesis", "cartridges", etc., at time where graphical computing was not yet at its prime-time.

 

At the end, the PC's architecture (although starting at much shallower levels of "built-in" functionality) proved capable of evolving, adapting and doing ANYTHING any other system or vendor tried on its own... and so did DOS + Windows, as well.

[kenjennings]

Except the 1979 is a handful of machines available to dealers (a lot less than a full launch would have) in December and the VIC-II and SID (which essentially IS the C64 to all intents and purposes) was completed a debugged by mid 1981 approx. So that's around 1 and a half years. So GTIA (required for all the best C64 competing graphics modes) and VIC-II are only months apart.

 

You're comparing the date that finished hardware was released to dealers for the Atari to the date sub components of the C64 were made. Apples, Orange. As you said, the Atari's could have been released earlier... that's because the chipset was finished earlier, too, in 1978.

 

The VIC-II and the SID were completed in November 1981 and brought togther into a prototype C64 for demonstration at the January 1982 CES. The distribution to dealers was around August 1982.

 

So, if you're comparing chipset completion you're comparing 1978 to 1981. Three years. If you're comparing the display of prototypes, that's early 1979 vs early 1982. Three years. If you're comparing release to dealers that's late 1979 to mid-third-quarter 1982, a couple months short of three years.

 

Three years is an entire generation in computer technology especially back in the 80s, but the C64 doesn't display that kind of advancement. The C64 was all about price for Tramiel, not technology.

[thorfdbg]

IBM succeeded because they promised something (private computing) to customers to had enough money to buy in. CBM and Atari always had the low-end customers that could not pay for the hardware, and this market was not sustaining. The technical advantage of the 8 bit machines helps nothing if you cannot sell the dream to the right customer. IBM addressed a market segment of potential customers, also only half-willing and driven by the Apple-II, that had the money to finance the fun, even though they got little in return but the name. Kinna like Apple works today, nothing but standard PCs with an Apple logo slapped on it. That said, the same happened with the Amiga - they had the right hardware, but the wrong user community.

[thorfdbg]

Three years is an entire generation in computer technology especially back in the 80s, but the C64 doesn't display that kind of advancement. The C64 was all about price for Tramiel, not technology.

 

Yes, it was all about price, but that's the right reason. Tramiel knew his customers, but in the end, this was not a sustaining business after all. The business market works entirely different, and CBM could not address it.

[WizWor]

I do hope they're not too different to compare, since I'm relishing the thought of a direct comparison between GEOS and the new A8 GUI when it's done. Don't want to be done out of that opportunity... absolutely can't wait.

That was sarcasm, right? A generation of hindsight, education, and experience separates the two. In the eighties, a gui was innovation. Now, it's imitation. No knock on the effort going into the new GUI -- just a nod to the guys who got there first.

[kenjennings]

In the USA people went mad for the Apple II for no apparent reason I can see (shit graphics shit sound and just as expensive as A800 48k) so I don't know how that happened.

 

The Apple was not primarily intended for games. It was meant to be an expandable, customizable computer and did it very well. There were tons and tons of third party hardware upgrades for the Apple II. Boards for 80 column text, boards for higher resolution graphics modes, boards for sound synthesizers, all kinds of boards for memory upgrades (beyond 64K) and peripheral interfaces. Because of this software developers could expect (even demand) mininmum hardware specs higher than baseline Apple II specs.

 

And later for some reason they move to CGA based PC XTs which had WORSE games than the 1982 C64 (as well as still purchasing Apple II and C64 machines).

 

Yeah. The PC was IBM's entry into mid-1970-style computing -- a CPU and a bus backplane. Essentially an Intel version of an Apple II. Because the PC was from IBM, and it was boring, and it was unreasonably expensive, then it must be a serious computer. Of course, even though most people buying computers can't intelligently evaluate technology, the price of the first IBM PC meant it was not popular as a personal computer for the home, and it should have died a quiet death. However, then the price wars devestated low and mid-range personal computing leaving behind a vacuum that sucked in later, somewhat cheaper, (and IBM-reputed "serious") PCs and clones sending personal computing as a whole on a trip back in time several years.

[Keatah]

The Apple II was looked upon as a serious computer with potential and capability to get real world tasks done. People had confidence in the machine's ability to do things it wasn't made to do or thought of at the time; as well as the things it was advertised being capable of. And the physical construction felt utilitarian, durable, strong, only added to that aura.

 

A lot of discovery in computer concepts came from the Apple II. Furthermore, many of the tricks involved in Apple II programming are really pioneering exercises across all computers. The II series was too simple a machine to have "stuff" buried in it. It was generic. So instead, the machine helped us realize the holes and magic and wonder in how we did things. Programmers didn't waste time going down some rabbit hole of undocumented graphics modes on a gaming chip or something. If there were rabbit holes in the II series, it was of your own doing, in your own program.

 

The C-64 and Atari 400/800, regardless of how favorable the internal architecture was, would never be seen as anything more than toys. And the shit plastic, however flexible and durable or not, conveyed that.

 

The quality of the documentation that came out of Apple at the time was unparalleled. And quite easy to understand.

 

And finally, the Amiga was certainly not the future. The capabilities it showcased, sure, yeh. But the internals of the machine? No frakking way boi! Too many custom chips tied in too closely with the main cpu. The custom chips would require redesign along with CPU replacement if you were going to really beef up performance.

 

I wanted so much (and tried so hard) to like the Amiga. And at one foolish time had replaced a fully functional Apple //e with it. And productivity fell through the floor. Ughh.. That and the bullshit advertising and promises made, that was the worst of everything Amiga.

[WizWor]

In the early days (ie 1982ish) the name Atari brand meant a hell of a lot more for leisure market (games consoles, home computers to play games on) but the issue is quite complex IMO. In the USA people went mad for the Apple II for no apparent reason I can see (shit graphics shit sound and just as expensive as A800 48k) so I don't know how that happened. And later for some reason they move to CGA based PC XTs which had WORSE games than the 1982 C64 (as well as still purchasing Apple II and C64 machines). They also completely failed to notice the future of computing was the Amiga 1000 too doh!!

As I recall, as schools transitioned from calculators to personal computers, Apple and the TRS80 were prominent. A lot of us saw our first computer in a lab or a classroom and, for the most part, it was a monochrome, text based system. At the same time, we were learning to love Atari in the arcades and in our living rooms as the VCS. When the Commodore computers arrived, they were a less expensive to the Apple in the classroom. The first 'computer lab' I had class in was full of C64s. Teachers and students bought these because they were familiar. All of my friends who frequented the arcades had Ataris and those who did not had C64s. I only knew the TRS80 from that one demonstration at school and I knew no one with an Apple until I got to college.

 

Around 1984, I took a BASIC programming class in a C64 school. One of the kids had an Apple II and asked if he could work on that. We were underwhelmed with his computer. It was big and had expansion slots, but, as equipped, didn't belong on the same table as an Atari or Commodore with their sounds and colors. We brought our Ataris in and the semester was spent trying to prove the superiority of this computer or that. In retrospect, the instructor was a genius. We spent hours 'enhancing' once the assignment was complete. In my opinion the talent of the programmer was more important than the hardware itself. I think that is where this thread starts and stops -- the Atari and Commodore computers were very comparable and were distinguished by the skills and interests of programmers.

[oky2000]

You're comparing the date that finished hardware was released to dealers for the Atari to the date sub components of the C64 were made. Apples, Orange. As you said, the Atari's could have been released earlier... that's because the chipset was finished earlier, too, in 1978.

 

The VIC-II and the SID were completed in November 1981 and brought togther into a prototype C64 for demonstration at the January 1982 CES. The distribution to dealers was around August 1982.

 

So, if you're comparing chipset completion you're comparing 1978 to 1981. Three years. If you're comparing the display of prototypes, that's early 1979 vs early 1982. Three years. If you're comparing release to dealers that's late 1979 to mid-third-quarter 1982, a couple months short of three years.

 

Three years is an entire generation in computer technology especially back in the 80s, but the C64 doesn't display that kind of advancement. The C64 was all about price for Tramiel, not technology.

 

Except for one small point, Chuck Peddle didn't want the 22 column VIC 1 chip, it was a work in progress for his team that he wanted to continue work on to make what ultimately would have become the VIC-II chip even before the date the VIC-II was actually finished by MOS.

 

The VIC-II and SID were completed, not used (as Jack changed his mind about selling arcade motherboards), then rolled out for a completely different project a long time later to 'keep the Japanese at bay'.

 

The CTIA/ANTIC/POKEY A8 on the other hand were sweated over night and day from before first wired prototype until machine's half hearted launch just 2 weeks before 1980 etc. This is a completely different situation.

 

There is no factual reason why the C64 couldn't have been finished by Summer 1981 IF that's what Jack wanted to do with the chipset from the start AND had not gone against the wishes of Chuck Peddle and his team. Any intelligent person can see the difficult part of the C64 design was making the core chipset not the logic on the board to support it or the hacked up PET v2 BASIC as the user environment BUT there is no way the 400/800 with GTIA or CTIA could have come out any faster so like I said a year between them at best not 2 years and 10 months as some keep posting.

 

And by the same way the Amiga 1000 could have been launched the SAME TIME as the pathetic Mac 128k IF they had the same sort of funding and engineering resource wasted on that Apple ZX81++ imitator with stolen OS ideas for $5000 in late 84

 

YMMV etc as always to anyone wishing to quote me on this

[flashjazzcat]

 

That was sarcasm, right? A generation of hindsight, education, and experience separates the two. In the eighties, a gui was innovation. Now, it's imitation. No knock on the effort going into the new GUI -- just a nod to the guys who got there first.

 

No it wasn't sarcasm. Maybe we can compare the two with that generational context in mind. That's fine by me. Now: what about the red text? Is that sarcasm?

[oky2000]

The Apple was not primarily intended for games. It was meant to be an expandable, customizable computer and did it very well. There were tons and tons of third party hardware upgrades for the Apple II. Boards for 80 column text, boards for higher resolution graphics modes, boards for sound synthesizers, all kinds of boards for memory upgrades (beyond 64K) and peripheral interfaces. Because of this software developers could expect (even demand) mininmum hardware specs higher than baseline Apple II specs.

 

I see your point but outside the educational market it made no sense and ZERO should have been sold to people with more than two braincells in the street to use at home. Hence it is the US equivalent of the overpriced BBC Micro Model B sold to schools and also home users if they wanted it for £499 with NOTHING not even a set of tape leads. The Apple II however is far INFERIOR to the BBC B on all levels and yet costs more in the US before importing to the EU/UL so there was no reason for people to buy that overpriced POS instead of something better in the USA. I can make a 0-60 in 2.5 second car starting out with a £20,000 saloon car and spending £100,000, but the original saloon car is still shit and only an idiot would do that instead of getting a 0-60 5 second Porsche for £50 with highly advanced engineering and design. This is the sort of thing that the Apple II is IMO.

 

Imagine if in the UK Acorn had sold 10 million BBC Micros for a total of 50 billion £s and a handful of C64s were sold...and then we all bought DOS/8086/CGA shit as an 'upgrade' lol it's so unbelievable it could be evidence for time travel and mind control haha.

 

This is exactly the situation between A800 and Apple II. America has a history of buying utterly the worst suitable machines for home use even when they sometimes cost more though (Apple II, NES with carts costing 25% as much as an actual C64 in Seares, IBM XT to play CGA games on from US Gold/Sega, Windows 286 instead of Amiga 1000 costing 80% less etc etc......)

 

Imagine if the PET 4000 series had become the dominant machine, there is only a few months difference in technical evolution between that and the Apple machine yanks went gaga for IMO and at least the PET 4000 was a gorgeous gorgeous machine made out of solid metal.

 

NES failed here, Apple 1,2,Mac failed here, IBM XT/AT failed here......I am glad my childhood wasn't fucked up with these shit machines that for some reason DESTROYED home computing a decade earlier in the USA. What a shit time you kids had in the 80s........no wonder you all had nicer BMXs than us, most kids had completely shit home computers WORSE than a Colecovision from years earlier to play on. My heart goes out to you guys living through that hell. We had it sweet here in the UK, I didn't even have to touch that Wintel rubbish until 1994 or use a Spreadsheet until 1997 for business purposes (and I told my boss he needed to purchase a laptop for me because I had no desire to own a Windows/Dos kludge in my home using my own wages...nope this was the time of Playstation and an 060 Amiga 4000 which never crashed or lost memory sorry!)

 

I feel very sorry for Atari and Commodore losing money/sales despite making superior products for two decades because idiots worldwide still went out and made those two wankers billionaires despite them supply the two worst machines for those 2 decades. The mind boggles!!

 

(As you can see I don't suffer inferior technology and con artist machines like cart based NES rubbish gladly, YMMV of course)

[Faicuai]

(...)

 

Three years is an entire generation in computer technology especially back in the 80s, but the C64 doesn't display that kind of advancement. The C64 was all about price for Tramiel, not technology.

 

Absolutely.

 

Little doubt about this. At the end, it was Tramiel (for the most part) the one who put the last (and biggest) nail in the Home-Computer market's coffin (sounds counter-intuitive, but the C64 was precisely THAT nail). What followed after was the rather rapid destruction of Commodore itself, and the rest of this industry sector, which could not cope fast-enough with the evolution of Intel's 16bit and 32bit speed and processing power, at the core of the PC's architecture.

 

Some folks have a hard time understanding that one thing is ONE manufacturer behind ONE machine (or model) and another very different is an ENTIRE ecosystem of Manufacturers, HW & SW behind a PLATFORM.

 

That ended up being the difference between IBM PC's (and COMPATIBLES, and Apple to some extent) vs. the rest. The diversity and depth of HW/SW and solutions emerging around the PC eventually became UNPARALLELED, impossible to attain to any single computer-maker.

 

It takes little brain's-gray-cortex / IQ to understand this.

[WizWor]

No it wasn't sarcasm. Maybe we can compare the two with that generational context in mind. That's fine by me. Now: what about the red text? Is that sarcasm?

No. Please do not read it that way. Just that it is contemporary -- being developed RIGHT NOW.

[flashjazzcat]

No. Please do not read it that way. Just that it is contemporary -- being developed RIGHT NOW.

 

No problem. We'll compare it with "Wheels" or whichever is the latest version of GEOS which runs on a C64.

[WizWor]

BTW, I think it's fine to compare your GUI (which is already amazing) to others. I'm just saying that it shouldn't be the basis of a judgement as to whether one machine is superior to the others.

[kenjennings]

There is no factual reason why the C64 couldn't have been finished by Summer 1981 IF that's what Jack wanted to do with the chipset from the start AND had not gone against the wishes of Chuck Peddle and his team.

 

Other than the fact the chipsset for the C64 didn't exist in the Summer 1981. Design of the chips began in January 1981. They were completed in November 1981. Neither the C64 nor the spin-off MAX video game could exist as complete working systems prior to completion of its' chips.

[carmel_andrews]

Me thinks that IBM got lucky with the PC, remembering that they were even considering bying into the Atari tech and I heard even Apple tech

 

There again, Didn't Job's and Co also approach Commodore as well, only thing i'm not sure about with that story was the claim that tramiel 'gave them the 6502' (which was wrong because i am guessing synertek 6502's were already already been used by wozniak)

 

Interesting that so many things spun out from Atari like Amiga, Apple (since Jobs worked for Atari and Wozniak designed one of the games) and probably the PC, since IBM were looking to buy into that tech before they thought better of it

 

Shame that Atari didn't capitalise on all that talent they had, thyeir again if it was true what JM said in an article i linked to in the classic computer section, if you run a tech company like an accountant it deserves to be screwed up

 

The difference between commodore and Atari was that commodore did try upscaling their tech, i..e pet to vic20 (even though the vic 20 hardware was originally supposed to be used in a colour pet system) and then vic 20 to c64, whereas Atari didn't understand the concept of trying to upscale it's hardware (I am probably thinking that even the project that eventually became the Atari 800 and 400 was lucky to have even gotten of the ground, considering that warner's had just invested over 100 million in the vcs and Decuir/Miner and Co were asking them to invest in a better version of the vcs, which became the 400/800)

 

The interesting thing about the PC though we have to remember that the 8bit attempt at a PC like architecture (a tie up between the Asian software company ASCII and Microsoft) was only mildly successful in some parts of europe and asia (i ofcourse refer to the MSX)

[flashjazzcat]

BTW, I think it's fine to compare your GUI (which is already amazing) to others. I'm just saying that it shouldn't be the basis of a judgement as to whether one machine is superior to the others.

 

Of course not... that would probably be disastrous.

[TMR]

Little doubt about this. At the end, it was Tramiel (for the most part) the one who put the last (and biggest) nail in the Home-Computer market's coffin (sounds counter-intuitive, but the C64 was precisely THAT nail).

 

The problem i have with that is i saw C64s on sale ten years after launch; how long did it take to hammer that nail in?!

[Faicuai]

The problem i have with that is i saw C64s on sale ten years after launch; how long did it take to hammer that nail in?!

 

Fair comment, from a pure time-line perspective.

 

However, it means little in terms of viability / sustainability of a company: Apple II's were selling as well, Atari 8bit-line was extinct by 1992, and Commodore went-broke in 1994. A $100 C64 (actual price reported, and down from its $600 intro-level) could hardly sustain Commodore or ANY other company... By then, 16bit-computing was the main focus of all these companies (as well as their income).

 

In short, the 8bit, home-computer market was already dead by 1985-1986. It was just a matter of time before hitting the concrete-floor, at the end of the fall.

[TMR]

Fair comment, from a pure time-line perspective.

 

However, it means little in terms of viability / sustainability of a company: Apple II's were selling as well, Atari 8bit-line was extinct by 1992, and Commodore went-broke in 1994. A $100 C64 (actual price reported, and down from its $600 intro-level) could hardly sustain Commodore or ANY other company... By then, 16bit-computing was the main focus of all these companies (as well as their income).

 

And that moving on was inevitable, the companies were always going to chase the next product and i doubt anybody in the early days even expected the 8-bit market to make it past the early 1980s. If we took the C64 out of the equation in 1982, Apple had prototype 68000-based Macs running and were talking to WDC about what would become the 65816, the Amiga team started beavering away as well and smaller firms are already thinking over their options like Sinclair with the QL.

 

The 8-bits did continue to sustain their various companies to a degree after 1986 though, Commodore and Atari were hardly going to keep the production lines going for a laugh so there must have been at least a reasonable profit coming in from those machines pretty much up until the end.