high voltage Posted May 25, 2014 Share Posted May 25, 2014 Lucky the A8 had no rival, a cut above the rest 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted May 25, 2014 Share Posted May 25, 2014 (edited) How could anyone forget. At least it wasn't a crappy TI. Oh and.... Apple. Stink different. The funniest part of this is that I posted Apple, Stink Different and iSpend, iSuck, iCrap or something like that in another thread and the Apple Mac fans didn't like it at all! You could post Trash80, Commode Odor, etc... all day long and they wouldn't say a word but don't you dare say anything about their Mac. Edited May 25, 2014 by JamesD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhomaios Posted May 25, 2014 Share Posted May 25, 2014 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApolloBoy Posted May 25, 2014 Share Posted May 25, 2014 The funniest part of this is that I posted Apple, Stink Different and iSpend, iSuck, iCrap or something like that in another thread and the Apple Mac fans didn't like it at all! You could post Trash80, Commode Odor, etc... all day long and they wouldn't say a word but don't you dare say anything about their Mac. Uhh why did you quote yourself being an obnoxious twat? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted May 25, 2014 Share Posted May 25, 2014 Here is some of the good ribbing that went on with the ATASCII graphics on the Atari 8-bit towards the Commodore: (More to come) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted May 26, 2014 Author Share Posted May 26, 2014 At least it wasn't a crappy TI. I cannot tell you how many times I heard that in the past! From the Atari, guys, the Commodore guy's, hell even a Timex Sinclair user had the balls to put down my AWESOME TI! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobertLM78 Posted May 26, 2014 Share Posted May 26, 2014 ...hell even a Timex Sinclair user had the balls to put down my AWESOME TI! - That was ballsy! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
am1933 Posted May 26, 2014 Share Posted May 26, 2014 I don't actually remember there being any computer rivalry, maybe it was because I was too busy beating the shit out of Commodore and Sinclair owners. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bartsfam Posted May 26, 2014 Share Posted May 26, 2014 Too bad the Adam never panned out..it seemed like such a great deal when compared with everything else. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fast eddie Posted May 26, 2014 Share Posted May 26, 2014 Knew someone with that computer back in the day. The Adam was notorius for being buggy. Colecovision was so awesome, wish they could have given at least one more years worth of games and forgot about releasing a computer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted May 26, 2014 Author Share Posted May 26, 2014 Too bad the Adam never panned out..it seemed like such a great deal when compared with everything else. I remember a few reasons the Adam never panned out. The first, they were made so cheaply, many of them were broken... right out of the box. The second was the printer... a daisy wheel... really? Many people wanted to print up RLE's, GIF's, and other graphics, the Adam's printer was limited to boring text. I'm fuzzy on the storage medium though, I do not remember a "disk drive". Can somebody help me out on this? It say's, "Mass Memory Storage Drive" but that does not necessarily mean "disk drive" could it have been a "tape drive"? The picture is not all that helpful either. I hate to appear stupid, but it was so long ago, some things on computers I never owned are fuzzy... if not lost to memory all together. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted May 27, 2014 Share Posted May 27, 2014 Uhh why did you quote yourself being an obnoxious twat? See what I mean 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
high voltage Posted May 27, 2014 Share Posted May 27, 2014 (edited) Mind you the Adam tape drive was faster than a 1541. And the Daisy wheel printer was useful due to the built-in WP, annoying was the lag for fast typists like me. Another annoying feature was the PSU being in the printer and the printer erasing tapes when stored to close. Edited May 27, 2014 by high voltage Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Usotsuki Posted May 27, 2014 Share Posted May 27, 2014 The MSX is closer to what the Adam should've been, imo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted May 27, 2014 Author Share Posted May 27, 2014 You know, I think it would be fun to bring back a little bit of the old rivalry back, but with a modern perspective. Like, 30+ years on what has the Commodore 64 evolved into? I'm sure people have made some totally neat hardware and software for it. I'd love to see what the best and most sophisticated Commodore 64 game looks like, as compared to the same for a TI-99/4A. I'd like to see a comparison on hardware hacks too. Speed, Video, Storage. etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted May 27, 2014 Share Posted May 27, 2014 You know, I think it would be fun to bring back a little bit of the old rivalry back, but with a modern perspective. Like, 30+ years on what has the Commodore 64 evolved into? I'm sure people have made some totally neat hardware and software for it. I'd love to see what the best and most sophisticated Commodore 64 game looks like, as compared to the same for a TI-99/4A. That's relative and depends heavily on what you consider to be "sophisticated" really. As a first thought, things like Turrican 3 (my favourite bit starts around 19 minutes in when it goes fixed speed shooter) and Mayhem In Monsterland (again, wind forwards about three and a half minutes to see the first stage when the magic dust has been used) are some of the more technically sophisticated but are running on stock hardware. Something like Newcomer is deeper on the gameplay front, although that video is only of the 2001 preview and it's become more technically complex since then. From an expansion point of view, there's only an handful of games requiring expanded hardware; Metal Dust needs a SuperCPU (a 20MHz 65816 and up to 16Mb of RAM that plugs into the cartridge port) to run since it's playing huge wedges of sampled music and effects during a very busy scrolling shoot 'em up and the recent port of Prince Of Persia uses an EasyFlash cartridge because it needs to bank switch in lots of data. I'd like to see a comparison on hardware hacks too. Speed, Video, Storage. etc. The Turbo Chameleon adds a 6MHz speed up to the 6510, bolts on VGA out, PS/2 keyboard and mouse in, infra red support for a CDTV control pad, gives up to 16Mb of Commodore-style DMA powered RAM expansion and a furter 4Mb of GeoRAM, has an SD card slot and emulates a couple of 1541 drives (from D64, G64 or T64 files on the card) and a selection of cartridges including fastloads and freezers, has, second SID emulation which is still being worked on but is already reasonable, optional battery-backed clock and somewhere to connect an RRNet LAN interface... ...oh, and it can run in stand-alone without the C64 connected and will also emulate a Sinclair Spectrum, Atari 2600 or OCS/ECS Amiga with a 68020 as well with more being worked on. =-) Here's mine (the office is far more messy now and the C64C was swapped for a Breadbin) and yes, despite that specification list the Chameleon is just the yellow cartridge poking out of that C64. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted May 27, 2014 Share Posted May 27, 2014 The MSX is closer to what the Adam should've been, imo. What the ADAM should have been has been the topic of many threads. MSX has many flaws itself but a single board design certainly would have been more cost competitive. I think a pizza box design would have made more sense with the external keyboard. Something like the Atari Mega ST console. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matthew180 Posted May 27, 2014 Share Posted May 27, 2014 I guess I'm the exception to the rule. I never bashed other systems, hell I didn't know anyone else with a computer! I had a 99/4A but I was more interested in what other systems had that was different or new compared to what I had. I liked all computers, especially ones I didn't have. The arcade coin-op games always seemed to be better than any home computer you could buy and I always wondered what was in them, what their resolution was, how much memory they had, and what video *chip* they used. I loved looking through the computer magazines and seeing all the new looking systems with stuff I had no idea what it was. I was always looking at the resolution and colors though, those were the specs that defined a system to me. I remember the VectorScan 512, or something like that: 512x512 with 1024 colors per pixel! Great stuff. Everything was new and exciting, always something to discover or explore. I think that's what made the early 80's the "golden era" of home computers. I'm just glad I was the right age at the right time with parents who bought me a home computer instead of sending me to computer camp. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
X900BattleGrape Posted May 27, 2014 Share Posted May 27, 2014 (edited) In Europe, Amstrad CPC and C64 fans are still today battling each other, as well as the Amiga and Atari fans. c64 Forever! Dirty Amstrad CPC users argggh! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBegD7k2wvo Edited May 27, 2014 by X900BattleGrape Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted May 27, 2014 Author Share Posted May 27, 2014 Well KerrrrrrrrAP! Being a TI-99/4A user, I hate to admit it, but it looks like the C64 beats the crap out of the TI! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkO Posted May 27, 2014 Share Posted May 27, 2014 Well KerrrrrrrrAP! Being a TI-99/4A user, I hate to admit it, but it looks like the C64 beats the crap out of the TI! Two reasons come to mind... The TI has a 16 Bit Chip, which should have kicked the Living Daylights out of any 8 Bit chip computer, but the BASIC was much s l o w e r than most other home PC's of the era, and then IIRC, the Technical Details were hard to obtain for programming it, unlike the VIC-20, C64 and even the Apple ][. MarkO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted May 27, 2014 Author Share Posted May 27, 2014 Two reasons come to mind... The TI has a 16 Bit Chip, which should have kicked the Living Daylights out of any 8 Bit chip computer, but the BASIC was much s l o w e r than most other home PC's of the era, and then IIRC, the Technical Details were hard to obtain for programming it, unlike the VIC-20, C64 and even the Apple ][. MarkO I'm curious, would it be possible for the TI to address more than what the original 32K expansion card did? Say 64K or 128K maybe? I bet the TI would hold it's own against a C64 with assembly language programs running 128K RAM with a 512K RAMDISK combo to swap out screens. The F18A is already out there to exploit the graphics part. (Note: I'm just asking, I'm not asking anyone to build anything) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted May 27, 2014 Share Posted May 27, 2014 I'm curious, would it be possible for the TI to address more than what the original 32K expansion card did? Say 64K or 128K maybe? That depends how the memory in that expansion is connected to the machine, if there are unused lines there which can act as a bank select switch it'd possible to have multiple 32K blocks and swap them out as required; this is how the C64's GeoRAM expansions and larger cartridges for the C64 or Atari 8-bit work. I bet the TI would hold it's own against a C64 with assembly language programs running 128K RAM with a 512K RAMDISK combo to swap out screens. The F18A is already out there to exploit the graphics part. If we're comparing expanded machines then just adding a RAM expansion on it's own gives the option of chunking around upwards of 16K per frame on the C64; that's more than enough to redraw a bitmapped display completely without even needing to double buffer. So with the 6MHz CPU... =-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matthew180 Posted May 27, 2014 Share Posted May 27, 2014 I'm curious, would it be possible for the TI to address more than what the original 32K expansion card did? Say 64K or 128K maybe? I bet the TI would hold it's own against a C64 with assembly language programs running 128K RAM with a 512K RAMDISK combo to swap out screens. The F18A is already out there to exploit the graphics part. (Note: I'm just asking, I'm not asking anyone to build anything) The 99/4A already addresses the full 64K of memory, but only 32K of the CPU's memory map is allocated for RAM. TI never came out with a bank-switch method so there is no "official" way to add more memory, only 3rd party ways that are not necessarily compatible with one another. This has been discussed ad-nauseam in other forums, but the 99/4A's sluggish nature is due to the 16-bit 9900 CPU being crippled by a 4-wait-state multiplexor to connect it to slow 8-bit RAM. If all the RAM in the 99/4A had been 0-wait-state 16-bit RAM (like the 256 bytes of scratch pad RAM is), and if BASIC had been written in assembly instead of GPL and run out of CPU RAM instead of VDP VRAM, the 99/4A would have been seriously fast. However this was not the case and no amount of whining or wishing will change history. The 99/4A is a crippled race horse in the name of making it cheaper, and even though it is my classic computer of choice, it is a dog compared to better designed systems. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted May 27, 2014 Author Share Posted May 27, 2014 This has been discussed ad-nauseam in other forums However this was not the case and no amount of whining or wishing will change history. The 99/4A is a crippled race horse in the name of making it cheaper, and even though it is my classic computer of choice, it is a dog compared to better designed systems. Thanks, question answered. I'll not go here again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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