Jump to content
IGNORED

C64 - A reappraisal 2017


Steve Mynott

Recommended Posts

The ingot was dropped on our toes with the 800XL, when late delivery of the product occurred, namely to SEARS and a few outlets. Might have been delivered with the Olympic Sponsor Stickers on the 800XL's box. That extra special POS was nestled in with a few XL's. The warning was out and you were lucky if you saw the hum bars alerting you about what was to unfold.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In early '84 I went through two or three 64s that failed in rapid succession. Though the one that worked, worked for a *long* time - it lasted for over a decade of heavy use before I needed to replace the motherboard (and still works to this day)

Edited by Laner
Link to comment
Share on other sites

..If that library existed, I'd use it in a heartbeat for my current project. Lack that, I'm probably going to revert to joystick, directional keys, and an interface based upon directional choices.

 

So, that's my personal story. I'm sad that we've got some really cool dedicated circuitry and OS code in all of these machines that is still potentially useful, but we don't have the shared libraries that allow us to take advantage of it. (The lack of commonly used libraries seems to be something that affects us in other areas, too.) Without something like that, nobody is ever going to code for the light pen. Or the Koala (or Atari Touch Tablet). We rarely get that trakball or mouse input.

 

I believe that that early 8-bit rigs were both too diverse in architecture and too small in terms of memory and other resources to have supported any sort of common libraries. Libraries like you speak of started coming into practical consumer usage with the 1st MAC.

 

Ironically it was the artful, yet diverse, features of each platform that made it unpractical in the 8-bit era.

 

We started seeing vertical action in the 16-bit era, model-to-model coherency in a single company's lineup. And in the PC era it spread across brands and clones and soon enough, operating systems, and generations of CPUs.

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know much about the C64, but I did own a SX-64 for awhile, and although I didn't care for the slow disk drive speed or the odd way required to access it (kind of reminded me of the Apple][ in this regard), I really loved the ease of creating multi-color text which I always thought the A8 had missed the mark on that one. Anyway speaking of improving the sound on the C64, I came across this upgrade board that looks promising...

 

How so? I rather thought that Apple II had straightforward and easy-to-understand DOS and tools. Then again, I grew up with the system and had a disk drive in 1979.

 

As far as speed, The Apple II disk was/is the fastest among the home micros. An entire disk of 143K can be read to memory in something like 14 seconds.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I never had a C64 fail on me, I had two of them. One when they first came out and one I acquired 2nd hand in the 90's. I also never had an Atari 8-bit rig fail either. 2 Atari 800s and 1 Atari 400. I always made sure they had proper ventilation, and waited in between power off-on cycles. I also made extra effort to only work with them in what I tried to ensure was a static-free environment. Like not walking across the shag carpet and then jamming a cartridge into them. If did play on the carpet I had a professional anti-static mat set up and grounded. When I played with these in my bedroom blanket fort I always put them up on books or something flat.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As far as speed, The Apple II disk was/is the fastest among the home micros. An entire disk of 143K can be read to memory in something like 14 seconds.

 

The Apple drive card was very fast because it basically piped the raw drive signals to the computer's CPU.

 

The downside was that without a traditional controller to shift in the data, the CPU was pretty much completely utilized during loading and the drives cables had to be fairly short for the drives to work reliably. It was a much cheaper solution than a dedicated microprocessor to serially feed the host machine, though.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I never did like serial disk drives or any storage device that transferred serially. Not until USB 2.0 got underway with Windows 98se and Windows XP. That's something like 25 years later! I'm thinking it was the development of low-cost analog signal processing for the paired TX/RX lines in the specification that made it suddenly practical.

 

I guess the bulk and slowness of Atari/Commodore drives were a turn off to me. The extra weight, the extra complexity, not for me. The advantage was a simpler physical connection which was more consumer friendly than the 1978 Apple Disk II. One mistake with that connector and poof!

 

I also believe the reasoning behind the short cables for the Apple II would be that no signal processing is done, and the lines are parallel, thus you can only go so far before the adjacent lines generate interference that overpowers the original signal. With serial it's less of a problem, you deal with only one problem, and that's the signal weakening, no self-induced interference.

 

In some cases, on an "RF-quiet" night and good grounding and clean contacts I could string together two extension cables (arranged flat and just so) on a Disk II, and get something like almost 2 meters length. It was a fun experiment. But I wouldn't consider it reliable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Apple drive card was very fast because it basically piped the raw drive signals to the computer's CPU.

 

The downside was that without a traditional controller to shift in the data, the CPU was pretty much completely utilized during loading and the drives cables had to be fairly short for the drives to work reliably. It was a much cheaper solution than a dedicated microprocessor to serially feed the host machine, though.

 

I was rather surprised that no one ever did (much anyway) context shifting. Where the CPU would load some data, then run the user's program, and go back and forth. Thus simulating simultaneous disk access and running a program.

 

I seem to recall some game's title page that kept the drive running and scrolled new data onto the screen, bottom-to-top, as it came in from the drive.

 

Maybe this wasn't explored as it was then believed that total rotational life of a floppy disk was 40 cumulative hours. And the friction generated heat if the head stayed in one position. So..?

 

---

 

But it did confuse my childhood mind why Atari and Commodore needed a big-ass transformer and all that complex circuitry to do what the Apple II did with 12 simplistic TTL chips.

 

Atari 810 had 17 chips, some of which were LSI and far more complex than 74LS series gates.

1541 had a whopping 36 chips! Essentially a complete computer in there with a 6502 processor.

 

Vic20 + 1540 = Slow

C64 + 1541 = Slower

 

Slower on purpose so that the drive didn't interfere with video chip timings or something like that!

https://ilesj.wordpress.com/2014/05/14/1541-why-so-complicated/

Edited by Keatah
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

regarding relyablility...

 

except for the Xbox 360 my gear did not broke or blow even used for hours and hours... (800XLs, 800, VIC-20, 130XE, 65XE, C64ii, SNES, Jaguar, Amiga 1200, Atari STE, Amiga 500, 1084 Mon, ST Mono-Mon, PS2, NDS, Gamecube, 2600, 7800, iMacs, GBA, Lynx, Iphones, Nokias, PCs, Xbox 1, PSX, ...) I have to say I remember only 2 devices "breaking"

 

Samsung SmartTV (panel/backlight gone) and Xbox 360 with Ring of Death.

 

ps. when looking at the gear list... I see why my wife says "you are a nerd" :D

Edited by Heaven/TQA
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That may be, but the central electronic repair center was chock full of c64's. Cooked chips, cooked power supplies. Very rare to see an Apple or Atari on the sheets.

That's what i meant about anecdotal evidence really; how many of those C64s were there due to user error - trying to reset the machine from the user port and shorting the wrong pins, attempting to connect the PSU to another port or similar, prodding around inside with a screwdriver - or external forces like power spikes and dodgy third party peripherals?

 

Come to think of it, how many were just "niggles" like blown internal fuses or chips working loose from sockets which take five minutes to fix? i've seen those more times than i care to count from my days selling home computers and as a teenager my first C64 was sold to me as "faulty" but just needed the VIC-II reseating. But again, anecdotes...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I guess when an Atari 8-bit user reappraises the C64 is a bit like when a C64 user reappraises the NES. It is rather uncommon but known to happen every now and then.

Yes, and there's always the danger of "institutional" (unintended) bias even when attempting to be objective (which is kind of unlikely in said machines' forums anyway, if only for little jokey digs to the crowd). Only someone who loves both and is knowledgeable would give best balance (if they wanted)... though god knows what kind of cognitive dissonance they would be living with if they had to judge them against each other seriously!

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Also remember that Apple didn't get their machines FCC certified for home use. This is how they got away with exposed ribbon cables. Everyone else had to devise a low-emission interface, and serial was it.

 

Gosh yes. I remember televisions in the house going wonky and having sawtooth background noise. I think it even leaked over into the neighbor's house IIRC.

 

It didn't help that my setup and bedroom was high up in the attic for most of the times. Near the antenna, and at the right height to transmit across the street. And I didn't know any better either, I made an extension cable so I could play the the computer in bed or on the floor and have the TV still on the stand. And it was unshielded speaker wire. I often played with the cover off so I could see the circuits and try to imagine what was going on in them.

 

I even had an antenna amplifier in attempt to boost the signal and get a clearer picture. At the time I was using the same logic as if a toy took 6 volts and worked at this speed. Then 9 volts would make it go even faster. This applied to electronics and computers too. An infantile & unworkable overclock.

 

Later, I made an antenna to transmit to my buddy's bedroom for real. About 50ft away. Basically some wire done up in a square and a triangle I taped to the wall. And we'd play text adventures via walkie-talkie. He could monitor the signal on his TV and just radio in ideas about what to do.

 

I had two modulators going. One for VHF 2-3, and one for UHF 33 or 34. Sup'R'Mod brand.

Edited by Keatah
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

i can't remember having a Commodore 8-bit die on me... i've killed a few machines - being nosey and carelessly trying to remove the shielding on the VIC-II without powering down beforehand for example but that wasn't anything to do with build quality.

 

800XLs on the other hand, the first one i got for Christmas developed a red screen of death in under a week so went back to Dixons (the salesdroid swapped it out no questions asked, saying there'd been a lot of returns with similar faults) and the replacement ran for a few years before developing a RAM fault. And no, that wasn't down to me and a screwdriver for a change, it just conked out.

 

That's the problem with anecdotal evidence...

 

Absolutely right, the only fair evidence is proven returns figures from the companies themselves and I don't know them, I can only reflect on what I saw as can you TMR, we both were doing the same stuff for the same company but regional differences, different suppliers of the components to build the machines and just the unknown can change everything. In some respect I try to avoid these threads because as we all know they turn in to 'mines bigger than yours' normally far too early on.

 

All I know is that I enjoyed all the machines I've owned, I went on to them because I saw a good supply of what I liked, games mostly, and they were good quality, my only 'mistake' was an ST which I was offered at a cheap price, I lasted one day with it, >I< could not get on with it, I quickly moved to the Amiga after seeing it. There's nothing wrong with sampling all the machines out there, why miss out when there's goodness to be had and that's why threads like these fail in the end, good intentions turn to machine rivalry when people really should try other machines, if you don't like them then move on, it does not make them bad, just not your thing.

 

Paul..(TMR, bet Rob killed loads of Atari's :) )

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1. Sid vs Pokey: Definitely this comes down to personal taste. The consensus of the public is that SID is better. I personally like Pokey. But really, it's a matter of taste. Both sound awesome when programmed well, and like crap when not.

I always thought of the POKEY as a tone generator that can be made to make noise and the SID as a noise generator that could be made to make tones.

 

EDM and Rock, the two most popular genres of music in games and demos more noisy than tonal. The Atari struggles to play that kind of music. Look at arcade and 8-bit console game music of the time, it was far more tonal than noisy. The C64 redefined the noise a home computer was expected to make. It's just another example of picking up the C64's scraps instead of making full use of the available hardware and playing to the Atari's strengths.

 

2. Reliability: For multiple reasons, the c64 is vastly less reliable than the Atari. I've been through like 8 commodore computers over the years... and I still have my original Atari 800 and it runs fine. This has also been the experience of multiple collectors I know, and the general consensus of the forums. But I am referring to the original 800 line and the XL line. The XE is just as unreliable as the c64. Almost like the same person was running the company...

You can count me amongst the people who (at least anecdotally) have seen that reliability problem with the C64. The Atari was an "engineered computer", the C64 was a "game playing product". One built to a spec level, the other to a price point.

 

Just look at the keyboard on the 130XE or look at the way the Atari ST was just knocked together out of off the shelf parts to see what the Atari 800 would have been if it had had Tramiel at the helm when it was first designed instead of at the end of its life.

 

3. As a game machine. Reliability issues aside, the c64 is a slightly more capable game machine. The Atari is a better all-around computer. Both have excellent games. The Atari handles fast arcade games better, while the c64 does graphical games a bit better. It also has a much bigger library due to being supported better/longer.

The C64 sold shedloads more than the Atari, by the time Tramiel re-engineered the machine for cost over spec it was too late. The people who bought Atari's were not the same people as the people who bought the C64. One set wanted a computer they could play games one, the other set wanted a games machine they could type the occasional letter on. They were just marketed differently and sold accordingly.

 

4. Homebrew: The c64 has a way more active homebrew community, due to it being more popular. The Atari could do the same thing, but sadly, we just don't have the fanbase that the c64 does. We do get some great games occasionally though.

I agree and I think it's because of the last point, the gamers/pirates wrote the demos and homebrew. We have some really talented sceners and brewers making stuff for Atari, but nothing like the numbers the C64 has. On the other hand we have people like FJC making Operating systems and word processors and people like Mytek, Lotharec and Candle producing amazing hardware the like of which is unmatched on the C64

 

4. Which system is better: Neither. It depends on which one you grew up with and had experiences with.

The Atari is a better computer, the C64 is a better games console with keyboard addon.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So I was curious if there were any defect rate numbers available for the Commodore 64 to see if it indeed was significantly more failure prone than select contemporaries like the Apple II and Atari 8-bit, and how the percentages worked out (not that we'd likely ever get numbers for any of those systems). As such, I asked the question on a big Commodore 64/128 Facebook group.

 

As expected, no one has been able to produce any hard numbers (again, likely a difficult, if not impossible, proposition for the vast majority of these companies; as a point of comparison, when we were writing the CoCo book, there weren't even good sales numbers available). Besides the usual anecdotes about having issue x, y, or z, and never having any issues, etc., Bil Herd, legendary Commodore engineer, was able to provide some color commentary on the topic:

 

"Production did whatever they had to do to hit the numbers. They didn't necessarily talk about it and we were not allowed on the production floor when I first got there.

This changed over time, I would like to think I was part of it, as I got to know the head of production (at the local bar no less) and I was adamant that we could lower the failure rates if they let us see what was going on. In one case I recommended protection diodes on the test jig as I think they were blowing out the chip on one of the ports (not even immediately, static discharge can break something later)"
In regards to the common practice of filling the power supplies with epoxy: "That was one thing we were not able to change until the 128 as the supply was procured by Commodore Japan and blessed at the highest levels."
"C64 reliability was all about the VIC chip and a couple of other custom chips. In the early days even the best ones sparkled (so we changed the Kernal so the unused character cells on the blue screen had the foreground and background characters set to the same color, they still sparkled but it was the same color as the background)
I got there just as they were going to a Beryllium lead fram to help pump the heat out of the die."
In regards to a comment about making a product purposefully short-lived: "Yes we never would have tried to make something fail or not last as long (as affordable) People get upset when they hear that I would not have added cost to a product if already was projected to last 3-5 years. Quite simply I would not have stayed one of the lead consumer designers if I put extra (unnecessary) cost, especially at the sales numbers of millions. (Think of 5 million dimes)"
In regards to a comment about the "nasty" power supply being the source of most of the reliability problems, randomly cooking parts as they failed, etc.: "The VIC I actually melted the case."
"Failures take many forms also, for example there were many units that started off violating the DRAM timings and then it got worse with heat. The DRAM contents could get corrupted which may do things like result in a reboot 20 minutes later. Back then if a home computer occasionally reset it wasn't considered to be all that unusual."
"The C64 suffered from high "infant mortality", once it got a couple of months old it would probably function like any other piece of technology for the day."
On the idea that the biggest problem someone saw was blown out SIDs (but who lived in an area with a lot of static electricity in the winter): "The C64 SID design actually violates one of my design rules that I use. My opinion is that whenever there is a large capacitor attached to a chip it should be current limited and possibly diode protected.
The issue is that when power is removed from SID that there is a residual voltage on the cap and now it has more voltage on that pin than the other pins including VCC.
The instantaneous current flow could be quite high and also violates the pin spec of the chip and forward biases stuff, etc."
And as a follow-on to that last comment and the idea of wouldn't it be something as simple as a drain resistor to sort that: "Usually a resistor in series, it usually can be so small so as not to add an RC pole in the case of a filter (like SID). I told the guy that tried to redesign the SID (for HMOS and other things) that he should heavily JFET/Diode protect that pin but I rather doubt he did. I don't think he ever really listened to a SID playing either."
  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

"C64 reliability was all about the VIC chip and a couple of other custom chips. In the early days even the best ones sparkled (so we changed the Kernal so the unused character cells on the blue screen had the foreground and background characters set to the same color, they still sparkled but it was the same color as the background)

I got there just as they were going to a Beryllium lead fram to help pump the heat out of the die."

 

This is one of the problems with NMOS technology. The power consumption is high and goes up with the number and speed of switching transistors. Atari's video was spread over 2 chips and most of the internals (everything not dealing with high-rez output) are switching at 3.58MHz. Vic II is one chip internally running at about 8MHz. That's asking a lot in a passively cooled plastic DIP package.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

How is it they were able to sell so many to home users?

Anyone can buy and bring home business machines. They just aren't guaranteed not to cause interference, and they cannot be designed to connect to the TV. I'm sure that people who bought the aftermarket modulator for the Apple had noisy picture issues.

 

I'd love to know what the FCC docs from the late '70s say. There were probably other restrictions on how they were sold and marketed as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Anyone can buy and bring home business machines. They just aren't guaranteed not to cause interference, and they cannot be designed to connect to the TV. I'm sure that people who bought the aftermarket modulator for the Apple had noisy picture issues. There were probably other restrictions on them as well. I'd love to know what the FCC docs from the late '70s say.

 

Yeah, famously that's why the TI-99/4 (not 4a) came with a monitor. They couldn't pass FCC regulations with their RF modulator in time. Supposedly that's what also spurred the creation of the TRS-80 Model III, to replace the Model I, but I also think it was probably time for an update in that case anyway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Everyone wants to know why the 800 didn't have proper slots and that's pretty much the reason. Atari sold their products through consumer channels and they wanted to target the living room. This meant the 800 was a beast made of cast aluminum with shields on every removable surface. Exposed slots would never have passed, or would have added a lot of cost to make sure they couldn't leak. Then (thanks to the TI fiasco), the FCC relaxed their standards and computers could suddenly be sold wrapped in foil-lined cardboard.

 

Bill, do you know how to get hold of the FCC standards from that time?

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bill, do you know how to get hold of the FCC standards from that time?

 

I think we'd be better off sourcing original company documents and/or people who were around at the time. I'm pretty sure it was just the standard FCC Part 15 requirements around that time.

 

Here's a passage from a rough draft of the CoCo book in reference to engineer Jerry Heep's work on a precursor to the technology that would find its way into the CoCo: "Once it became obvious that no amount of shielding wasn't going to address the RFI problem, Tandy employed a clever workaround. "They issued me a transmitter's license, by the FCC, to operate an experimental television station," Heep later recalled. "The license would allowed me to build transmitters which emitted a television signal." In essence, Heep's license allowed him to build and operate Green Thumb Boxes as individual little television stations. That stroke of end-run genius effectively got Tandy around the stringent FCC Part 15 regulations."

 

Crazy what engineers had to go through back then.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...