6502 How to fairly compare the 8-bit Atari with their contemporary computers, speed-wise?

[ldelsarte]

Your reply is the perfect summary of the situation, as least to me.

On 1/26/2020 at 8:13 PM, emkay said:

It was a marvelous task in 1979 , but they missed to add features by the years.

So true! After the C64 release, an upgrade with cost-reduced machines (1200XL, 600XL, 800XL) and sleek design was not enough to fight in this competition.

I'm not at all an hardware expert, but I suppose an "ANTIC II" or a "CGIA II (ANTIC + GTIA, combined)" fully compatible with the existing ANTIC and adding more graphics mode (640x192, monochrome, to get 80col + 320x192 in more than 1 color, more player missiles, colour text modes) would have made a real difference.

And of course, obviously, a faster but 100% ATARI-BASIC compatible new BASIC, and a new Floating Point Math Package.

Plus a faster disk drive with a true double density.

If today an indiegogo or kickstarter project would offer to recreate the Atari 1053 or, better, Atari 1055, I would love to buy one.

[emkay]

21 minutes ago, ldelsarte said:

Your reply is the perfect summary of the situation, as least to me.

So true! After the C64 release, an upgrade with cost-reduced machines (1200XL, 600XL, 800XL) and sleek design was not enough to fight in this competition.

 

To be fair. The biggest feature of the Atari back then was the Basic that helped directly if a Syntax Error occurs . Particular for very programming starters it was a nerve saver

And the Disk handling wasn't that bad either. 

 

 

21 minutes ago, ldelsarte said:

I'm not at all an hardware expert, but I suppose an "ANTIC II" or a "CGIA II (ANTIC + GTIA, combined)" fully compatible with the existing ANTIC and adding more graphics mode (640x192, monochrome, to get 80col + 320x192 in more than 1 color, more player missiles, colour text modes) would have made a real difference.

And of course, obviously, a faster but 100% ATARI-BASIC compatible new BASIC, and a new Floating Point Math Package.

Plus a faster disk drive with a true double density.

If today an indiegogo or kickstarter project would offer to recreate the Atari 1053 or, better, Atari 1055, I would love to buy one.

 

Some things really have been weird, as the external drives could have been at any size, and sector count. In my "Atari Schiffeversenken" game, I turned the ST into a Drive for the Atari. So game only needed to be stored on an ST Disk. Then I turned the ST from a loading device to a communication device, having a nice "battleship" game on 2 computers.

 

And about the graphics and sound Part. There always had only one Chip to be actualized: The GTIA.

If you check the registers, you quickly will get all that unfinished stuff.

If you have in mind that "GTIA" is the extension of "TIA" , it might also explain much.

In 1979 CTIA was used because the computers had to be finished somehow. Even after the chips productions got cheaper and cheaper by the years, there never appeared a full "G-TIA". Not to mention that TIA also had 2 sound channels and was able to play real basses. Just the solution of finishing the "G-TIA" would have allowed to have 100% compatibility to the 2600 , and the cheaper chips production  could have brought some dedicated Screen RAM that is overlaid to the ANTIC Screen, that allowed 80 columns , a lot of colorful sprites, and possibly 2 16 Bit channels for music.