Computers and the videogame crash of the 80's.

[potatohead]

Well better is not the same as influential. 

 

If we move to a better discussion, yeah.  The PC was better.  

 

On many of my computers there are no drive letters.  Just saying.

 

In fact, that is most of them today.  Had not thought about it recently.  All part of another era creeping up upon us.

 

As for Prodos and DOS...  1.0 was pretty lousy. Prodos was better in many ways.  MS DOS improved nicely enough though.  But it was rough early on.

 

Actually looking at an IBM effort on its own?

 

Micro channel did not do so well, did it?

 

 

Edited September 13, 2020 by potatohead

[Keatah]

Drive C:\ is labeled as such because it is the first letter available for fixed-disk HDDs. Drives A & B are reserved for removable media such as floppies or tape drives. When the PC first came out I don't believe there was a hard disk available for it straight away. Hence drives A & B.

 

On a technical matter, I believe the PC quickly pulled ahead because of its ability to push text around pretty quickly, much like the Apple II. The PC had very comprehensive firmware (BIOS) that was very well documented, much like the Apple II. And of course, the slots. Those are all things eminently visible and recognizable.

 

Less apparent to the consumer would be the 8086/8088's architecture. The shape of the stuff inside. Intel had demonstrated its ability to grow and support its microprocessors. 4004, 8008, 8080, and more. Great and complete documentation. Tools. Support. And more. They were heavily vested in expanding their product line.

 

The VCS, Atari 400/800, C64, Amiga, and other popular rigs of the day had big complex (relatively speaking) custom chips. These gave those systems a unique and capable personality, but for expansion purposes they were stealthily limiting. Not on purpose. But inherently. Just changing bus speeds meant making a new custom chipset. A company would need to

 

Intel had made custom chips too, except they were broken down into smaller logic pieces or blocks. You could get DMA, FDD/HDD, IRQ, FPU, mux/demux, buffers, registers, gates, memory controllers, and early CRT display controllers. And shortly thereafter beautiful sounding sound chips from 3rd party companies (all hail OPL3)!! And later, awesome-looking 3D graphics processors. Many parts from intel were diverse and interconnected. You could build a machine with an MMU or not.

 

A lot of that was much simpler than say something like Antic, Pokey, Copper, Agnus, Denise, Paula, Gary, RIOT, TIA, GTIA, and others. Those chips, while marvels of capability in their time, were not able to be thrust into future designs. Not without causing limitations. Their interfacing requirements seemed to be restrictive. And future designs weren't able to pull them forward because their performance was limited, or they limited performance of the host.

 

This meant designs had to be more expensive to accommodate non-standard trickster glue logic. Intel's building blocks were smaller, more granular, and cheaper. They could be assembled in many thousands of ways to make whatever was necessary in a timely cost-effective fashion. The glue that held it together, basic logic like 74LSxxx and derivatives, was cheap and available in many speeds and packages.

 

Rather than designing an expensive custom chip, an "IBM-PC" engineer or peripheral designer could browse a vast number of cheap parts and make up-to-date functionality. No need to layout a new chip and fab it and test it - that was a long process back then. And in the future updating the design was equally easy.

 

To businesses (and other influencers) the discreteness and higher number of parts didn't mean much. This was a tool that had to do stuff. Hence the misleading advertising companies selling machines with custom chips spewed forth. They conveniently left out the limiting factors I just described.

 

Another thing in the PC world is that as functions become widespread and stable throughout the world, they tended to become integrated into silicon. Discrete mainboard functions like timers and IRQ and DMA controllers became absorbed into the Northbridge and "chipset". And then eventually into the CPU die itself. May sound contradictory what I was saying, but these are staple & stable housekeeping functions. And suddenly there is more room on the motherboard. Or you could make it smaller.

 

I was personally "upset" that the 6502 didn't really evolve. Not even in clock speeds. At least nothing like going from 4MHz to 100MHz.

 

And Motorola was an "old-man" company. Motorola's time had come and gone before it even got here! They couldn't evolve the 68000 into anything but an automotive controller - which is losing marketshare now that more powerful things are needed.

[Keatah]

 

To all: I know I ranted about custom chipsets and x86 superiority in the past. I just wanted to do it again.

 

7 hours ago, bluejay said:

I like Apple and I understand the IBM couldn't have been without the computers that came before it. MS-DOS was much more versatile than ProDOS. The IBM PC, in many ways, was more capable than the Apple II. But best of all, it had potential to expand to infinity and beyond. As I have said, modern computers are based on the IBM PC because it was better than what the Apple II did. I see no other logical reason why modern computers would still be more or less compatible with a computer almost 40 years old.

I feel modern computers are based on the original machine of yore strictly out of necessity of compatibility and because of evolution. The cost incurred when redesigning a system over and over again would be too high.

 

Another not-instantly-recognized advantage of the PC is [that] long-term evolution. A user could upgrade piecemeal and still retain a lot of compatibility. A personal example is some graphics software I purchased back in the 386/486 days. It still works natively on an i9 today. It's been working on countless configurations.

 

I would have gotten sick and tired of always buying new software with every speed and memory increase. Had I have had to replace the software with each speed upgrade I would have spent thousands of dollars. And that money invested over time is nicely compounded. So BIG plus.

 

When I buy into Intel's 12th generation chips I'll have reasonable confidence in carrying over most of my software. And 100% confidence in transferring my working data files. I do understand that virtualization and emulation will need to be a part of this. It will become more important for folks working with 30, 40, 50-year old software.

 

On the other hand. Just this week I was getting into DemonStar (PC shooter), and noted how much it resembled Raptor (another PC shooter). But the old DOS version of Raptor didn't run on our i9. I just pulled out DOSBOX and had it working perfectly in minutes. I don't doubt vintage gamers appreciate this level of compatibility.

 

And MAME, we all know how it has grown up and is now about 26 years old. Rapidly changing platforms would not permit such things to happen. Can't cook a pot-roast in 8 minutes!

 

The slow evolution of PC provides the right environment for solutions like these to be born in and become workable. Practical. Refined. PC provides the hardware compatibility straight away or it gives you the tools to attain that compatibility.

[mr_me]

On 9/12/2020 at 3:39 AM, Keatah said:

Provided the OS lets them and has provisions for what they want to do. File managing and importing/exporting operations always seem fraught with tediousness. Procedures designed with restrictions which allow one file to be moved after an annoying number of taps or clicks. And you're never quite sure precisely where the file is. Can't work that way, and thus my mobile phone remains just that, a phone and camera. Everything else waits till getting home to a real computer and not a babysitting toy.

 

What phone do you have.  Apple went out of it's way to hide files from users locking them within each app.  Android has a file system like any computer, it is linux based, and has lots of handy file managers available.

 

16 hours ago, potatohead said:

Re:  ColecoVision

 

In my neck of the woods, a few people got 'em.  And having a legit Donkey Kong was a big deal.  Impressed a lot of people, but I must say the moment the NES hit?

 

Boom!  They were everywhere within a year.  

 

If you ask me, the Coleco machine had a lot going for it.  Controllers, and enough graphics power to make some compelling games.  Was a definite upgrade to the systems prior, but it was not quite there.  To me, seeing the NES and things coming, and what computers were doing?

 

It seemed high end, but last of an earlier generation more than it seemed forward looking.  That's just one subjective take.  

 

And marketing had a YUGE influence on all that.  The NES was the start of something, and it was big, they had those gaming events, etc...  

 

How things were marketed had just as big of an impact as any technical decisions did.  IMHO, the "add on computer" was seen as a dubious move by a lot of people, and it was easy to get lumped into the toy computer bucket.  The Aquarius, Tomy, Adam, others were all kind of little islands.  Thinking back, people were like, either get a computer, or get a game system.   

 

I know that's how most of my circle of people felt about it.  The good stuff was happening elsewhere.

 

Game systems played games.  Computers could do that, and actually do computing. 

 

A lot of people who got an NES also got a C64 too.

 

Right about that time, computing split.  As others have mentioned, people began taking work home, others were starting up work (that's me taking contracts and delivering programs, or info, graphics) at home. 

The colecovision had high resolution but lacked basic graphics features that previous generation game systems had.  The atari 2600 had more colours, intellivision had hardware fine scrolling and could put more sprites on a line without flicker.  The atari 5200 had all of that but coleco had slightly higher resolution and donkey kong which won them the next generation console war in 1982/83.  But commmodore 64 and nes graphics and audio made the colecovision technology obsolete not long after it came out.

 

12 hours ago, bluejay said:

IBM was clearly inspired by Apple. They were neck and neck in the early 80s, and even though the Apple 1 was a terrible computer it was the first computer to define what a personal computer was. 

However, in the end, the Apple II died and the PC won. Why is the primary hard drive called C:\? IBM and MS-DOS. Why do executable programs end with .exe? IBM and MS-DOS.

I like Apple and I understand the IBM couldn't have been without the computers that came before it. MS-DOS was much more versatile than ProDOS. The IBM PC, in many ways, was more capable than the Apple II. But best of all, it had potential to expand to infinity and beyond. As I have said, modern computers are based on the IBM PC because it was better than what the Apple II did. I see no other logical reason why modern computers would still be more or less compatible with a computer almost 40 years old.

The open architecture of the ibm pc is a lot like the 1978 apple ii, which was not unlike the s-100 computers before it.  Apple was a distant third in the first generation of microcomputers and way behind commodore and ibm in the 1980s.  That doesn't mean they didn't make quality products.  We know the ibm pc was the most popular platform of the 1980s but which is the best is arguable.

 

10 hours ago, potatohead said:

Well better is not the same as influential. 

 

If we move to a better discussion, yeah.  The PC was better.  

 

On many of my computers there are no drive letters.  Just saying.

 

In fact, that is most of them today.  Had not thought about it recently.  All part of another era creeping up upon us.

 

As for Prodos and DOS...  1.0 was pretty lousy. Prodos was better in many ways.  MS DOS improved nicely enough though.  But it was rough early on.

 

Actually looking at an IBM effort on its own?

 

Micro channel did not do so well, did it?

 

 

This has been discussed in other threads but the ibm pc was slow and lacking on many levels.  Starting with choice of cpu which intel won by default because nobody else could deliver chips.  The motorola 68000 was the natural choice but only intel could deliver chips at the time.  IBM settled for a slow cpu with segmented memory addressing.  That may have contributed to the slow evolution of its software including its single task operating system that users suffered through for more than a decade.

 

Regarding intel, they finally got it right with the 386 but the 64-bit architecture we use today isn't even theirs, licensed from amd.

 

Regarding the 6502, when you're selling your product at rock bottom prices there's no money for r&d.  Without r&d there's no future.

 

By the way, the original ibm pc was available in a configuration without any floppy drive.  It booted to a basic interpreter and had an onboard audio cassette interface for data storage.  They didn't sell many of those but that cassette interface was in all models for many years.  And it wasn't long after its introduction before third parties made hard disk controller cards for them.

[JamesD]

20 hours ago, potatohead said:

Really @JamesD said that, but I'm not gonna fight the forum spiffy quote system right now.

 

Seriously!  That decision was a very poor one in hindsight.  The Tandy scene, maybe Coco 3 in particular, would have looked very different.  That little machine is very powerful.  Deserved much better software than it generally saw.

 

 

You have to wonder how many people didn't buy Radio Shack because it didn't run some program that could be run on anything.
A potato could run Print Shop, but I actually had people refuse to buy an Amiga because it didn't run Print Shop.
 

[JamesD]

Okay, the quote feature only grabs the first section of text, who thought that was a good idea

 

Quote

This has been discussed in other threads but the ibm pc was slow and lacking on many levels.  Starting with choice of cpu which intel won by default because nobody else could deliver chips.  The motorola 68000 was the natural choice but only intel could deliver chips at the time.  IBM settled for a slow cpu with segmented memory addressing.  That may have contributed to the slow evolution of its software including its single task operating system that users suffered through for more than a decade.

 

Regarding intel, they finally got it right with the 386 but the 64-bit architecture we use today isn't even theirs, licensed from amd.

 

Regarding the 6502, when you're selling your product at rock bottom prices there's no money for r&d.  Without r&d there's no future.

...

intel had a 2nd source supplier, AMD, and that was part of the contract.
I think Motorola could deliver chips, but I don't think the 68000 had a 2nd source yet.

As for the 6502...
You have to remember that MOS was purchased by Commodore. 
Jack Tramiel was more of a sales guy than a technology guy.
He really only pushed for development of CPUs that reduce part counts, and as a result, costs.
The 6510 had 6 additional I/O lines.
If Commodore had wanted, they could have had a serial UART and/or timer built in.

Rockwell had 65C02 microcontrollers that included more built in hardware, a hardware multiply, etc...
Sadly their regular 65C02 didn't include the multiply. 
WDC still has CPUs & microcontrollers based on the 65C02 and 65816, but they haven't done anything else.
 

[Keatah]

4 hours ago, mr_me said:

What phone do you have.  Apple went out of it's way to hide files from users locking them within each app.  Android has a file system like any computer, it is linux based, and has lots of handy file managers available.

Currently using an iPhone. For reasons. That it's limited in exposing the filesystem is no shocker - I previously messed around with iPads and iPods prior to purchase.

 

 

[zzip]

2 hours ago, JamesD said:

You have to wonder how many people didn't buy Radio Shack because it didn't run some program that could be run on anything.
A potato could run Print Shop, but I actually had people refuse to buy an Amiga because it didn't run Print Shop.

Print shop always seemed so limited to me.   I wanted a desktop publishing program that gave me full control over what I printed.

 

but I suppose it would be hard to created those ugly-ass banners in a DTP program that Printshop was known for.

[Leeroy ST]

It's a shame though because I really would have liked at least one other "PC" ecosystem to compete with PC in the modernday to shake up the industry. I guess technically one could consider android that alternative but  it's on a different side of the market. 

 

I'm tired of the sames things over and over, Windows XXXX with problems because no one is forcing Microsofts hand, HP and Dell near monopoly, peripherals dominated by a few companies, internal design and motherboard designs also by the same handful of companies.

 

It's similar with phones, you have "brands" but only three are mass market (Apple, Samsung, LG) one had a grip on the low-end but that's falling rapidly (Motorola), all run Android which has a near monopoly with no other open platform competing against it, closest is a locked ecosystem with Apple, which replaced Blackberry, everything else is basically dead and deals and influence has made it hard to impossible for new entrants to come in. Processors are 97% Qualcomm and 2% mediatek. Cameras and screens are made by a handful of companies.

 

I feel like the American spirit of competition has been eradicated, and as a result has taken out all the fun and excitement out of the tech industry outside of video games. But even that has its own separate pool of problems. 

 

Look at 80's and 90's computer industry or late 90's and pre-2012 phone industry, that's what I though we would see, evolving and growing innovation keeping things fresh and progressive. 

[Keatah]

The 80's, 90's, and pre-iPhone periods were times of throwing shit at the wall to see what worked. Now the wall is full and excess just dribbles down the gutter. Don't confuse haphazard throwing with creativity. This continued throwing business doesn't promote an environment of compatibility and standards, which make using tech so practical and enjoyable to begin with.

 

Some may view the hardware as being bland and lack innovation itself. But the same cannot be said for software. Software is unlimited with no restrictions. Anything, anyone, that demonstrates software is locked or lagging or doesn't innovate is simply operating out of a limiting mindset. Out of preconceived notions fostered by forces having nothing to do with the tech industry. Forces like "staying safe" and not venturing out of the box to try anything new. Commercialism and the unwillingness to take a risk on anything not using a safe and proven formula.

 

Simply put, there is nothing (on the tech side) stopping developers from making kick-ass tools and games and other programs - aside from perceived limits. Limits that don't really exist.

 

[JamesD]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

Print shop always seemed so limited to me.   I wanted a desktop publishing program that gave me full control over what I printed.

 

but I suppose it would be hard to created those ugly-ass banners in a DTP program that Printshop was known for.

Print Shop was great for "Welcome Home <insert name here>" or "Happy Birthday!" banners.
You had a lot of canned graphics objects you could use to quickly create something.
Importing someone's photo to go on the banner was not something they did back then.
Funny thing, we carried Deluxe Print which did pretty much the same stuff, and even offered color, but nope... "my friend said it has to have Print Shop".
*edit*
You have to wonder if that "friend" knew the Amiga didn't have Print Shop to begin with, but just wanted them to buy the same kind of computer they had.

 

Edited September 13, 2020 by JamesD

[JamesD]

1 hour ago, Leeroy ST said:

...

I'm tired of the sames things over and over, Windows XXXX with problems because no one is forcing Microsofts hand, HP and Dell near monopoly, peripherals dominated by a few companies, internal design and motherboard designs also by the same handful of companies.

...

Ugh... right now my brother can't install the latest drivers for his graphics card because some Microsoft api (probably .net) failed to update.
He has practically the same setup I do, the only real difference, is that his graphics card is an 8GB card, and I cheaped out with the 4GB version of the same card to wait for the new cards being released this year.
 

[MrMaddog]

9 minutes ago, JamesD said:

Funny thing, we carried Deluxe Print which did pretty much the same stuff, and even offered color, but nope... my friend said it has to have Print Shop.

 

Ugh, that's like someone saying "Can't use LibreOffice on Linux cuz I need MS Office running on Windows to open any Word doc..."

 

That was the one thing I hated about the PC standard was that people "forced" themselves into only using Wintel stuff that killed off other computer platforms that weren't made by Apple.

 

Personally, I saw the PC archtecture (in the 90's) as being completely open not only with plug-in hardware but also being able to run alternate OS's like Linux, emulators to still use non-compatible software and still be able to play the latest games & apps on Windows.

 

 

[Hwlngmad]

On 9/12/2020 at 1:47 AM, potatohead said:

A big driver for that was software.  By the late 80's, there was a lot of good software for both machines.  People were buying Apple 8 bitters for education and small business.  A few were buying them as workstations of some sort too, development, test, measure, control.  Same for C64, a bit less on the niche part of things.  Both machines had great game libraries.  

 

I knew people running both machines to make good money.  On the Apple, it was Appleworks mostly.  On the C64, I didn't see many, but a couple people, including an uncle of mine, used a C64 word processor that could conditionally include text and populate fields.  He made a ton doing real estate with that C64 cranking out kick ass offers and contracts in minutes.

 

I myself had a variety of machines, but a lot of the real work got done on an Apple 8 bit machine.  

Very true.  Software is probably what kept the Apple II and C64 alive.  Also, least we forget that the Apple II and C64 were upgraded with the Apple IIe Platinum being the last iteration of II line in 1987 and the C64C coming out with the slim design look of the Commodore 128 with the GEOS GUI in 1986 to keep the machines somewhat relative hardware wise, too.

[Hwlngmad]

On 9/11/2020 at 9:51 PM, JamesD said:

Just a couple things, though I'm not 100% sure what you mean by bridging the gap. 
I'm taking this as introducing a machine somewhere in between.

Apple introduced the IIGS, and Jobs went out of his way to neuter it so it couldn't compete with the Mac.
It was bridging the gap, but it was expensive, and the new software base was much smaller. 
Most people simply ran Apple II software.
If it had run at 4-8MHz, I think the GUI would have run much better, but then fewer people would buy a Mac.

Amiga development took place at a different company that was purchased by Commodore, so they didn't really have much notice to create something in between.
There was GEOS to add a windowed OS and apps though.
They probably should have introduced an improved C64 upgrade with 2MHz, 128K, and additional colors instead of the TED series,
but I'm not sure the Amiga deal was in the works yet, so it's not like it would have been an intentional gap filler.

The Atari ST was completely developed from scratched after Jack took over. 
Again, no development time for some intermediate 8 bit, though they did give the 120XE more RAM... and a worse keyboard.

If you meant something like a 68008 machine... it would have had some appeal on price, but the performance wouldn't be that great.
It's already a 32 bit oriented instruction set on a 16 bit buss, so 68000 code isn't nearly as compact as 8 bit instruction sets.
Code would run quite slow on the 68008, and you still need the same amount of RAM to run the software, so it's not saving much.

Sure, what I meant by "bridging the gap" would be machines that fell between say a C64 and an Amiga.  Now, I do realize that there were some machines that would be in this realm (like the CoCo 3, Commodore 128, Atari 130XE).  However, it is (in my opinion) just a little surprising that there weren't more machines (in the U.S. at least) that tried to bridge the gap between the low end C64 (i.e. $200ish range) side to the Atari ST/Amiga/PC clone higher end ($1k and more) side .  However, due to the massive amount of software for the Apple II and C64, combined with hardware updates both machines received, I suppose that explains (to, I suppose, a vast degree) why there weren't more machines.

[zzip]

9 minutes ago, Hwlngmad said:

Sure, what I meant by "bridging the gap" would be machines that fell between say a C64 and an Amiga.  Now, I do realize that there were some machines that would be in this realm (like the CoCo 3, Commodore 128, Atari 130XE).  However, it is (in my opinion) just a little surprising that there weren't more machines (in the U.S. at least) that tried to bridge the gap between the low end C64 (i.e. $200ish range) side to the Atari ST/Amiga/PC clone higher end

I wouldn't even put the 130XE in this category.  Besides extra-memory and a chip to manage it, it had no new features over the rest of the 8-bit line.

 

The C128 had enhancements at least.

 

The IIgs is a better example of interim machine, but it was priced outside this $200-1000 realm

 

But the fact that Apple crippled the IIgs to make sure it wouldn't cannibalize sales I think shows the answer to why these companies didn't make better interim computers.

 

Coco 3 is probably the best example of an interim machine.  Maybe it's because Tandy's 16-bit machine the Tandy 1000 was playing in the clone market and wasn't as proprietary as the others?

[wierd_w]

That sounds like naked greed, in the face of clear and present inefficient pricing for product that does not meet the customer's actual needs.

 

EG, "Why sell the customer what they actually need-- A mid-range system with decent performance and featureset, at a moderately increased pricepoint over the bargain floor offers, when we can forbid that option, and try to force them to all buy ferraris instead. Then we can focus only on ferraris, and make a killing."

 

You see that kind of mindset all the way through to the late 90s, when the "Sub 500$ computers" hit the market, and then suddenly sold like hotcakes.

 

Nobody wanted to specifically target the mid-range.  They either wanted to target the "Toy computers for peanuts; they probably dont even know what they are buying anyway." end of things, or to target the "This is the sexiest bit of hardware out there, at the highest price, so you know it must be good-- We don't care that all you really need is something that can do spreadsheets in a reasonable amount of time; we are selling you something you can barely afford, that has more power than you need, because we dont want to diversify, and we know you have no choice, now open that wallet, and make it rain" end of things.

 

The outliers to that were things like the early apple computers. Woz practically bent over backwards to drive the component counts down, and pricepoints down, as hard as was humanly possible for the time, to get as much bang for the buck spent as possible.  (That did not stop Jobs trying to play silly games with the sales price, but it did show at least one of the founders was interested in getting the customer the balance between price and power that the market was actually demanding.)

 

Slavish devotion to the "High or Low end-- there is no Midrange!" mantra is one of the reasons Commodore died, and did not properly manage the Amiga line of computers.  They wanted to sell Amigas in the US as only high-end business machines, thinking that they could demand premium prices with an unbalanced price equilibrium.  Meanwhile, in Europe, they realized that people were using them for a wide assortment of purposes, that they were widely popular as midrange home computers for gaming AND work outside of big-name video editing and pals-- and were busy trying to make and offer product to meet those market demands-- and the product did very well.

 

 

I would say that the European example with Amiga vs the US one, clearly demonstrates that it was most certainly NOT about "We can't do that", so much as "we WONT do that", and the unwillingness to not do anything but the highest or lowest pricepoints, was literally toxic to the market.

 

 

[Bill Loguidice]

50 minutes ago, Hwlngmad said:

Sure, what I meant by "bridging the gap" would be machines that fell between say a C64 and an Amiga.  Now, I do realize that there were some machines that would be in this realm (like the CoCo 3, Commodore 128, Atari 130XE).  However, it is (in my opinion) just a little surprising that there weren't more machines (in the U.S. at least) that tried to bridge the gap between the low end C64 (i.e. $200ish range) side to the Atari ST/Amiga/PC clone higher end ($1k and more) side .  However, due to the massive amount of software for the Apple II and C64, combined with hardware updates both machines received, I suppose that explains (to, I suppose, a vast degree) why there weren't more machines.

I've always argued that the C-64 had the best combination of features, performance, and price point, so there was really no need for more low end 8-bit competition. Once a minimum quality level is reached (in this case, good graphics and sound and 64K memory), that's good enough for most people. That was reached with the C-64 upon its release, followed soon enough by a killer price point that the competition had a hard time matching. Once the software was in place, it was game over for everyone else on the low end (or relied on 8-bit technology) who wasn't already established.

In terms of a mid-range solution, I don't think there was really much of a market for one. This was not a time that you could do much more with a computer offering between what a C-64 could do and what the higher end platforms like the Macintosh, ST, Amiga, and PC could do. And as you stated, there were pseudo in-betweeners like the C-128 and CoCo 3, as sort of super 8-bits, but they really were just meant to extend already established platforms. So, if anything, those were the mid-range solutions for the small percentage of users who wanted a bit more punch and/or a way to further extend their original 8-bit investments. And frankly, by the time something like the Amiga 500 hit, the higher end platforms suddenly became surprisingly price competitive with something like a similarly decked out CoCo 3 (with "required" disk drive, monitor, and RAM expansion to use its extra features) as just one example. So really, the higher end platforms came down to mid-point pricing after just a handful of years themselves.

[+wongojack]

On 9/11/2020 at 10:37 AM, wongojack said:

 

So no crash for computers but perhaps a slower growth rate than from 80 to 83

 

I also found the quote I was thinking of from Bill's (and Matt Barton's) book regarding machines in-between 8bit and 16bit.  It is on page 116 of Vintage Game Consoles: The Greatest Platforms of All Time.  This is an excellent book and despite its title, it dips deeply into computer platforms.  I was expected to flip through and just re-read things I already knew, but instead, it is deeply engaging with anecdotes and helpful context explanations about each era as well as console/platform.  The quote is this:

 

" . . . no single computer model would ever again enjoy the market share of the C-64 in its heyday.  In hindsight, there was simply no way to replicate that special combination of power and price that the C-64 embodied.  This was evident by the long list of failed competitors in its class, including Commodore's own C-16 and Plus/4, or with enhanced variations like the C-128 or unreleased C-65 prototype., which promised to be the ultimate 8-bit computer.  The problem for these wannabes, however, was that for millions of fans, they already owned the "ultimate" 8-bit computer and would accept no substitutes."

 

 

And I will insist on my opinion of the ZX Spectrum (the only computer in the Spectrum line I've ever tried).  Based solely on looks, it is the ultimate example of "you had to be there."  As someone who didn't live through the

popularity of that platform, it simply looks like a downgraded compromise.

 

On 9/11/2020 at 3:25 PM, wongojack said:

 

I actually just managed last month to get all the items in the cauldron on Knight Lore, and you'll find no argument from me on this statement I underlined.  Americans had things sorta dumbed down to them with consoles despite the evidence in this thread to the contrary.  Here's another quote from the same book about that:

 

"Other parts of the world evolved more slowly, with England and other European countries still favoring price over performance.  In particular, this meant more sustained competition within the personal computer scene . . . The vibrancy of the European market in this generation also birthed a whole army of "bedroom coders" whose skills would soon be appreciated the world over, giving the Americans a run for their money . . ."

 

8 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

I've always argued that the C-64 had the best combination of features, performance, and price point, so there was really no need for more low end 8-bit competition. Once a minimum quality level is reached (in this case, good graphics and sound and 64K memory), that's good enough for most people. That was reached with the C-64 upon its release, followed soon enough by a killer price point that the competition had a hard time matching. Once the software was in place, it was game over for everyone else on the low end (or relied on 8-bit technology) who wasn't already established.

In terms of a mid-range solution, I don't think there was really much of a market for one. This was not a time that you could do much more with a computer offering between what a C-64 could do and what the higher end platforms like the Macintosh, ST, Amiga, and PC could do. And as you stated, there were pseudo in-betweeners like the C-128 and CoCo 3, as sort of super 8-bits, but they really were just meant to extend already established platforms. So, if anything, those were the mid-range solutions for the small percentage of users who wanted a bit more punch and/or a way to further extend their original 8-bit investments. And frankly, by the time something like the Amiga 500 hit, the higher end platforms suddenly became surprisingly price competitive with something like a similarly decked out CoCo 3 (with "required" disk drive, monitor, and RAM expansion to use its extra features) as just one example. So really, the higher end platforms came down to mid-point pricing after just a handful of years themselves.

 

Have always appreciated your perspective on this Bill

 

[Hwlngmad]

4 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

I've always argued that the C-64 had the best combination of features, performance, and price point, so there was really no need for more low end 8-bit competition. Once a minimum quality level is reached (in this case, good graphics and sound and 64K memory), that's good enough for most people. That was reached with the C-64 upon its release, followed soon enough by a killer price point that the competition had a hard time matching. Once the software was in place, it was game over for everyone else on the low end (or relied on 8-bit technology) who wasn't already established.

In terms of a mid-range solution, I don't think there was really much of a market for one. This was not a time that you could do much more with a computer offering between what a C-64 could do and what the higher end platforms like the Macintosh, ST, Amiga, and PC could do. And as you stated, there were pseudo in-betweeners like the C-128 and CoCo 3, as sort of super 8-bits, but they really were just meant to extend already established platforms. So, if anything, those were the mid-range solutions for the small percentage of users who wanted a bit more punch and/or a way to further extend their original 8-bit investments. And frankly, by the time something like the Amiga 500 hit, the higher end platforms suddenly became surprisingly price competitive with something like a similarly decked out CoCo 3 (with "required" disk drive, monitor, and RAM expansion to use its extra features) as just one example. So really, the higher end platforms came down to mid-point pricing after just a handful of years themselves.

Very true Bill.  I, personally, just find it intriguing that no one really tried apart from a handful of attempts considering how many tried their hand in the late 70s / early 80s.  However, as you state above, you had the C64 on the low end that no one (really) could compete with and then you had (essentially) mid-range solutions like the Amiga 500 or even the Tandy 1000 HX come around circa 1987.  So, that perhaps explains things quite a bit then.

[Hwlngmad]

49 minutes ago, zzip said:

I wouldn't even put the 130XE in this category.  Besides extra-memory and a chip to manage it, it had no new features over the rest of the 8-bit line.

 

The C128 had enhancements at least.

 

The IIgs is a better example of interim machine, but it was priced outside this $200-1000 realm

 

But the fact that Apple crippled the IIgs to make sure it wouldn't cannibalize sales I think shows the answer to why these companies didn't make better interim computers.

 

Coco 3 is probably the best example of an interim machine.  Maybe it's because Tandy's 16-bit machine the Tandy 1000 was playing in the clone market and wasn't as proprietary as the others?

Well, as Bill stated, by 1987 you did have computers like the Amiga 500 (and as I stated the Tandy 1000 HX) that hit the $200 to $1000 range.  So, perhaps the reason why so many didn't bother with more advance 8 bit solutions as it was too difficult to compete on the low end and the fact the market was rapidly moving toward the PC standard, especially from around the mid-'80s onward.

[zzip]

51 minutes ago, wierd_w said:

That sounds like naked greed, in the face of clear and present inefficient pricing for product that does not meet the customer's actual needs.

 

EG, "Why sell the customer what they actually need-- A mid-range system with decent performance and featureset, at a moderately increased pricepoint over the bargain floor offers, when we can forbid that option, and try to force them to all buy ferraris instead. Then we can focus only on ferraris, and make a killing."

 

You see that kind of mindset all the way through to the late 90s, when the "Sub 500$ computers" hit the market, and then suddenly sold like hotcakes.

 

Nobody wanted to specifically target the mid-range.  They either wanted to target the "Toy computers for peanuts; they probably dont even know what they are buying anyway." end of things, or to target the "This is the sexiest bit of hardware out there, at the highest price, so you know it must be good-- We don't care that all you really need is something that can do spreadsheets in a reasonable amount of time; we are selling you something you can barely afford, that has more power than you need, because we dont want to diversify, and we know you have no choice, now open that wallet, and make it rain" end of things.

It's actually a wise move.  If you are launching a proprietary computing platform,  you need mindshare,  the more you have, the more developers you have on board, and the more customers you will attract, etc.    If you are pushing two incompatible platforms, then you end up hurting yourself.    Atari was making this mistake in the console market by pushing the 2600, 7800 and XEGS at the same time,  but in computers, they knew they wanted to push as many people to ST as possible, while doing the minimum to support the XE line.

[elmer]

3 hours ago, zzip said:

I wouldn't even put the 130XE in this category.  Besides extra-memory and a chip to manage it, it had no new features over the rest of the 8-bit line.

 

The C128 had enhancements at least.

 

The IIgs is a better example of interim machine, but it was priced outside this $200-1000 realm

 

But the fact that Apple crippled the IIgs to make sure it wouldn't cannibalize sales I think shows the answer to why these companies didn't make better interim computers.

 

Coco 3 is probably the best example of an interim machine.  Maybe it's because Tandy's 16-bit machine the Tandy 1000 was playing in the clone market and wasn't as proprietary as the others?

 

2 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

In terms of a mid-range solution, I don't think there was really much of a market for one. This was not a time that you could do much more with a computer offering between what a C-64 could do and what the higher end platforms like the Macintosh, ST, Amiga, and PC could do. And as you stated, there were pseudo in-betweeners like the C-128 and CoCo 3, as sort of super 8-bits, but they really were just meant to extend already established platforms. So, if anything, those were the mid-range solutions for the small percentage of users who wanted a bit more punch and/or a way to further extend their original 8-bit investments. And frankly, by the time something like the Amiga 500 hit, the higher end platforms suddenly became surprisingly price competitive with something like a similarly decked out CoCo 3 (with "required" disk drive, monitor, and RAM expansion to use its extra features) as just one example. So really, the higher end platforms came down to mid-point pricing after just a handful of years themselves.

 

I believe that we can all agree that by 1987, the writing was clearly on the wall for the 8-bit generation, and the introduction of the Amiga 500, and the price drop of the Atari ST, both really started to make them viable machines for home consumers ... although honestly, in Europe at least, it wasn't until the next price drop in 1989 that the Amiga really started to fly off the shelves.

 

While small-business PC-clone users in the US could buy a Tandy 1000 in early 1985 (for $1200), it wasn't until 1986 that the European market really got a cheap PC-clone with the Amstrad PC1512, and with a price that could actually rival the Amiga and ST.

 

 

The C64 was released in 1982, and it deserved its success.

 

But that still leaves 1983/1984/1985 as years with an opportunity for a higher-specification, but affordable, 8-bit machine to appear.

 

Yes, both Atari and Commodore introduced upgraded machines in 1985 with the Atari 130XE and the Commodore 128, but the Atari 130XE really offered nothing new at all (just some extra memory), and the C128 was an awful mess of a machine, finally with an 80-column text mode, but with little advantage for any C64 user, and a terribly half-assed and slow CP/M mode thrown in that couldn't possibly appeal to anyone that wanted CP/M capability.

 

The CoCo3 was a nice hardware upgrade to the CoCo line in 1986, but it didn't seem to get promoted at all, and it was an upgrade to a machine that had pretty much already failed in the marketplace ... I mean, c'mon really *still* no sound chip on the CoCo3 in 1986???

 

 

So, to me at least, that leaves an opportunity for *someone* new to appear in the 1984-1986 timeframe.

 

In Europe, this was the Amstrad CPC range, finally delivering affordable 80-column computers to the home, small-business and even some industrial-control companies, and revitalizing CP/M as an OS where mom-and-pop business users could afford to buy professional CP/M programs from the early 1980s at bargain-basement prices.

 

For home users and gamers, the improvement in hardware tech by 1984 allowed the CPC to display 4-color bitmap graphics at 320x200, or 16-colors at 160x200, which was a nice color improvement over the older home computers.

 

In Japan, this was the MSX computer, or more-specifically, 1985's MSX2, which was a major upgrade to the 1979 technology in the original MSX.

 

In the US, there is annecdotal evidence that suggests that Atari considered importing the British Enterprise 128 computer into the US market for Christmas 1984 ... but the sale of Atari, and failure of Elan Computers to actually finish off the hardware and release the Enterprise before early 1985 certainly killed off that potential opportunity.

 

 

So, I still wonder ... why did nobody else in the US create an upgraded mid-range 8-bit computer in those years?

 

The only conclusion that I can come up with is that there really weren't any other electronics/consumer companies left in the US that wanted to get into the market after the vicious 1983 price-war.

 

Edited September 14, 2020 by elmer

[Leeroy ST]

1 minute ago, elmer said:

So, I still wonder ... why did nobody else in the US create an upgraded mid-range 8-bit computer in those years?

 

The only conclusion that I can come up with is that there really weren't any other electronics/consumer companies left in the US that wanted to get into the market after the 1983 price-wars.

 

The reasons are two, price margins were an issue and that range was considered risky by American companies.

 

The second is that with many American computer makers developing PC clones or products that ran DOS that would still be compatible, the only US companies that were making unique hardware were Apple, Atari, Radio Shack and Commodore. Two of which went all in on 16-bit.

[JamesD]

37 minutes ago, zzip said:

I wouldn't even put the 130XE in this category.  Besides extra-memory and a chip to manage it, it had no new features over the rest of the 8-bit line.

 

The C128 had enhancements at least.

 

The IIgs is a better example of interim machine, but it was priced outside this $200-1000 realm

 

But the fact that Apple crippled the IIgs to make sure it wouldn't cannibalize sales I think shows the answer to why these companies didn't make better interim computers.

 

Coco 3 is probably the best example of an interim machine.  Maybe it's because Tandy's 16-bit machine the Tandy 1000 was playing in the clone market and wasn't as proprietary as the others?

The Tandy 1000 group supposedly tried to get the CoCo line discontinued, and pointed out how much better the 1000 version of Rampage looked in a meeting!
Except it turned out that they pointed to the CoCo 3 screen which was the better looking version and that insured the CoCo was still manufactured a couple more years.
When the CoCo was discontinued, they supposedly destroyed all the design documents, etc... to make sure the decision was final.
Someone from the 1000 group no doubt.
 

 

5 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

I've always argued that the C-64 had the best combination of features, performance, and price point, so there was really no need for more low end 8-bit competition. Once a minimum quality level is reached (in this case, good graphics and sound and 64K memory), that's good enough for most people. That was reached with the C-64 upon its release, followed soon enough by a killer price point that the competition had a hard time matching. Once the software was in place, it was game over for everyone else on the low end (or relied on 8-bit technology) who wasn't already established.

In terms of a mid-range solution, I don't think there was really much of a market for one. This was not a time that you could do much more with a computer offering between what a C-64 could do and what the higher end platforms like the Macintosh, ST, Amiga, and PC could do. And as you stated, there were pseudo in-betweeners like the C-128 and CoCo 3, as sort of super 8-bits, but they really were just meant to extend already established platforms. So, if anything, those were the mid-range solutions for the small percentage of users who wanted a bit more punch and/or a way to further extend their original 8-bit investments. And frankly, by the time something like the Amiga 500 hit, the higher end platforms suddenly became surprisingly price competitive with something like a similarly decked out CoCo 3 (with "required" disk drive, monitor, and RAM expansion to use its extra features) as just one example. So really, the higher end platforms came down to mid-point pricing after just a handful of years themselves.

The TS-1000 sold a million machines in a year.
The only thing it had going for it is price.  It probably would have sold more if stores hadn't gotten so many returns from defective machines they stopped carrying them.
The C64 had quality issues at first too. 
Watch some of Bill Herd's speeches.  Other Commodore employees would steal chips out of machines he was working on to repair their own machines.
He had to put tubes of chips on his desk to stop that.
Based on that, I'd say price was the main issue, and things like quality were an afterthought.

Beyond price, I'd have to say games were the #1 thing people did with their computers.
People might buy a word processor, or Print Master, but they came back over and over for games.
Suggesting people somehow chose a machine by features is probably overrating most customer's knowledge.
I saw a lot of customers pass through my partner's computer store, and for every person that knew anything about computers, there were a hundred that knew nothing.

We'd hear "So and so said this", "I want to get what the schools have", "this magazine says", "it has to run this", "it has to be IBM",  etc...
The people that said "it has to run this" often didn't even know what that software did, someone just told them they needed to be able to run it.
I almost never heard anyone say anything about the hardware beyond "I need a hard drive", "I need a printer", or "I have to dial in to the university computer".
They certainly weren't asking about quality, performance, etc...  and any decision made based on that was indirect via a friend that knows computers, or a buyer's guide.
If performance was an issue, they just knew more MHz was better.
Oddly enough, a lot of people had never even heard of Commodore or Amiga was, so I'm pretty sure they didn't know what a C64 was. 
Everyone knew who Radio Shack, Apple, and IBM were.
From what I could tell, people didn't want to know about computers, they only got one because they thought they had to.
I think the reason a lot of people use tablets instead of computers now, is people still don't want to know about computers.
They see a tablet as an appliance, but a computer somehow has the expectation it requires you know something special.