Add-ons that FAILED for the various "Classic Computers".

[Mr SQL]

2 hours ago, carlsson said:

I don't have sales figures at hand, so I'll take your word for granted. Perhaps it boils down to only 10% of the VIC-20 owners actually used their computers, so it was for them the software companies released games both for unexpanded and expanded machine?

Quite possibly and you had another great point earlier about accessories light the light-pen not being intended to sell in mass quantity which could apply to some of the larger RAM programs.

 

From my own experience when I released "expanded" games from Saint John Gallery Software I made sure they only tricked out a bit on newer versions of the hardware and were backward compatible with the lowest common denominator memory configuration that had market share unless it was a specialty product which could have it's own draw to make users upgrade to more memory and a disk drive, or even buy the whole computer system just to run the software.

1 hour ago, zzip said:

Atari never got held back by the 8K or 16K limits on some models though.   Especially once the disk game era arrived.  You can't run a floppy system on 16K so those fell by the wayside.    But most vendors limited their games to 48K to maintain compatibility with the 800.   A few would give enhanced features if you had 64K or even 128K

Great post zzip!  I think this is exactly how a successful 3rd party software company should be run in the 80's to maximize sales from Magazine ads (users system configs will follow the distribution curve) and it's how I ran mine.

 

[carlsson]

Regarding VIC-20, memory expansion and light pens, I would like to point to this list of advice from Bug-Byte to programmers looking to get published through them:

 

Quote

... and some free advice for would-be programmers

1. Make it an original - not arcade copies please.
2. Make it in machine code.
3. Lots of different screens if arcade game - variety keeps the game interesting.
4. Pictures & animation if adventure - lots of screens again.
5. Make it for, in order of preference: Commodore 64, Spectrum, BBC/Electron, Atari
6. Give it a pretty title screen.
7. Take time to get all the bugs out.
8. Don't make it for an obscure hardware set up (VIC-20 with 3K expansion & light pen) - it cuts down the market too much.
9. Take time to put in "professional" touches which aren't really necessary to play the game - pretty backgrounds to the screen, well designed characters, really smooth & flicker-free animation, good sound effects etc.
10. Send it in, you have nothing to lose - the reviewing service is totally free. At worst, your cassette will be returned to you with rating of its worth and suggestions for improvement. If Bug-Byte likes the program, you are under no obligation, until agreement has been reached over payment for it.

As you could see from my numbers, there were twice as many 16K releases as there were 3K releases, despite the bigger memory was more expensive. If anything, I'm willing to agree that the 3K memory expansion for the VIC-20 was a failed add-on, but the 8K and 16K ones weren't. Much is due to how the memory map is designed, with several holes to fill.

Edited November 20, 2020 by carlsson

[leech]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

Atari never got held back by the 8K or 16K limits on some models though.   Especially once the disk game era arrived.  You can't run a floppy system on 16K so those fell by the wayside.    But most vendors limited their games to 48K to maintain compatibility with the 800.   A few would give enhanced features if you had 64K or even 128K

I made this point in another thread, talking about how Atari never did have great developer relationships, as they seem to have always had lowest common denominator support.  Like Shadow of the Beast for example was coded for 512kb and no blitter STs.  Do we have a break down like for the VIC-20 on what software requires 64k+ or even ones that are enhanced?  I know AR would swap less if you had 64k or 128kb.

[zzip]

1 hour ago, leech said:

I made this point in another thread, talking about how Atari never did have great developer relationships, as they seem to have always had lowest common denominator support.  Like Shadow of the Beast for example was coded for 512kb and no blitter STs.  Do we have a break down like for the VIC-20 on what software requires 64k+ or even ones that are enhanced?  I know AR would swap less if you had 64k or 128kb.

Yeah exactly..  Atari computers were always hampered by this.   Thank God the 130ST never became reality :)

 

90K disk games on Atari 8-bit, 360K disk games on ST.    GTIA support was kinda rare, but did happen.

 

Memory on the 8-bit is the only exception to the rule that I can think of,  and I think it must be because if you had a disk drive then you likely had at least 48K in your system.

 

AR is the only commercial game that comes to mind for 64K + 128K support.   There may have been others, but I can't think of any.

[leech]

On 11/20/2020 at 10:33 AM, zzip said:

Yeah exactly..  Atari computers were always hampered by this.   Thank God the 130ST never became reality

 

90K disk games on Atari 8-bit, 360K disk games on ST.    GTIA support was kinda rare, but did happen.

 

Memory on the 8-bit is the only exception to the rule that I can think of,  and I think it must be because if you had a disk drive then you likely had at least 48K in your system.

 

AR is the only commercial game that comes to mind for 64K + 128K support.   There may have been others, but I can't think of any.

Yeah, it was funny.  A friend of mine had an 800, we had the 800xl and the difference in disk swaps even there was noticeable.   Then when I got a hold of a 130xe. It was even that much better!  But it was (at the time) the only game I know of that supported it.  I think the other multidisk games I am had tried was Alienants(?) And it didn't detect it.

I have read Ultima 4 didn't have music because they targeted 48kb... granted back in the day I didn't even notice as I thought they did it because Ultima 3's music got annoying after a few hours of hearing the same tune!

[leech]

On the note above about music.  What about the Mockingboard for the Apple II?  Seems to me it was popular, but at the sametime the support for it was dreadful!

[doctor_x]

Not sure anything comes close to the Atari Mindlink in terms of FAIL.

[Keatah]

On 11/21/2020 at 3:02 PM, leech said:

On the note above about music.  What about the Mockingboard for the Apple II?  Seems to me it was popular, but at the sametime the support for it was dreadful!

 

As I mentioned before. The Mockingboard made a mockery of Apple II gaming. Made the platform half-assed. It caused an imbalance because with the MB you suddenly had a specialized sound solution with custom-chip-like performance. Yet ZERO improvement in graphics. Apple II graphics traditionally (and today) match well with the modulated clicks of that little speaker. Subtle changes in speed when sound was being produced were even side cues as to what might be happening in the game.

 

As is typical of such add-ons everything has to be re-written to make use of it. Maybe in conjunction with some then-hypothetical graphics upgrade card, as a pair, it might have gone over better. But by that time you're down $600 and minus 2 expansion slots.

 

Won't say the later Ultima games didn't have nice music. But. One hit wonders..

Edited December 12, 2020 by Keatah

[leech]

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

 

As I mentioned before. The Mockingboard made a mockery of Apple II gaming. Made the platform half-assed. It caused an imbalance because with the MB you suddenly had a specialized sound solution with custom-chip-like performance. Yet ZERO improvement in graphics. Apple II graphics traditionally (and today) match well with the modulated clicks of that little speaker. Subtle changes in speed when sound was being produced were even side cues as to what might be happening in the game.

 

As is typical of such add-ons everything has to be re-written to make use of it. Maybe in conjunction with some then-hypothetical graphics upgrade card, as a pair, it might have gone over better. But by that time you're down $600 and minus 2 expansion slots.

 

Won't say the later Ultima games didn't have nice music. But. One hit wonders..

On that note, can we call the IIGS an 'Add-on' that failed?  ?  Not enough software was written specifically for it, and it was badly supported by Apple.  It has the opposite issue, great graphics for the time, but the lawsuit with Apple Music supposedly forced them to gimp the S in GS...

[Keatah]

It was a computer that failed. Certainly not an add-on. And certainly not for the same reasons the Mockingboard never gained widespread support. Or that it (GS) never gained support like the original II did.

 

In regards to graphics and sound chips..

 

Apple II, Atari 400/800, C64, Vic-20, Amiga, PC, Atari ST were harmonious machines. Both their audio and visual outputs were at the same technological level. It also goes without saying that most all cartridge based consoles are harmonious and balanced.

 

A IIgs wasn't. It was this weird hybrid. And it was artificially limited in one of its modes of operation - the sound part. And it didn't have display lists or a programmable graphics processor to match its programmable sound chip. Too many technical disparities. Therefore not harmonious.

 

An Apple II upgraded with a Mockingboard and/or an Arcade-Sprite board was not harmonious.

 

But don't take my word on it. Check the sales figures.

 

 

 

 

[leech]

3 hours ago, Keatah said:

It was a computer that failed. Certainly not an add-on. And certainly not for the same reasons the Mockingboard never gained widespread support. Or that it (GS) never gained support like the original II did.

 

In regards to graphics and sound chips..

 

Apple II, Atari 400/800, C64, Vic-20, Amiga, PC, Atari ST were harmonious machines. Both their audio and visual outputs were at the same technological level. It also goes without saying that most all cartridge based consoles are harmonious and balanced.

 

A IIgs wasn't. It was this weird hybrid. And it was artificially limited in one of its modes of operation - the sound part. And it didn't have display lists or a programmable graphics processor to match its programmable sound chip. Too many technical disparities. Therefore not harmonious.

 

An Apple II upgraded with a Mockingboard and/or an Arcade-Sprite board was not harmonious.

 

But don't take my word on it. Check the sales figures.

 

 

 

 

Kind of what I meant, it was a tongue in cheek comment that it was an add-on.  Like saying it was an Apple II with a bucnhc of stuff added onto it, rather than what it was, a new computer with some Apple II backwards compatibility built in. 

 

As it is, if Apple had developed that system and brought into the 32 bit and 64bit era with 100% backward compatibility to Apple II era software I would have a huge amont of respect for them.  As it is, Apple have switched CPU architectures more than most people have had wives.

[oracle_jedi]

80-column add-ons always seemed to me to be both desirable and disasters.  Without OEM support they usually ended up being niche products like the odd-ball 80-col expansions for the VIC and Atari. 

 

And Atari's own offering, the XEP80, was a comical mess, with I think two software products able to support it - Atari Writer 80 and Personal Butler.

 

A related group of desirable disasters were the CP/M expansions for the 64 and Atari.   It seemed you got either an unusable 40-column experience, an unreadable 80-column experience, or an ungodly expensive and esoteric CP/M computer that turned your Commodore or Atari into just a keyboard.

 

And the TritonXT for the TI-99/4A.   Whoever thought that was a good idea?

 

[oracle_jedi]

On 11/20/2020 at 7:57 AM, carlsson said:

Regarding VIC-20, memory expansion and light pens, I would like to point to this list of advice from Bug-Byte to programmers looking to get published through them:

 

 

Oddly, my memory was that Bug-Byte published some of the worst commercial VIC20 games.  Maybe slightly better than Liversoft, but only just.   Am I remembering this wrong?

 

[carlsson]

Hm, not entirely sure. Another VIC in the Wall is a decent Breakout game. I have no memories of Bug-Bytes versions on Asteroids, Backgammon or Chess. I seem to recall that Cosmiads var decent or maybe I'm thinking of another game. Panic and Q-Warrior says nothing to me, Scramble I'm not sure which was theirs and same about Vic-Men.

 

It should be noted though that the advertisement was from a while into 1983 when they were focusing on the C64 so perhaps their earlier VIC-20 titles were past them. Now, Bug-Byte was no powerhouse on the C64 neither. Out of 11 titles on Lemon64, only four have user scores above 6/10: Jeep Command 6.4 (Argus Press title republished by Bug-Byte), Star Soldier 7.9, Star Trader 6.6 and of course Twin Kingdom Valley 8.0 which may have been their jewel in the library.

[Keatah]

32 minutes ago, oracle_jedi said:

80-column add-ons always seemed to me to be both desirable and disasters.  Without OEM support they usually ended up being niche products like the odd-ball 80-col expansions for the VIC and Atari. 

 

And Atari's own offering, the XEP80, was a comical mess, with I think two software products able to support it - Atari Writer 80 and Personal Butler.

I think the Apple II was the only system to have successful 80-column upgrades. There seemed to be only one way of doing it. One standard. All the 80 column upgrades followed it. And in the transition from the II+ to the //e, Apple adopted the method and made it built in.

 

I'll attribute that state of affairs to the Apple II not having custom chips. It was as simple as tacking the 80col circuitry onto the bus. No need to insert stuff deep into the design.

 

32 minutes ago, oracle_jedi said:

A related group of desirable disasters were the CP/M expansions for the 64 and Atari.   It seemed you got either an unusable 40-column experience, an unreadable 80-column experience, or an ungodly expensive and esoteric CP/M computer that turned your Commodore or Atari into just a keyboard. And the TritonXT for the TI-99/4A.   Whoever thought that was a good idea?

On the Apple II, a CP/M card's Z-80 essentially replaced the host 6502. The cards sometimes had their separate memory, but were able to seamlessly use the Apple II's drives, keyboard, 80column, speaker, clock, printer, modem, and perhaps other hardware.

 

For cards that didn't have their own memory, they just used existing system memory. Some CP/M boards were capable of using the RamWorks boards for going beyond the base configurations of 48K or 64K.

 

 

[oracle_jedi]

3 hours ago, Keatah said:

I think the Apple II was the only system to have successful 80-column upgrades. There seemed to be only one way of doing it. One standard. All the 80 column upgrades followed it. And in the transition from the II+ to the //e, Apple adopted the method and made it built in.

 

 

Apple seemed to get a lot of things right with the II+ and then the //e.  

 

I didn't know all the 80 col cards worked to the same standards but that's cool and makes so much more sense for developers and consumers.  I liked how Apple made 128KB RAM and 80-columns an effective standard with the //e, it was a single upgrade card from Apple if I remember.

 

I think its the direction Atari should have gone with their aborted 1400XL.   80 cols and 128KB RAM in 1983 would have made so much more sense than built in 300-baud modem and a speech synthesis unit.

 

[carlsson]

IIRC, RAM chips had a spike in price around 1983-84 but then again I suppose the next series of Atari computers were not intended for the lower price segment anyway. When it came to peripherals, it seems that comms and speech were the cool things of the time, while more memory and higher resolution were just better of the same they already got. Also it should be noted that while the 600XL and 800XL machines were launched in the first part of 1983, it didn't seem like those were available to buy until well into the fall. Sure if the 1200XL had been more of a success it could have paved the way for a 128K machine instead of the 800XL.

[leech]

Would have been interesting but maybe useless to have gotten a 128kb machine so early, as it was most coders targeted the 48kb 800.

[oracle_jedi]

4 hours ago, leech said:

Would have been interesting but maybe useless to have gotten a 128kb machine so early, as it was most coders targeted the 48kb 800.

 

Well I was thinking more of productivity apps - Word Processors, Spreadsheets and such, but you raise a good question.   On the Apple //e, were there many games that used 128KB, or were they still targeting a wider audience with 48KB games?

 

[Keatah]

5 hours ago, oracle_jedi said:

Apple seemed to get a lot of things right with the II+ and then the //e.  

Yes. I was thrilled as a kid. And more impressed as time went on, especially in retrospect. The II+ had just enough refinements to get me excited, again though at the time I wouldn't have known.

 

The features I liked were the capacious 48K memory, and the ability to make it 64K with just a simple card. Memory was a huge thing with my and my gang. We used it as a simple measure of how smart a computer was. The bigger the memory and more chips it had the better it was. No frills!

 

I liked it had floating point BASIC instantly on power-up. There were no diagnostic screens or delays. The prompt couldn't have shown faster. The cassette system with simple with LOAD/SAVE and that was it.

 

It had an understandable DOS (to a kid). It gave the appearance of total integration with BASIC. It simply added new commands. And it worked like a random-access cassette drive, using the same two LOAD/SAVE commands. Only difference was superspeed in comparison and a filename! Again much appreciated by a kid. IT took all of less than a minute and we were using a then state-of-the-art storage subsystem.

 

I liked that many add-ons were contained within the case - means little or no sprawl. No sideways growth like a TI, or backwards stretchage like a Vic or 64. It was one feature I appreciated even as a shit-faced kid.

 

I always (biased or not) thought the II+ and //e were very thoughtful designs. It was one of the micros that made me least ask, "goddammit why'dnt they do it that way instead!?!?!"

 

We all know that computers have I/O, RAM, ROM, CPU, graphics, sound, bus, slots, storage, and so on and so forth. But the Apple II was big on putting the RAM and CPU at the forefront. When working on the II, it was all about hitting memory locations, storing, retrieving, and toggling soft-switches. Gently guided by firmware more or less. There was nothing in the way of the programmer. Charming Wozisms aside. Naturally.

 

When the //e came out, the II+ was getting just a tad boring. Having filled all the slots and sometimes rotated cards in and out, eyes turned to the //e, gaining back slot three. Coming standard with 64K memory and following the II+ memory map for the 48K/16K divide meant no modifications were needed for the bulk of the existing software. Having the aux slot for ANOTHER 64K + 80-columns was magical. What in the world would we DO with all that "K" ?? My god!!

 

Loved the enhanced keyboard which gave us lowercase straight away and let us type "new" symbols directly such as []\|{}_. Absolutely thrilling for BBS decoration and menu headers. Applesoft and DOS now were more compatible with lowercase. Appreciated the lower temperatures from more integration via the quasi-custom MMU and IOU. I say quasi-custom because they didn't cause the //e's core to deviate from the II+ that much. they were essentially some 25-35 TTL ICs packed into 2.

 

We got a bonus increase in graphics resolution via DHGR, but that wasn't Applesoft friendly unfortunately. Needed 3rd party tools to really benefit from it. But they were there.

 

And soon thereafter we got an enhancement kit that gave us MORE text symbols to play with, some updated firmware, and a processor with new instructions which ran completely at room temperature. Talk about excitement! No wonder the //e was so desired among many back in the day!

 

5 hours ago, oracle_jedi said:

I didn't know all the 80 col cards worked to the same standards but that's cool and makes so much more sense for developers and consumers.  I liked how Apple made 128KB RAM and 80-columns an effective standard with the //e, it was a single upgrade card from Apple if I remember.

Videx brand was the standard. There were many clones and compatible spinoffs. There were a few oddballs here and there with different firmware implementations, but they all worked.

 

Yes it was a single card upgrade from Apple. There were many more 3rd party designs that gave us like 3MB of memory, and real RGB output. Today we have a VGA option that piggybacks on the 3MB RamWorks board. All of it very compatible.

 

There was also a CP/M card that did the upgrade too. Microsoft SoftCard //e. By then though CP/M was falling out of favor.

 

Apple had a few iterations of the 64K/80-column card. The first one had 8 RAM chips, the last one had 2. Higher reliability and all that. And it was free with purchase of a //e Platinum model - which had even less chips than the //e.

 

5 hours ago, oracle_jedi said:

I think its the direction Atari should have gone with their aborted 1400XL.   80 cols and 128KB RAM in 1983 would have made so much more sense than built in 300-baud modem and a speech synthesis unit.

I don't have enough knowledge to speak with any measure of authority about Atari design philosophies, not more than what read in consumer books & catalogs anyways.

 

Thing with a built-in modem is that modem technology was on the verge of beginning rapid changes. Significant signal processing and data compression were just around the corner. Changes started showing up in earnest once 2400 baud hit the scene.

 

Modems gained processors and had their own command language, no longer relying on the host to manage data transfer. They did different things to the signal altogether, new modulation techniques, multiple symbol constellation, much more error correction. And soon data compression. What was in the Atari became dead weight. I believe they would have done better to make it modular or just provided for a high-speed serial port. I mean really hi-speed like 115,200 baud. I have similar views on the speech synthesis.

[Keatah]

1 hour ago, oracle_jedi said:

Well I was thinking more of productivity apps - Word Processors, Spreadsheets and such, but you raise a good question.   On the Apple //e, were there many games that used 128KB, or were they still targeting a wider audience with 48KB games?

Seems like games targeted 128K once the //c hit the market. The //c made 128K a standard in the Apple II world. And by the time the //c was out many //e owners had upgraded to 128K or were about to. This was around 1984/1985.

 

There weren't many arcade action games asking for more than 48K/64K. Code loops had to be small and simple. Remember this was 1977 class hardware. The 128K games were mainly interactive fiction novels aka graphic adventures. Or action-educational titles.

[The Usotsuki]

Also the Laser 128, which was an Apple //c clone.

[leech]

5 hours ago, The Usotsuki said:

Also the Laser 128, which was an Apple //c clone.

I didn't follow Apple all that much in the 80s, they were always under performing for the price in my Atari 800xl spoiled eyes / ears.  But surely some of the popularity of them was because Apple didn't hunt down clone makers until the Macintosh days, right?  I mean the very thing that allowed the IBMs to take off so significantly were the clones.  Sure Apple is successful now due to the iPod, and a bit more with iPod+gsm modems that they sell now, but after killing off clones of their computers, they were on the edge of joining Atari / Commodore.  I mean a 'what if' C= and Atari had clone makers it may have saved them, but instead they kept lowering prices to the point where clones couldn't have made any profit anyhow.  

 

The only 'clones' I know of for the ST line were the C-Lab Falcons, and then the Hades / Medusa computers (anyone know how many of those were made, I'd LOVE one of the Hades 060s...)

[potatohead]

On 11/11/2020 at 3:50 PM, Arnuphis said:

But the light pen for my Vic-20 was a huge flop for me.

Seriously!  I made one from some article in a magazine, maybe Creative Computing.  It seemed super exciting, but using it kind of sucked.  

 

On 11/11/2020 at 8:34 PM, pacman000 said:

Weirdly, I kinda want one of those TRS80 bar code readers.

These were a fail too, but I wanted one too.  When I finally got one, someone had made an simple script to decode the text properly.

 

Was fun for a day.  Scanning stuff worked.  And it was fun to push it with increasingly shitty barcodes.  Managed to hand draw a couple too.

 

Meh otherwise.

 

Re: Print Buffers 

 

Where I grew up those things were a success!  Saw them in action at schools, some business and working professionals had em.  Seemed common to me.

 

Re:  Mechanical keyboard for Atari 400

 

I should have kept mine!  Got one, did it and loved working on the computer.  One of the best upgrades ever!

 

Maybe they were a fail generally though.  I did not see another one for a long time.

 

Re:  C64 REU

 

Yes.  I knew a guy who had one.  We also nodded his disk drive and did a few other things to his C64 system.  That REU was a pretty great idea and it got very little support.  Didn't see another one of those for a while either.  

 

At the time, I thought the Atari XL series machines could benefit from a similar device plugged into the expansion bus.  

 

Maybe had the REU hit sooner?  Maybe it was doomed anyway, but earlier would have been better.

 

 

[carlsson]

Regarding a 128K and 80 column machine in 1983, it reminds me of the CBM-II series which of course were meant as PET/CBM substitutes, not home/gaming computers given they were text only and monochrome. That is except for the very rare P500 model which has the C64 chipset but 128K RAM and never made any impact much due to the success of the cheaper C64. Sure as a response to Commodore, Atari could have uppened the game a little but then again it took about 10-12 months after the C64 was released and the big price wars took place. While personal computer giants like IBM and Apple probably were unaffected by it, the question is if a $800 - $1000 Atari with 80 columns and 128K had managed to stay one level ahead when the C64 dropped from $600 to $400 in a short period of time.