8 Bit Wars 2

[1024MAK]

Look past the smoke screen. If people were using ZX81s for serious computing (admittedly with replacement keyboard, RAM pack and printer interface), why do think the other 1980's computers were not used for serious use / non-gaming use?

In practice, only machines that lacked suitable expansion interfaces were not suitable for word processor and similar applications (no good if you can't print).

And there were at least 20 different computers on the market just prior to Amstrad launching their CPC range.

At this time, you had to pay a lot of money to get a CP/M compatible machine. So understandably, serious software was written to run on the respective hardware in the same way that games are.

The main selling point for the Amstrad CPC (IMO) was:-

   
• Everything you need in one package including monitor, for a good price
• 64k of RAM
• Integrated cassette deck (and later, FDD)
• A good BASIC
• From an existing British company that was already known (but not well known)
• Good keyboard

The main problem was that the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 had nearly all of the games market.
Amstrad were just a little bit late to the party.

But a lot of the limitations that apply to all the machines came down to cost and the available technology. An CPC 464 was not practical in 1981 for example. It would not have sold into the intended market, as it would have cost too much.

Mark


Edited to correct a couple of typos.

[Puresox]

The sheer fact of the amount of bedroom programmers proved that the Spectrum was used as a serious machine by many in that Market . I feel the point is That all these machines could do all round things to a lesser or better extent , But each one was more suited to one field than the other. The Amstrads strongest point was being an all rounder that was fairly cheap for everything it included , that could be used fairly comfortably as a Home or small Buisness machine( Very small Business) Lol.


Oh and just a question regarding the Mouse on the Amstrad , This piece of important equipment seems more prominent on the c64, I virtually cannot think of any games Bar' Carrier Command ' that uses it . C64 had its use in loads of games . For what reason would that have been ? The market being bigger?

[arnoldemu]

The AMX mouse is probably the most common mouse hardware on the CPC, however, it's the one that takes the most cpu time to read, so for a game it's too slow to use.
Reading AMX takes many scanlines.

If Kempston had been more common, then it would have seen much more take up. Reading kempston takes less than 1 scanline.

So in part, it is the availablity of the hardware and second how much cpu time it takes to read it.

I believe the mouse on the c64 takes little cpu time to read too.

[Swainy]

I've got to admit Chinny that I was pretty disappointed with that video of yours on the CPC. I think it's pretty short sighted of you not seeing how the Spectrum could be used as nothing more than a games machine. I had a grey +2 as a kid and although I did play a lot of games on it I also used it for coding plus I done an awful lot of graphical work on it. Occasionally I even done a bit of home work on it.

I highly doubt if I was the only Speccy owner who used their Spectrum for other things. I think it's a pretty snobby attitude to think that the Spectrum wasn't capable of anything other than games.

[TMR]

I believe the mouse on the c64 takes little cpu time to read too.

[Nods] There are a couple of pots on each joystick port for paddles that get used by mice as well, so generally speaking it only takes a few scanlines to handle mouse input. There's not a massive amount of games software that supports a mouse, but utilities like Amica Pain or GUI-based operating systems such as GEOS and i believe Contiki do.

[Puresox]

Just Listened to the Wars last night and found it entertaining enough on the whole. I think the guys have done a good job at giving the CPC a fair chance , By looking at the gameplay rather than the whole package , Which I am certain the CPC would be screwed if that was taken into consideration.
From my perspective thanks to Swainy and the crew for  8-Bit Wars Podcasts and related stuff .

[chinnyhill10]

I've got to admit Chinny that I was pretty disappointed with that video of yours on the CPC. I think it's pretty short sighted of you not seeing how the Spectrum could be used as nothing more than a games machine. I had a grey +2 as a kid and although I did play a lot of games on it I also used it for coding plus I done an awful lot of graphical work on it. Occasionally I even done a bit of home work on it.

I highly doubt if I was the only Speccy owner who used their Spectrum for other things. I think it's a pretty snobby attitude to think that the Spectrum wasn't capable of anything other than games.

Hi Swainy,


Sorry I didn't respond quicker but it's Christmas and there's better things to be doing on Christmas day at 10pm than posting on message boards.


Before I address any further points you raise, would you like to apologise to the forum for spamming messages constantly over a period of what feels like years with huge attachments? You might notice our friendly mods have been back through all of your posts and deleted all the bandwidth hogging images hosted at this forums expense.


But come on Swainy, even Clive himself admitted the Speccy had become a games machine rather than the all round computer he envisaged. It was built to a price and the original model didn't have the keyboard, the memory, the storage or the display for it to do anything more than the most basic productivity tasks. The original ZX printer was nothing more than a joke printing onto a special coated paper of a similar type to what shops now give out as a receipt.


I never said it couldn't be done, What I said was it neither had the capabilities or the software choice to make it a realistic solution for anything other than the most trivial of administrative tasks or programming (which you seem to be mistaking for productivity applications to run a small business or household). Drawing loading screens etc isn't productivity either unless you are being employed to draw them. Seems to be a wilful misunderstanding of what serious applications actually are.


The CPC had a stream of commercial grade productivity packages throughout its life. Word processors (including WordStar, which was a big deal when released, Protext, Brunword) which include mail merge, spell checkers and lots of features that are surprisingly modern. Both Protext and Brunword would run from ROM which made them an extremely powerful choice way beyond anything offered for the Speccy. Literally like comparing Wordpad to MS Word.


Even the likes of the then industry giant Digital Research were making their software available on the CPC. DR Graph and DR Draw were widely advertised in magazines like Amstrad Computer User. Industry standard packages used the world over (which each cost about the third of the price of a 48k Speccy).


You had spreadsheets like Supercalc 2, database software like DBase 2. With Wordstar, Dbase 2 and Supercalc 2 you have a full office suite as people would understand it today right there (and these packages are way more powerful than the frankly rather limited but best selling Mini Office 2). All these packages were industry standards in their day in the way Word, Excel and Access now are. Add on the aforementioned DR Graph and DR Draw and you have a very powerful system indeed. Not a IBM PC granted, but to get an IBM PC you'd be spending at least 3 times the price of a 6128 until Amstrad released the PC1512.


Now granted, Wordstar, DBase 2 and Supercalc 2 would run on a +3 with CP/M Plus, but that was an extra purchase only available from Locomotive Software after 1988. Crash summed up this development as:


"Until recently it (the Speccy) has been handicapped by an obscure operating system, no standard disks and a limited home TV display resolution. Locomotive Software have addressed all three of these problems with the launch of CP/M Plus for the +3."


But the +3 CP/M implementation had two massive drawbacks. The lack of 80 character display on the Speccy which meant an emulation mode was needed which in the words of Crash "works with most packages, but makes some very hard to use" and chronic speed problems as text output is a third of the speed of standard Speccy BASIC (which is hardly a nippy implementation compared to Locomotive and positivly arthritic compared to the BBC Micro).


So basically a +3 could run a wealth of serious software via CP/M but it would be slow, it was an extra purchase, and you'd run into display problems sooner or later (which would prove expensive if you had just spent £50 on a software package for it). On lesser models you were hobbled by tape storage (you going to trust your dissertation to a tape or run a stock database from a C90).


I love the Speccy. I've owned and used them continuously since 1989. I have 6 or 7 of them (depending on if we're counting the broken ones currently under repair). I stayed with YS to the bitter end when others were seduced by 16 bit consoles and who only came back to the machine in recent years when it became a fashion statement. I was in Boots in the next town clearing them out of their remaindered Speccy titles in 1993 (and yes it was Speccy as there was no CPC stuff left). But I'm not going to sit here and pretend that the general productivity software on the CPC wasn't light years ahead of what was on the Speccy. Protext on ROM on a CPC monitor compared to squinting at Tasword on a TV on a Speccy? Come on!


And then we look at the PCW with its high resolution display and Locoscript and it's a whole new level of application software that makes most CPC packages look a bit rubbish. It's horses for courses. Of course it would be "snobby" to say the PCW running Locoscript is far more suited to Word Processing than anything the CPC has to offer, especially with it's higher resolution display and extra memory. You call it snobbish, I call it being realistic.


So Swainy, lets be clear, nobody bought a Spectrum for its productivity software after that initial excitement of the first year or so of release. It became a games machine much to Clive's private annoyance.  Amstrad firmly positioned it in their line up as the base games machine (they were quite merciless in killing off the QL as it had no place in their line up). You could hook a printer up to an Amstrad model, you could kind of run CP/M and you could do lots of other things But you can also drive your Mini Metro around the Nürburgring. Just because it can be done, doesn't make it a sensible choice.


So I stand by what I said. Where I did mis-speak was on C64 disk drives where what I should have said was they were extremely commonplace in the USA. And there has been an annotation on the video for several days now to that effect.

[MacDeath]

for word processing, Speccy had the advantage of the colour attributes, quite handy in colour display... like you know, having mnemonics in another colours.
Yet, while Mode1 has less colours, it is actually enough for text processing, and Mode2 really displays a lot of extra characters (and can somewhat perform well in pseudo 3 colours, dithered grey works well)
The CPC or PCW despite only in 2 colours in hi-rez modes, had the 640x200 resolution that was quite better for huge amount of text to display and was quite a standard resolution as well, and even better resolutions  were possible actually...

CPC could actually get the same resolutions as the PCW. Not sure any word processor would use that though and it would need extra RAM to be well exploitable, but you may see the CPC6128 as a mini PCW actually. shame Amstrad never merged the 2 lines.


Speccy as it used less RAM on the video also had some advantages, be it for music or just the fact that the 128k models could get a bit more RAM available...

But CPC was more rounded from the very begining.


just compare speccy48 and CPC464... and speccy+2/+3 and CPC6128...
while "amstrad-era" speccies lost the many mnemonics and shortcuts displayed on keyboard, to have a somewhat numeric pad on CPCs was more than handy too.


But basically most computers from the era could perform "serious tasks" because it was basically what they were developed to do first hand.

Visicalc, word processing, code learning, etc.

Basically it depended on what the owner would do about it.
Many Amiga owner only learnt to insert a game disk in the machine and play, many speccy owners are now professional coderscoders... or the other way. And beside cat and run (and sometimes |cpm) I fail to know a lot into coding myself... 
Still any computer owner would have huge advantage over any console-lamer, because having a keyboard and some apps on one disk would get you to learn a bit how to use them. At least I know how to use shift key or key-combinaisons or to avoid caps-lock like plague...

each machine was still a way to learn computers... some better than others for things or other, but all good enough.

Hell some could even play well on PCW...
Head over heels or the many CPC ports on PCW are somewhat as good as on CPC or speccy.
La Abadia del'Crimen seems quite good on PCW too.

Even a "poor" CGA+beeper IBM "almost compatible" machine was a great way to play or work.

But yeah, Amstrad should win anyway because here, we are at CPCwiki, not "C64fans incorporated" nor "Speccylation forum"...


quite true that for a small amount of time, the CPC6128 or PCW8256 could quite do the same work as some old IBM PC from first generation... the ones in 4,77mhz and 256k... while you could get a while room equipped of fully equipped Amstrads for the price of a Mac or a true IBM PC.


The article I posted (was posted recently at Facebook's 464 page) is quite interesting on the matter.
The scientist says he see no point into purchasing 16/32bit computers (Atari STs and others) at the moment (1984-1987) because they were just starting to use computers so a simpler one was better to learn, and could basically do the tasks.

Also when you have to equip a whole research laboratory, you clearly prefer to purchase 3 Amstrad CPC664 (were probably cost down due to release of the 6128) with monocolour screens but also most resiliant disks in the market instead of 1 Macintosh or half a PC with 5"1/4 frail disks that may not resist laboratory conditions on One Atari ST and half (they weren't quite "cheap in 1985 actually)....

[Zoe Robinson]

The CPC had a stream of commercial grade productivity packages throughout its life. Word processors

The CPC's influence on the Word Processor market continues to its day. StarOffice began life on the CPC and continued its development for many years after the CPC ceased production. It jumped formats a few times and jumped owners, and we now call its direct descendant OpenOffice.

[Gryzor]

Like other said, the fact that "it could be done" doesn't mean a specific computer was well suited to a specific task. Yes, many coders started on the Speccy, but I'm betting every coder moved on to third party solutions (be it keyboard and a multitude of expansions or a cross-dev setup) as soon as they could afford it. Yes, if you had nothing else you'd do stuff with what you had, but that doesn't mean much...

[Zoe Robinson]

Guys, it's been over thirty years since the Spectrum launched. We've got to face facts: most coders now didn't start on the Spectrum. If you're in your twenties, like many of the indie programmers that are starting to dominate development (it's a bedroom developer industry again, like back in our childhoods!) then you weren't growing up with the Spectrum, you probably had an Amiga or an ST; or maybe an early, cheap PC. Those who learned to code more recently did it on a PC, or a Mac.


The older developers that were coding when we were kids learned on the Spectrum, the Amstrad and the CPC; as did those of us who learned to code when we were kids but we aren't anywhere near the majority of the coding pool these days. It's time to move on from this argument, because it's now irrelevant. Starting on an 8-bit is now a minority coder origin story.

[TMR]

Like other said, the fact that "it could be done" doesn't mean a specific computer was well suited to a specific task.

A specific computer didn't have to be well suited to a specific task for people to use it for said task though; the PET or ZX81 weren't exactly designed with games in mind but people had a bloody good go at writing them and made some very playable ones too. The same works for "serious" software, the first word processor i used on the C64 had a 40 column display and scrolled horizontally as well as vertically, that's not the most optimal solution but it worked.

Yes, many coders started on the Speccy, but I'm betting every coder moved on to third party solutions (be it keyboard and a multitude of expansions or a cross-dev setup) as soon as they could afford it.

Cross development is what anybody being sensible about programming did given half a chance because trying to build something substantial just using one machine is a pain in the bottom; that predates every system we're talking about too, there were cross dev systems cobbled together for the Apple II and Atari 8-bits in 1970s America. But at the same time people did work on Microdrive-equipped, rubber keyed Spectrums too.

[chinnyhill10]

The CPC's influence on the Word Processor market continues to its day. StarOffice began life on the CPC and continued its development for many years after the CPC ceased production. It jumped formats a few times and jumped owners, and we now call its direct descendant OpenOffice.

And oddly enough Star Writer as it was known originally was hardly known at the time. You'd see it listed in mail order advertisements but most people in the UK opted for the gold standard of Protext. Protext went on to be ported to the ST, Amiga and PC before fading from view. Star Writer (as you say) became Star Office which then became Open Office which now is the 2nd biggest office suite in the world (I assume MS Office is number 1)


Ex-Your Sinclair writer Steve Anderson was telling me earlier that when he spent a week working for YS at the Future offices in Bath, he wrote all his copy on a CPC 6128+ with Protext (YS of course shared an office with AA).


It's common knowledge that alot of copy in AA was written on real CPC's and imported into the Macs at Future, but I hadn't suspected that Your Sinclair were borrowing the AA machines as well!


Which opens up a whole new question...... After YS closed, Amstrad Action shared an office with Commodore Format. Could it be that the magazine loved by C64 fans might just have had some copy written in Protext on a [gasp] Amstrad CPC?

[Gryzor]

A specific computer didn't have to be well suited to a specific task for people to use it for said task though; the PET or ZX81 weren't exactly designed with games in mind but people had a bloody good go at writing them and made some very playable ones too. The same works for "serious" software, the first word processor i used on the C64 had a 40 column display and scrolled horizontally as well as vertically, that's not the most optimal solution but it worked.

Videogames are like porn; they're going to be on any and every platform. Heck, the PDPs got their own fair share and let's not forget what the first videogame was developed on


Word processing works on the NCx00 too, but nobody said these are viable platforms; they were made for specific reasons. After loading my first ever word processor (Easi-Amsword ) on my 464 in mode 2 I could never use anything less.

Cross development is what anybody being sensible about programming did given half a chance because trying to build something substantial just using one machine is a pain in the bottom; that predates every system we're talking about too, there were cross dev systems cobbled together for the Apple II and Atari 8-bits in 1970s America. But at the same time people did work on Microdrive-equipped, rubber keyed Spectrums too.

And yet development on the CPC was much, much easier and it was even used as a cross-dev platform. I don't think anyone used the Speccy to do cross development for any other platform.

[chinnyhill10]

And yet development on the CPC was much, much easier and it was even used as a cross-dev platform. I don't think anyone used the Speccy to do cross development for any other platform.

Famously the Oliver Twins built their own cross dev system for the Spectrum using a CPC 6128, MAXAM and a special link cable. All the coding was done on the 6128 and they would send the code across to the Speccy for testing.

[Gryzor]

Exactly what I had in mind...

[TMR]

And yet development on the CPC was much, much easier and it was even used as a cross-dev platform. I don't think anyone used the Speccy to do cross development for any other platform.

Easier than a rubber keyed Spectrum with a Microdrive yes, but that doesn't mean it was too hard to do or uncommon because of that extra level of difficulty; it's quite hard to tell how common it actually was as well, unless there's some orphaned source to be found buried in the final product.

There will have been people out there using one Spectrum to build code to push over to a second for testing as well (i think i remember reading about someone doing that but can't for the life of me remember who) just like i used a C128 in C64 mode and a regular C64C with a homebrew cable between them for years and commercial coders like John Harris linked together two Atari 800s; the assembler is already there so it just needs modifying to deal with the data transfer. It's just common sense really, trying to do everything on a single machine just invites the target code to clobber the source once in a while.

[1024MAK]

Yawn.... All those rose tinted spectacles

In 1982, there was no CPC (it was released on 21st June 1984). Some software was written on other machines, but a lot of software was written on the target machine.

Later, as the cost came down, and software development got more professional, yes of course the more sensible way was to use cross-development using a more suitable machine.
In professional programing companies, the Tatung Einstein was often used from 1984 for Z80 CPU coding and development. Then transferred across to the target machine for testing.

Now, as I said above. Before the CPC came along, various home computers could be expanded to make them more suitable for using them for more serious applications. That was part of the fun for the home computer user. You could select your preferred expansions for the things you wanted to do. Be it keyboard, disk drive or printer interface (a lot of disk drive interfaces included parallel or serial ports).

As far as I am aware, Sinclair intended people to learn how to program in BASIC on the ZX Spectrum. And people did.

When Amstrad launched the CPC 464 in 1984, it is very likely that Amstrad saw the games player as being a very large part of the market that they were aiming at.

By that time, both the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64 were mainly being used as games machines. So for most people, how was the CPC-464 any different?

Yes, of course when Amstrad launched the CPC6128 in late 1985, it was more suitable for serious applications. But then, by that time, there were other computer systems that were even more suitable. Okay, these were business systems. But this is what happens in a quickly changing technology market. For example, the Victor 9000 / ACT Sirius 1 series of personal computers. These were available from 1983 and had 600 KB/1.2 MB floppy drives. They ran MS-DOS or CP/M-86. They were followed by the ACT Apricot. All of these were much better for serious applications than a CPC 6128. Then of course IBM compatibles took over the world...

And of course, as far as home computing goes, from 1981 onwards the Acorn BBC B, followed by the BBC Master 128 were often used for serious applications.

Mark

[Swainy]

Hi Swainy,


Sorry I didn't respond quicker but it's Christmas and there's better things to be doing on Christmas day at 10pm than posting on message boards.


Before I address any further points you raise, would you like to apologise to the forum for spamming messages constantly over a period of what feels like years with huge attachments? You might notice our friendly mods have been back through all of your posts and deleted all the bandwidth hogging images hosted at this forums expense.


But come on Swainy, even Clive himself admitted the Speccy had become a games machine rather than the all round computer he envisaged. It was built to a price and the original model didn't have the keyboard, the memory, the storage or the display for it to do anything more than the most basic productivity tasks. The original ZX printer was nothing more than a joke printing onto a special coated paper of a similar type to what shops now give out as a receipt.


I never said it couldn't be done, What I said was it neither had the capabilities or the software choice to make it a realistic solution for anything other than the most trivial of administrative tasks or programming (which you seem to be mistaking for productivity applications to run a small business or household). Drawing loading screens etc isn't productivity either unless you are being employed to draw them. Seems to be a wilful misunderstanding of what serious applications actually are.


The CPC had a stream of commercial grade productivity packages throughout its life. Word processors (including WordStar, which was a big deal when released, Protext, Brunword) which include mail merge, spell checkers and lots of features that are surprisingly modern. Both Protext and Brunword would run from ROM which made them an extremely powerful choice way beyond anything offered for the Speccy. Literally like comparing Wordpad to MS Word.


Even the likes of the then industry giant Digital Research were making their software available on the CPC. DR Graph and DR Draw were widely advertised in magazines like Amstrad Computer User. Industry standard packages used the world over (which each cost about the third of the price of a 48k Speccy).


You had spreadsheets like Supercalc 2, database software like DBase 2. With Wordstar, Dbase 2 and Supercalc 2 you have a full office suite as people would understand it today right there (and these packages are way more powerful than the frankly rather limited but best selling Mini Office 2). All these packages were industry standards in their day in the way Word, Excel and Access now are. Add on the aforementioned DR Graph and DR Draw and you have a very powerful system indeed. Not a IBM PC granted, but to get an IBM PC you'd be spending at least 3 times the price of a 6128 until Amstrad released the PC1512.


Now granted, Wordstar, DBase 2 and Supercalc 2 would run on a +3 with CP/M Plus, but that was an extra purchase only available from Locomotive Software after 1988. Crash summed up this development as:


"Until recently it (the Speccy) has been handicapped by an obscure operating system, no standard disks and a limited home TV display resolution. Locomotive Software have addressed all three of these problems with the launch of CP/M Plus for the +3."


But the +3 CP/M implementation had two massive drawbacks. The lack of 80 character display on the Speccy which meant an emulation mode was needed which in the words of Crash "works with most packages, but makes some very hard to use" and chronic speed problems as text output is a third of the speed of standard Speccy BASIC (which is hardly a nippy implementation compared to Locomotive and positivly arthritic compared to the BBC Micro).


So basically a +3 could run a wealth of serious software via CP/M but it would be slow, it was an extra purchase, and you'd run into display problems sooner or later (which would prove expensive if you had just spent £50 on a software package for it). On lesser models you were hobbled by tape storage (you going to trust your dissertation to a tape or run a stock database from a C90).


I love the Speccy. I've owned and used them continuously since 1989. I have 6 or 7 of them (depending on if we're counting the broken ones currently under repair). I stayed with YS to the bitter end when others were seduced by 16 bit consoles and who only came back to the machine in recent years when it became a fashion statement. I was in Boots in the next town clearing them out of their remaindered Speccy titles in 1993 (and yes it was Speccy as there was no CPC stuff left). But I'm not going to sit here and pretend that the general productivity software on the CPC wasn't light years ahead of what was on the Speccy. Protext on ROM on a CPC monitor compared to squinting at Tasword on a TV on a Speccy? Come on!


And then we look at the PCW with its high resolution display and Locoscript and it's a whole new level of application software that makes most CPC packages look a bit rubbish. It's horses for courses. Of course it would be "snobby" to say the PCW running Locoscript is far more suited to Word Processing than anything the CPC has to offer, especially with it's higher resolution display and extra memory. You call it snobbish, I call it being realistic.


So Swainy, lets be clear, nobody bought a Spectrum for its productivity software after that initial excitement of the first year or so of release. It became a games machine much to Clive's private annoyance.  Amstrad firmly positioned it in their line up as the base games machine (they were quite merciless in killing off the QL as it had no place in their line up). You could hook a printer up to an Amstrad model, you could kind of run CP/M and you could do lots of other things But you can also drive your Mini Metro around the Nürburgring. Just because it can be done, doesn't make it a sensible choice.


So I stand by what I said. Where I did mis-speak was on C64 disk drives where what I should have said was they were extremely commonplace in the USA. And there has been an annotation on the video for several days now to that effect.

Wow. I must have really touched a nerve or something. Well done.

[dodogildo]

Wanna know what some real people was thinking 12 years ago? I accidentally hit it while surfing for something else http://www.eurogamer.net/forum/thread/14274

[Zoe Robinson]

JFC, so many ignorant fanboys in that forum.

[Gryzor]

Oh yes. "Nobody had an Amstrad"

[chinnyhill10]

Wow. I must have really touched a nerve or something. Well done.

Just trying to help you from your position of ignorance Swainy. After all, even you must be bored of the green screen jokes by now.

[chinnyhill10]

Oh yes. "Nobody had an Amstrad"

I never knew anybody with an MSX. But given the amount for sale on Ebay and the software I saw in the shops, someone must have been buying them.


Amazingly not everyone cares about computers like we do. In the words of my mate when faced with my 464 "Oh we had a computer with the coloured keys like that. What is it, a Spectrum?". Doubt he was taking part in any playground arguments as he had no interest in computers!

[Swainy]

Just trying to help you from your position of ignorance Swainy. After all, even you must be bored of the green screen jokes by now.

No ignorance here Chinny. I own and enjoy the Amstrad CPC, Spectrum & C64 computers. All 3 can be and were used for things other than playing games on. The C64 was seen by many as just a games machine too but for a lot of people it was their first step into creating music.

The difference here is that you have a hissy fit if anyone disagrees with what you claim to be the truth.