CPCWiki forum

Firstly, I'd like to clarify that I'm not one of those infiltrated C64 fans. To prove it, you can read one very peculiar Amstrad CPC experience I wrote about recently ( https://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/games/the-giant-speccy-port-list/msg233993/#msg233993 ).

I also would like to explain that I'm aware of the C64 and ZX Spectrum limitations: the ZX Spectrum was admitedly designed with cost in mind (hence the colour clash, which could have been avoided) and the C64, while having multiple advantages, implemented the most emotionally depressing palette in history (because 1) dark colors were trendy at the time and 2) several colors are just the opposite hex value of some other decent color present to save memory).

The Amstrad CPC offered multiple advantages too. The included monitor made them look more professional than the competition, and the keyboard was nice. It was also easy to get into and had the best colours.

But after reading how it was designed in a very interesting article ( https://www.theregister.com/2014/02/12/archaeologic_amstrad_cpc_464/?page=1 ), I realized they were fist aiming for the 6502 processor, but later switched to the Z80 in the middle of the project just because their engineers knew that one better. Combined with the lack of sprites handling (even if kids were one of their main target market), I wonder if Baron Sugar, even if we love our dear CPCs, sold us a ZX Spectrum with better colours only a few months before the Amiga was released.

What do you think?

Underpowered compared to what? And underpowered for what?

Comparing it to the 16bits Amiga and Atari ST is not really fair. They came out just a year after the 464 but they have been SO much more expensive. They addressed a totally different market. In 1986 I would not have been able to afford an Atari ST which was twice as expensive as the CPC 6128. It took the 16bits until 1988 to come down to a similar price level as the 6128 in 1986.

So we can only check if it was underpowered compared to competitors in a similar price range. 

If you would do a comparison with other 8bits, the CPC would probably not be the top computer in any category but it would probably be in the top 3 in all categories. And most other 8bits might have won a category or two - but would have been far below average in others. The CPCs design made sure it was a good all-round computer with no outstanding strength but also with no outstanding weaknesses. 

The question was: what did you want to do - and how much are you able/willing to spend? With my budget, the CPC 6128 was the best option, as it allowed me to do all the things I want. So for me: no, it was not underpowered. It provided what I wanted and needed.  

As Eto said, it doesn't matter what year it appeared, just what price range. It won the title of Computer of the Year twice, in 1985 and 1986, because it had the best price-performance ratio.

Of course Atari ST and Amiga were better than CPC. But for several years, ST without a monitor cost about 50% more than 6128 with a color monitor, and Amiga even 100%, so their betterness did not matter for people who couldn't afford 16-bit.

Another story with CPC Plus. With mono monitor cost as much as ST, and with color, as much as A500. At a times when people already had two TVs at home and did not need a monitor.

I don't know if being 6502-based would have helped. That would just have been a poor man's BBC Micro. The z80 isn't a downgrade, and Spectrum ports were a major benefit.

QuoteCPC: Underpowered for 1984?

No

on par with many micros of its time, just different capabilities..

PCs where not that far ahead of a good 6128 tbh, 6128plus had even more colours than most PCs did at the time..

The Amiga was crazy expensive in 1985 and well into the category of "high end" systems you didn't really consider. It wouldn't be until about '89 that the costs had reduced to the point they were viable machines for home computing.

And it's easy to forget that the 16-bit home computers started to decline in the early to mid nineties, which wasn't actually that long after the 8-bits started to disappear off the shelves. In both cases it was really the rise of cheap, powerful 16-bit games consoles that are away the market.

CPC was underpowered for 1984 because has TDP only 10 Watt.
Without joke, CPC was midend claas. Called Half professional.

Here's an interesting comparison between the Z80 and the 6502: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/5748/comparing-raw-performance-of-the-z80-and-the-6502

In fact I think it was overpowered for the price. The CPC was from the concept an all-in-one budget machine. You can't compare with other machines with other target in mind.

The C64 had an unique chance for its time when 3 circuits where designed only for the machine (development already started in 1979): e.g. the SID was developed by musician affin engineer, special graphic chip VIC II... everything in-house with MOS engineering, also the CPU. So best environment situation. And they followed a clear gaming target/clients. This machine was overpowered for the time (1981)

The CPC is completely different: cost-effective like other Amstrad products (lessons learned / as it was with the first IBM PC), only 1 customised chip, rest was bought cheap and heavy available, semi-professional target clients, not only gaming (one joystick port), more office or a beginners/education driven, simple to use (cool Basic). But from hardware side and timing 1984 it's underpowered comparing to the competitors (16-bit area already started)

... and this is why I love this machine. Especially the limited AY music. Through the time till today sound chips become / sounds more and more perfect. 
How boring is playing perfect instruments. Everybody ca do this using a iPad and GarageBand.

And... No hw-sprites, but cool and clever programmer found super ways to visualise stuff which can compete with the C64.

Think different!

Amstrad CPC 6128: Best semi-professional use. Best maximum resolution. Best affordable all-in-one design. Best Price.

I wish the CPC would move as fast as the C64, but I also believe scrolling is overrated. Most of my favorite 2D platformers are screen based (Prince of Persia, Abe's Oddysee, Heart of Darkness, Bruce Lee, Saboteur, Saboteur 2...).

What sadly can't be fixed, and I can't stress this enough, is the feeling of sadness projected by the C64 palette.  :'(

80 column text and RGB output were not a small deal and something I completely took for granted. But glad that I didn't have to learn to code on a 40 column display going into a TV through a coax cable. And those Infocom adventures were great, too.

If you're designing a game from scratch it's easy to come up with a concept that avoids scrolling. My favourite C64 game is Impossible Mission and that's not a scrolling game either, unless you count the elevators.

The problem is after a certain point games weren't being designed to suit 8 bit hardware any more. 

I voted No because when I studied my classmates all had 286s and 386s started coming on the market. They were all astounded I could still do my dBase 2 programming and turbo pascal on my CPC, it booted faster than their computers  generally had better graphics and sound too.  Of course the Amiga 500 was on the market too for every years and I ended getting one of those with a GVP 286 card.

Quote from: cwpab on 12:24, 08 January 24Here's an interesting comparison between the Z80 and the 6502: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/5748/comparing-raw-performance-of-the-z80-and-the-6502

That is interesting a bit but I wonder how accurate the article is.  There are a few 6502 emulators for z80 but no z80 emulators for 6502 for example.  The 6502 ones on z80 usually only used to play SID music files, but they are usually ok with the timing.  Perhaps like cpc music, on a real 6502 the sid playback routines only take a few cycles where as on a z80 they hog the cpu.

Quote from: zhulien on 13:41, 09 January 24

Quote from: cwpab on 12:24, 08 January 24Here's an interesting comparison between the Z80 and the 6502: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/5748/comparing-raw-performance-of-the-z80-and-the-6502

That is interesting a bit but I wonder how accurate the article is.  There are a few 6502 emulators for z80 but no z80 emulators for 6502 for example.  The 6502 ones on z80 usually only used to play SID music files, but they are usually ok with the timing.  Perhaps like cpc music, on a real 6502 the sid playback routines only take a few cycles where as on a z80 they hog the cpu.

It's not an article, it's a question from an user in Stack Exchange. And the answers are pretty impartial: the basic conclussion would be that the 6502 is 2x faster with the same CPU speed as it needs less instructions to do the sameits instructions use less CPU cycles, BUT the Z80 has more registers and a faster RAM access, making it better to program complex operating systems. Not sure how all this affects the early 3D games, though.

The 6502 does need less instructions? Really?

Please translate this into 6502 - if you can!  8)

- LDIR

- SET 3,(IX+99)

- SBC HL,DE

Yes, you're probably right... I'm not an expert. It looks like what they actually said is that the 6502 instructions use less CPU cycles.  ;D

It's obviously, that cwpab mixed instructions with cycles.


A problem of the 6502 is its littel static stack, which makes it impossible to use it in high-level languages. They had to implement their own stack, in software which is much slower.
Another example is Sweet16, this f*ing cool "virtual machine" made by Wozniak for his integer basic. But the Z80 somehow can do all this by itself and would be much faster as well.
I can imagine that this is similiar for 3D stuff though there are pretty good 3D engines for the 6502, too.

The 6502 follows more a RISC philosophy where the Z80 more CISC orientated is.

Compare Driller on 8 / 16 bit computers - just to have an idea about 3D stuff (w/o hardware acceleration).

imho all 8 (/16) bit cpus are 'risc'-like anyway.

Quote from: GUNHED on 20:26, 09 January 24imho all 8 (/16) bit cpus are 'risc'-like anyway.

No, not at all.
According to Federico Faggin even the Z80 already has some kind of microcode.

I've never done any 6502 programming (yet) but I'm kind of curious to have a go at making something for the Vectrex sometime.

That has a 6809, which is a 6800 variant that failed in the market due to being six times the price of the 6502 and Z80. But it has some cool additional features like a relocatable zero page, two stacks, and it can multiply two 8 bit numbers in hardware.

Sadly, the CPC was not powerful enough,
to control NORAD. That is, why WOPR was used.
;)

Quote from: Prodatron on 20:31, 09 January 24

Quote from: GUNHED on 20:26, 09 January 24imho all 8 (/16) bit cpus are 'risc'-like anyway.

No, not at all.
According to Federico Faggin even the Z80 already has some kind of microcode.

CISC is imo something like multi media commands and all that super complex stuff. Ok - if you want so - we can start with Multiply instructions. 

Or you can just call anything CISC which is more than a byte. On the other hand all the Z80 opcodes which need more than 1 us may be considered CISC too.

However just look at current PC CPUs and then a 8/16 Bit CPUs. 

The term CISC was introduced in 1970 and has nothing to do with multimedia extensions.
It also doesn't matter if a CPU is 8, 16, 32, 64bit or whatever.
Even the creator of the Z80 confirmed, that the Z80 falls in the category of CISC cpus due to its microcode.

Btw, even the 6502 is defined as a CISC cpu:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_instruction_set_computer

Quote from: WikipediaWell known microprocessors and microcontrollers that have also been labeled CISC in many academic publications include the Motorola 6800, 6809 and 68000 families; the Intel 8080, iAPX 432 and x86 family; the Zilog Z80, Z8 and Z8000 families; the National Semiconductor NS320xx family; the MOS Technology 6502 family; the Intel 8051 family; and others.

Todays CPUs all don't use microcode anymore, internally they are all working like RISC cpus, even the Intel ones. This already happend during the 90ies.

It's fine for you, if you have your personal definition of CISC and RISC, but it has not much to do with the reality.

Well, as I published back the day in several issues of the SCUG magazine: No RISC more fun!

Quote from: Anthony Flack on 20:56, 09 January 24I've never done any 6502 programming (yet) but I'm kind of curious to have a go at making something for the Vectrex sometime.

That has a 6809, which is a 6800 variant that failed in the market due to being six times the price of the 6502 and Z80. But it has some cool additional features like a relocatable zero page, two stacks, and it can multiply two 8 bit numbers in hardware.

Z80 can multiply some 8bit numbers in hardware.

Quote from: HAL6128 on 18:11, 09 January 24The 6502 follows more a RISC philosophy where the Z80 more CISC orientated is.

Honestly this gets spouted so often and it's utter rubbish. One of the key tenets of "RISC" was a large number of registers, which is about as far from 6502 as you can get.

It has a more orthogonal instruction set than Z80, but that's more a consequence of having very few registers, rather than a conscious design decision to make registers easily interchangable.

Yes, that's right. The 6510 is formally a CISC cpu. It's just about the wording "complex" & "reduced instruction" where the z80 has 252 commands and the 6510 works with 56.
But yes again, there's more than the number of instructions.

In short, no, it wasn't.

I believe I switched over from C64 to my trusty CPC6128 with a green monitor as late as 1988, or maybe even 1989... At the time, both Atari ST and Amiga were way, way out of my league price-wise. Actually, having then experienced CP/M (and its outstanding Turbo Pascal) only re-affirmed my craving for a decent PC, which were even more expensive than the ST and the Amiga in any variant.

I saw my CPC6128 for what it was -- the perfected 8-bit/gaming machine and a peek into more serious stuff I had already experienced through PC mainly at school, and neither ST or Amiga really attracted me too much; I saw these as further improved gaming machines and nothing more. 

True, the CPC had no sprites, but its BASIC was so much more advanced than both Speccy and C64. It represented the 8-bit era swan song, in my view.

Thanks to this post, today I learned that x86 is CISC and ARM is RISC.

My dear PSX was RISC and that apparently helped it... I believe the 3DO was not RISC. I'm not sure how many consoles use(d) RISC, but a quick search revealed RISC was only used starting with the PSX (not sure if Saturn) and stopped at the PS3 era, as PS4 and other later consoles switched back to CISC with x86.

I have also learned that RISC uses more instructions to do the same, but it saves hardware space or transistors because these instructions use only one clock (cycle?) and this allows for pipelining.

A few weeks ago, I also read that a RISC processor was about 3x as fast as a CISC processor with the same speed (at least for consoles and games).

I wonder if the industry will move to the RISC ARM processors at some point.

Back to the CPC Vs. C64 comparison, it looks like the CPC CPU is 4x faster when it comes to Mhz, but Z80 processors are said to be equivalent to half the speed compared directly to 6502 ones (see a link I pasted in the previous page). However, since the CPC CPU has 4x the Mhz, this means:

- CPC has a CPU twice as fast as the C64
- But the C64 compensates this by using the CPU much less thanks to the hardware sprites and other tricks
- Which aren't enough for the 3D games and this should techinically be noticeable in the CPC Vs. C64 game comparisons

Quote from: cwpab on 23:18, 10 January 24Thanks to this post, today I learned that x86 is CISC and ARM is RISC.

...

A few weeks ago, I also read that a RISC processor was about 3x as fast as a CISC processor with the same speed (at least for consoles and games).

I wonder if the industry will move to the RISC ARM processors at some point.

Well yes, but mostly no. 

CISC Vs RISC was, in the end, a complete non event. Modern x86 processors are RISC internally (at the microcode level) and CISC on the outside. And so are ARM processors.

That wasn't the way people expected it to go, but memory bandwidth didn't scale as fast as CPU internal speeds. And so all modern CPUs decide more "complex" instructions in microcode and turn each one into a sort of mini RISC program, gaining both the CISC benefits of being able to express operations in only a few instructions, and the RISC benefits of simplified internal operations.

Quote from: zhulien on 14:41, 10 January 24

Quote from: Anthony Flack on 20:56, 09 January 24I've never done any 6502 programming (yet) but I'm kind of curious to have a go at making something for the Vectrex sometime.

That has a 6809, which is a 6800 variant that failed in the market due to being six times the price of the 6502 and Z80. But it has some cool additional features like a relocatable zero page, two stacks, and it can multiply two 8 bit numbers in hardware.

Z80 can multiply some 8bit numbers in hardware.

There is an extended version of the Z80 CPU (R800 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R800)) that offers multiply commands. But the Z80 can - as far as I know - only use adding and shifting, what soon ends up in long command sequences.

Quote from: cwpab on 23:21, 10 January 24Back to the CPC Vs. C64 comparison, it looks like the CPC CPU is 4x faster when it comes to Mhz, but Z80 processors are said to be equivalent to half the speed compared directly to 6502 ones (see a link I pasted in the previous page). However, since the CPC CPU has 4x the Mhz, this means:

- CPC has a CPU twice as fast as the C64
- But the C64 compensates this by using the CPU much less thanks to the hardware sprites and other tricks
- Which aren't enough for the 3D games and this should techinically be noticeable in the CPC Vs. C64 game comparisons

Both CPUs, on CPC and C64 side, are slowed down to avoid memory access collisions with graphics hardware. With this, the Z80 looses up to 25% of its speed. From C64 side I heard things are much more complex there, because the slow down differs between text/graphics area and border. I consider a constant slow down as an advantage - it simplifies programming.

The C64 offers some text modes, what allows for a much faster screen update than one could achieve in a graphics mode. Although text characters are much chunkier than pixels, with clever programming this can be (and is) used for fast games and demos. In the CPC the CRTC also operates in some kind of text mode, but hardwired to the Gate Array only different graphic modes are possible.

Quote from: cwpab on 22:16, 08 January 24I wish the CPC would move as fast as the C64, but I also believe scrolling is overrated. ...

I'm not sure where this comes from, but the problem with the CPC is that it scrolls too fast, not too slow (see e.g. here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l15sDOQ3LNQ?feature=shared&t=1)). Some effort is necessary to make it scroll slow (e.g. here (https://youtu.be/1q7RQykZoKY?feature=shared&t=5) and here (https://youtu.be/mkPu7Fryc_E?feature=shared&t=435)). That many games were badly ported from ZX Spectrum, where the poor CPC more or less had to run some kind of virtual machine for the ZX Spectrum graphics hardware, is another story.

About the C64 I heard that scrolling can only be done for eight pixels in each direction. After this, memory needs to be copied. This does not really sound like hardware scrolling.

I completely agree on that scrolling itself does not make up a good game and that some fresh colors aren't a bad thing.

This is true and the reason why many C64 games have only a 4 colour background; because there is time to rewrite the tile data but not the colour data. However much like with the CPC, coders have since found ways to glitch the machine and get around this.

Quote from: lightforce6128 on 04:09, 11 January 24From C64 side I heard things are much more complex there, because the slow down differs between text/graphics area and border.

This is called "bad lines". Every 8 lines (when a new "text" line starts), the C64s VIC2 has to grab additional data from the video ram, and here the CPU is slowed down a lot or even stopped (I don't remember exactly).
This "only" happens inside of the 40x25 char screen area, not in the borders. Outside of the bad lines the CPU isn't slowed down, as the 1MHz of the 6502 and the 1MHz of the VIC2 can perfectly share the 2MHz of the RAM.

In this discussion I have read some somewhat confusing statements.
I would put some fixed points:
RISC= reduced instruction set computer
CISC= complex instruction set computer
Already the acronym should be clear about the different architecture used within the CPUs.
The Motorola 6800, Intel 8080, Zilog Z80 (Mostek, Nec, Sharp, Toshiba Z80 Compatible), MOS 6502, processor families are CISCs.
ARM, MIPS, and Dec Alpha CPUs are RISC.
Handheld consoles such as GameBoy and GameBoy Color, Game Gear have a Z80 while the GameBoy Advance, Nintendo DS use an ARM.
In my opinion if I were to compare the CPC I would do it with the other 8Bit HomeComputers.
So I would not stop at just the C64 and the ZX Spectrum but also Apple II, TRS80, Atari (400/800/1200 ect), Thomson, SamCoupé and all those hundreds (if not thousands) of 8Bit computers that are part of the HomeComputers that came out between 1977 and 1994.

The CISC Vs. RISC debate is perhaps not very related to the CPC CPU, but it's an interesting offtopic. And it's still related if you consider in the CPC Vs. C64 debate, one of the processor has been described here as having 5x less the number of instructions even if both are technically CISC.

Quote from: lightforce6128 on 04:09, 11 January 24Both CPUs, on CPC and C64 side, are slowed down to avoid memory access collisions with graphics hardware. With this, the Z80 looses up to 25% of its speed. From C64 side I heard things are much more complex there, because the slow down differs between text/graphics area and border. I consider a constant slow down as an advantage - it simplifies programming.

Where the 6502 wins out over the Z80 in this regards, is how regularly it accesses the bus. On the Z80 it's a bit random and entirely dependent on the instructions being executed. On the 6502, however, the CPU will only ever access the bus on alternate cycles, leaving half the cycles available for a video controller to access RAM in a predictable pattern.

That not quite enough on the C64 because character based modes require more reads every so often (you have to read the line of characters plus the bytes that make up the current row) and that's what causes "bad lines" where the CPU suffers additional stalls.

The design of the CPC video hardware is such that this wouldn't have been an issue with a 6502 and it could very well have run at the full 2Mhz without any slowdown. Whether that would be better or not is hard to say, I'm not sure a 6502 is as efficient as a Z80 when it comes to block copying and the lack of registers may well have hurt things like masked sprite routines.

Quote from: lightforce6128 on 04:25, 11 January 24I'm not sure where this comes from, but the problem with the CPC is that it scrolls too fast, not too slow (see e.g. here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l15sDOQ3LNQ?feature=shared&t=1)). Some effort is necessary to make it scroll slow

I think that's a somewhat misleading way of describing it. The hardware scrolling in the CPC isn't too fast, it's too course. It's intended for text scrolling and thus the resolution is Mode 1 sized characters, you can write a game with scrolling like that (many MSX games did for example) but a lot of the time it'll look jerky.

Quote from: lightforce6128 on 04:25, 11 January 24About the C64 I heard that scrolling can only be done for eight pixels in each direction. After this, memory needs to be copied. This does not really sound like hardware scrolling.

The C64 can offset the start of the screen by up to 7 pixels. It can also move the character map around in memory to some extent, so you can get reasonably consistent scrolling without having to copy lots of data around (well at some point you do have to but it's not difficult). The only tricky bit is that the Colour RAM, which provides the attribute map that assigns colours/modes to individual characters is fixed in RAM. Hence a lot of games "cheating" by just never changing the colour area and keeping the background a consistent 4 colours.

The thing is, moving the screen by individual pixels is the hard bit as it requires a lot of bit level manipulation of memory, which is why the hardware assistance in the C64 makes such a big difference (coupled with sprites which avoid the need to redraw areas of the screen too).

Quote from: cwpab on 11:43, 11 January 24The CISC Vs. RISC debate is perhaps not very related to the CPC CPU, but it's an interesting offtopic. And it's still related if you consider in the CPC Vs. C64 debate, one of the processor has been described here as having 5x less the number of instructions even if both are technically CISC.

5x less instructions is also one of those slightly nonsensical comparisons though. Do all the different Z80 ADD instructions count? Are you counting addressing modes separately?

In real terms they have similar instructions, albeit with the Z80 having a bunch of block operations that the 6502 doesn't. But the instruction timings of core instructions, number of registers available and things like the Z80 having a full 16-bit stack are really where the biggest differences come into play. 

"Number of instructions" isn't really a useful metric. Even for RISC, the "reduced" bit meant "reduced in complexity" not "reduced in number" - most RISC chips at the time had as many, if not more, instructions.

The 3DO has an ARM RISC processor, the Saturn's SH-1 and SH-2 processors are also RISC.

And as Prodatron noted, all the current processors - even if they have a CISC instruction set - use a RISC core at its base. Intel and AMD for example just don't give you access to it.

Quote from: cwpabA few weeks ago, I also read that a RISC processor was about 3x as fast as a CISC processor with the same speed (at least for consoles and games).

That statement is too general and as stated above all processors today have a RISC implementation.

QuoteI wonder if the industry will move to the RISC ARM processors at some point.

It already has. ARM is in all mobile and smart phones, in all the current Apple devices, in the Switch, the Raspberry PI and its clones, in all the modern calculators, etc, etc.
If you ask me, it's time that a new competitor takes hold in the market, RISC V hopefully which is an open source RISC instruction set. There are devices (prototype boards mostly) which use them already.

Quote from: Prodatron on 08:12, 11 January 24and here the CPU is slowed down a lot or even stopped (I don't remember exactly).

It's slowed down. You can't stop a 6502.

Here's a good thread about halting the 6502:
dma - For how long can you safely stop the clock on an NMOS 6502? - Retrocomputing Stack Exchange (https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/14370/for-how-long-can-you-safely-stop-the-clock-on-an-nmos-6502)

Quote from: lightforce6128 on 03:57, 11 January 24

Quote from: zhulien on 14:41, 10 January 24

Quote from: Anthony Flack on 20:56, 09 January 24I've never done any 6502 programming (yet) but I'm kind of curious to have a go at making something for the Vectrex sometime.

That has a 6809, which is a 6800 variant that failed in the market due to being six times the price of the 6502 and Z80. But it has some cool additional features like a relocatable zero page, two stacks, and it can multiply two 8 bit numbers in hardware.

Z80 can multiply some 8bit numbers in hardware.

There is an extended version of the Z80 CPU (R800 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R800)) that offers multiply commands. But the Z80 can - as far as I know - only use adding and shifting, what soon ends up in long command sequences.

I did say some numbers, such as those that thr add operation has the same outcome as a multiply would.

Like x 2.  Add a,a is also a x2

Quote from: MaV on 15:09, 11 January 24

Quote from: Prodatron on 08:12, 11 January 24and here the CPU is slowed down a lot or even stopped (I don't remember exactly).

It's slowed down. You can't stop a 6502.

Here's a good thread about halting the 6502:
dma - For how long can you safely stop the clock on an NMOS 6502? - Retrocomputing Stack Exchange (https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/14370/for-how-long-can-you-safely-stop-the-clock-on-an-nmos-6502)

That's stopping the clock, which would be a weird way of trying to stop the CPU (I'd imagine a Z80 might also do strange things in that case too, such as upsetting refresh). The 6502 has a RDY line which external devices can use to halt the CPU temporarily (I'd guess that's what the C64 does but. I've never looked into it).

I agree with most of the comments. When talking about "underpowered" we must put in context the price. By that time, even Amigas were underpowered compared to much more expensive computers. As later were the PCs compared to SGI computers, until they were no more.

To me, by 1984-85 (6128), they were very well balanced.. by that time there were also some new 8bit Atari computers, XL (83), XE (85) that were no better than CPCs. But I see C64 was very good when launched.

Of course, plus series were disappointing for me.

Quote from: andycadleyThat's stopping the clock, which would be a weird way of trying to stop the CPU (I'd imagine a Z80 might also do strange things in that case too, such as upsetting refresh). The 6502 has a RDY line which external devices can use to halt the CPU temporarily (I'd guess that's what the C64 does but. I've never looked into it).

Right, the RDY line on the 6502 is used for such purposes. My mistake!
And you're right about the Z80 and the refresh, stopping the Z80 this way otherwise is completely safe. It all boils down to whether the processor is build with CMOS or NMOS technology.

RISC has a shorter list of instructions executing in fewer clocks than CISC. Which means it has to execute a longer list of commands than CISC to execute the same program. So the fact that it will execute more commands at the same time with the same clock does not give it an advantage. But its simpler structure requires fewer transistors, so it is cheaper to produce, and allows it to be clocked faster with a similar degree of heating. Or achieve the same performance as CISC while heating up less and consuming less electricity. And this is the advantage of RISC, especially in mobile devices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_share_of_personal_computer_vendors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_phones

According to these sites, PCs reached their peak production in 2011, up to 352 million. A year ago it dropped to 286 million. The decline stopped during the pandemic, but it is going down again. Meanwhile, smartphones peaked in 2014, to 1.88 billion, and are falling due by recession, 1.2 billion a year ago. But it's still 5 times as much as PC. So ARMs are leading. Now even the newest MACs run on RISC.
___________

And back to the main topic. CPC, having a resolution of 640x200 and a faster processor, had a huge advantage over C64 in office programs at a similar price. (plus it had a monitor included). C128 had a similar or even better mode because it was in color, but it was almost twice as expensive and almost half as slow in CPM than CPC. Yes, C128 had Z80 ticking only 2MHz.

CPC in games was sometimes slower than C64, but for example in isometrics it had either a higher resolution or more colors. In general, it had more colorful sprites than just 3 colors in C64. And a faster tape recorder and disk drive. In 8bits, only MSX2 was better than CPC, but also clearly more expensive and more exotic in Europe. So CPC was the Top Machine. (with not always top games). ;) And for dessert, a great quick Basic. Yeah!

But I wouldn't rate so well CPC Plus. After 6 years clock speed and RAM are the same. With almost twice the price, with an unnecessary monitor. Some 16-bit was a better choice. ST and A500 had a similar price to PLUS. Or even a PC cheaper than CPC+, e.g. Atari PC1 or Schneider EuroPC, which had a twice faster processor, 4 times more RAM, much easier to connect hard drive or cheaper quite useful DOS and Norton in ROM. And had Tandy Graphics, so utility with 640x200 in 4 colors, and hundreds of games in 320x200 in 16 colors. It really looked better than the same games on PLUS over and over again. For example Lemmings or Crazy Cars 2 & 3 in higher resolution. Just to buy AdLib for the printer port to have sounds better. So it was a much better successor after CPC than Plus with just few games with few more colors, Yuck. And I think I don't need to explain advantages of Atari ST or Amigas. :)

Thanks all again for the super interesting information! Especially the last message from ZorrO, very clarifying!

Hey ZorrO, I'm also a CPC + PSX person... What about the other retro gens? In my case it's MS-DOS for the 16 bit and PS2.  ;)

This is yet another offtopic, but I've never had 16bit. And I never had 8bit with recorder.
I had 6128 +5.25 +mouse, in 1992-96, then A1230 42MHz HDD CD and PSX until 2002, then 1.2GHz WinXP. Since 2007 I use laptops only.

Sounds like you started really strong with Amstrad... Whoa.

" 6128 +5.25 +mouse "

That's definitely NOT underpowered.  ;D

I start fascinated with computers in 1985 when I saw them on TV and noticed that there were some magazines about them. I was 12 years old then, but my parents didn't want to hear about such nonsense. Prices of them were sky high for me. But after 7 years I bought myself 6128 with green in 1992, when they stopped producing not only CPC but also A500. Such institutions as Police and universities were replacing then CPC into PC, so used 6128 went on sale for price like C64 + tape recorder. I wasn't rich but I was frugal so I buy it. After 2 years I bought a color TV, and a year later a big FDD and mouse from ST. Someone might think that it was already outdated, but in my block were 40 flats and I was only third owner of computer there, so I felt like a pioneer. And in other blocks situation wasn't better. Someone had XE, someone had C64, someone else had A500. :)

Poland wasn't rich country, in '85 only 1% of families had a micros, and in '92 about 6%. I guess in England probably were better, but not so much that everyone could afford Amiga in '85. So I think a question like in this subject "is it CPC in '84 wasn't too weak?" could asked by someone so young that he don't remember those times, or by someone from a rich family who doesn't realize that not everyone are a millionaire. :D

Do you remember this?

My answer is no, because "power" is what everyone is obsessed with today. Those times were more romantic for me (being a teenager at the time). The point of messing with a computer then, was not to find the more "powerful" machine but to find the easiest to learn with. That was the true "power" of those times and the CPC6128 excelled in it. It was my 2nd computer and my most loved till today. I learned tons of things on assembly, how hardware works and how software can be used to squeeze out every bit of potential of a computer. You couldn't do that with a PC or an Atari or Amiga (my third computer, which i still love but as a user/gamer, not as a computer enthusiast).

Quote from: Wanderer on 21:08, 12 January 24My answer is no, because "power" is what everyone is obsessed with today. Those times were more romantic for me (being a teenager at the time). The point of messing with a computer then, was not to find the more "powerful" machine but to find the easiest to learn with. That was the true "power" of those times and the CPC6128 excelled in it. It was my 2nd computer and my most loved till today. I learned tons of things on assembly, how hardware works and how software can be used to squeeze out every bit of potential of a computer. You couldn't do that with a PC or an Atari or Amiga (my third computer, which i still love but as a user/gamer, not as a computer enthusiast).

In those times, having a 3" disk drive in a home computer was really power.., compared to tapes..

Quote from: asertus on 21:39, 12 January 24In those times, having a 3" disk drive in a home computer was really power.., compared to tapes..

Indeed. In order to do anything other than gaming, it was a one-way street...

Quote from: cwpab on 23:18, 10 January 24Thanks to this post, today I learned that x86 is CISC and ARM is RISC.

My dear PSX was RISC and that apparently helped it... I believe the 3DO was not RISC. I'm not sure how many consoles use(d) RISC, but a quick search revealed RISC was only used starting with the PSX (not sure if Saturn) and stopped at the PS3 era, as PS4 and other later consoles switched back to CISC with x86.

I have also learned that RISC uses more instructions to do the same, but it saves hardware space or transistors because these instructions use only one clock (cycle?) and this allows for pipelining.

A few weeks ago, I also read that a RISC processor was about 3x as fast as a CISC processor with the same speed (at least for consoles and games).

I wonder if the industry will move to the RISC ARM processors at some point.

The 3DO has an ARM CPU which is RISC of course. I also find out the Saturn SH-2 processors are mentioned as RISC.

There is also the mythology/marketing around RISC, that it must be much faster. But it's relative. You might have thought 3DO or Saturn must be not RISC as they happen to underperform compared to Playstation. But there are a lot of other reasons they do so. Yet their CPU also seems to be of the RISC type.

The thing is, nobody can agree of a precise definition of CISC vs RISC, it never made sense to me. It's more of a chip design philosophy rather than something precise you can scientifically define.
But I can see the more registers, fewer instructions and orthogonality in ARM or others. But that orthogonality and more registers are nice on 68000 too, which I think is considered a CISC.
However, I see a lot of extra variations of instructions in later ARM. So is that a RISC now or CISC? I am not sure..

An early feature I love on ARMs btw, is that the instruction encoding allows it to do many things in one instruction that could be taking 2-3 or more on other CPUs. But it's not like extra junk instruction, but just the orthogonal design around simple instructions allows you to do things like that.

ADDEQ R1,R2,R3,LSL #4

This does R1 = R2 + (R3 << 4) only if the flag was Zero (conditional EQ)

On X86 you would need to do

JNE after
    MOV AX,BX
    MOV CX,DX
    SHL CX,4
    ADD AX,CX
after:

On X86 (and other CPUs too) you couldn't even use 3 regs as arguments,. your ADD is R1 = R1 + R2, so I had to swap around regs to do the shift (I am writing this fast, don't know if my asm is crappy).

At first I would be "Wait a minute? How is ARM a RISC?". But to counter my point, because the ARM doesn't have a lot of extra junk instructions, more bits are available in the instruction encoding to create those more parametrized simple instruction formats. The same thing is orthogonal, you can do it for MOV, ADD, SUB, AND, ORR, XOR, etc.. it's beautiful!!! One reason certain things were faster with efficient assembly on ARM than early X86 (things might be different now but for other hardware architectural reasons). But then PCs might had more bruteforce CPUs with more Mhz or faster RAM, I don't know. One architecture was never much faster than the other, they were fighting side by side. I've never seen the effect of a CPU truly outperforming the others so that it's obvious.

But anyway, I diverted. I would like to say stories of how now I am learning 68000 on Amiga/AtariST, I realize while it's so much more cool and orthogonal than x86, instruction cycles are not as fast that I perceived it to be. There are things where the 286 even spends less cycles than 68000 (don't look at the mul/div cycles my god, or even bit shifts by N positions). However, 68000 with more registers available and MOVEM instructions could counter that. So,.it's all relative. We also think 68000 must have been a beast because of the produced graphics from the custom chips of Amiga or Mega Drive, so it's misleading (See Spectrum QL with 68000 that looks and moves worse than 8088 with CGA).

Modern ARM CPUs are every bit as much a CISC design as x86. It's pretty much impossible to have SIMD type instructions and not be closer to CISC ideology than RISC. The only sense it which it's really any different is that it has less baggage from old designs than x86 (less, but not none. And Intel is moving to strip Real Mode support and a bunch of other legacy bits from x86 l, which will bring it a lot closer).

But there is still a weird cult clinging to the idea of "RISC is more advanced" and so the marketing droids still try to push the "ARM is RISC" line to make it seem better.

Weirdly the same didn't happen to VLIW, even though VLIW was really just an even further extension of the principle of RISC. Possibly because the most notable VLIW CPU was the Itanium.

Quote from: ZorrO on 20:44, 12 January 24I start fascinated with computers in 1985 when I saw them on TV and noticed that there were some magazines about them. I was 12 years old then, but my parents didn't want to hear about such nonsense. Prices of them were sky high for me. But after 7 years I bought myself 6128 with green in 1992, when they stopped producing not only CPC but also A500. Such institutions as Police and universities were replacing then CPC into PC, so used 6128 went on sale for price like C64 + tape recorder. I wasn't rich but I was frugal so I buy it. After 2 years I bought a color TV, and a year later a big FDD and mouse from ST. Someone might think that it was already outdated, but in my block were 40 flats and I was only third owner of computer there, so I felt like a pioneer. And in other blocks situation wasn't better. Someone had XE, someone had C64, someone else had A500. :)

Poland wasn't rich country, in '85 only 1% of families had a micros, and in '92 about 6%. I guess in England probably were better, but not so much that everyone could afford Amiga in '85. So I think a question like in this subject "is it CPC in '84 wasn't too weak?" could asked by someone so young that he don't remember those times, or by someone from a rich family who doesn't realize that not everyone are a millionaire. :D

Very cool story! In contrast, I feel very privileged: My dad placed his color 6128 in my room when he bought a 286 in 1989 (I was 9), and shortly after I got 80 copied games from one of his friends. Sadly, the disk belt broke and the computer was gone by 1992. But I was a "late adopter" too and was a bit confused when I read Spanish magazines, that were already focusing on the Amiga. 

From my experience in Spain, one of the kids in my class had a CPC (green monitor and tape, I guess I was the rich kid compared to him), several had a Spectrum and one had an MSX. None had a C64. And I I've heard stories about kids that received a ZX Spectrum well into the 90s. In retrospect, I wish I had a tape machine: I would have waited much longer loading games, but I'd still have the computer.

Back to Poland, I find it interesting that you stayed 7 years (from 1985 to 1992, from 12 to 19 years old) "obsessed with 8 bit computers" without having one. Could you give more details on that? Was there any magazine that hyped you? Did you had access to those machines at schools? Also, once you had the CPC, how did you get games for it? Did you use the 5,25 inch drive? Thanks!

Quote from: cwpab on 19:34, 17 January 24Was there any magazine that hyped you?

Bajtek   https://archive.org/search?query=subject%3A%22bajtek%22&page=2
Komputer
IKS  (Informatyka Komputery Systemy)

Quote from: cwpab on 19:34, 17 January 24Also, once you had the CPC, how did you get games for it?

Pirated software marketplace

About it ...  :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSb-PPQEU7k

Quote from: cwpab on 19:34, 17 January 24Did you had access to those machines at schools?

Hahahahhaha!!!  ;D  80th, sometimes one BW TV for the entire school

In my generation, as I read there were only a few experimental schools with computers in the largest cities in Poland. The generation a few years younger was more lucky to attend to such a school.
I saw saloon arcade for the first time in 1981, a few years later two more such places appeared in my city. I played only once, and in 5 minutes I lost enough money to buy a monthly computer magazine that I could read and watch for weeks. I preferred reading rather than playing, so I didn't play anymore, but I often went there to watch like play others. :)

I guess I wasn't very social because I didn't have the opportunity to touch one until I bought a computer. Although I knew which stores had Timex and Atari on display. Before I bought computer, I read a lot of science fiction and stories about UFOs, Yeti, ghosts, etc. I rode a bike a lot, also camping, and sometimes I ran away from home. And somehow these years passed me by. :)

In years '86 to '90 were 5 multi-platform computer magazines in Poland. The most popular of them, "Bajtek", wrote about 8-bits until '94.
At first, most popular computer in Poland was Spectrum, then Atari 8bit, then C64 and A500 simultaneously. And according to polling, only 3% of readers had CPC. Therefore, out of 32 pages, only 2 (sometimes 4) were about CPC. Often boring about CPM.

Long listings were in the IKS magazine, about 1/8 were for CPC. But rather boring, high mathematics written by soldiers from officers' school. In others, there were only tests of Amstrads, they praised how cool they were, but there were no tips or descriptions of the software. When numerous gaming magazines appeared after 1991, they usually forgot to mention that described title also had an Amstrad version. Amstrads in Poland had a reputation as a cheap PC substitute suitable for writing texts, not a gaming machine.
But back then I wasn't planning to buy CPC, I didn't even dream about it, because I thought that if I could afford a computer one day, I would probably buy Spectrum or Timex (because it has 64 characters per line), but there were big, ugly and expensive FDD for them. :(

Later, all the multiplatform magazines disappeared and appeared about Atari XE, ST, C64 and Amigas. After 1995, only those about Amiga and PC remained.
Honestly, I spent more money on magazines about UFOs and parapsychology. :)

I stared at these magazines and liked computers with FDD and high resolution. And I read about tape recorders were suck so much, so when Amstrads suddenly became so cheap in 1991 was for me like salvation. :)

Around 1993 I borrowed from a friend 4 foreign magazines only about CPC. 2 English and 2 German. (he had an uncle abroad). They were from 1988, but I was enchanted by how many beautiful things I saw there, I didn't know English well at that time. And only a few words of German (till now). But I typed listings and names of several games and programs to ask pirates about them later.
MacArti0 mentions computer's market, but they were only in a few large cities, and even there it was difficult to find something for CPC, it was easier to find something in the advertisements "I have such a computer and I will exchange the software", you could order by phone, but it was cheaper to visit and copy.
My rubber belt in FDD broke too, but I used rubber band what they used to sell bunches of radishes. I am not joking. :)

In 1994, an anti-piracy law was introduced, but it took 10 years for piracy in Poland to drop from 99% to 50%. In the past, even if you had a pirate collection, your friends were jealous of you. Because it wasn't easy to get them. But today, just like in Western countries, if you want you can find pirates, but to make people jealous, you have to have the originals.

I seen in local club had 8 pieces of CPC 6128 and kids 10 years old try learned LOGO on it. (I was already had 20 years old). And I put an ad on cable channel that I was looking for Amstradians, four people responded, all 464. :(  But I also met others and I had someone to copy software from, it was more difficult to buy 3' floppy disks than to find someone who had CPC software. It wasn't as bad as imagined by Polish owners of other computers.

After two years, I replaced my green monitor with a color TV. In the early 1990s, owners of old PCs threw away those large 5.25' (40-track) 360K drives to replace them with 80-track 720K ones, and the old ones were very cheap (1/4 price of C64 FDD), but I didn't like them and resisted them for a long time. I had a scheme how to connect 5.25' from these foreign magazine, and for mouse too. In 1995, when my friend bought a 6128 with a 5.25' drive and 120 disks but he was short of money, I said that I would pay the rest but I would take 60 disks. And I got a my 5.25' from another friend in exchange for a book I didn't need. I bought the ST mouse without a cable for few pennies. And after 4 years I had 40 small disks and a total of about 500 games. Utilities for everything, digitized music and pictures. And a few full-disc demos. All pirates version. Atari and C64 owners without a FDD envied me terribly. I sold it after four years for 1/3 of price. I didn't know that someday I will be miss my CPC. I bought an A1200 030 HDD etc. And again, I was an outsider for several years when most people had a PC. After three years I bought another bare 6128 with one empty floppy and without power supply. It stayed in Poland, cause I live in England since 17 years, and I have only emulator.

My only failure with CPC was in '93 I went to the Internet to university library and I found everything up to CPC on Norwegian FTP. I copied some stuff on 3.5' floppys, and I borrowed such a drive from a friend but I couldn't get it to work. :(

Actually, what I have found is a lot of support of Atari 8bit computers in Poland. And a lot of recent homebrew games from there.. were those popular in 80-90s? More than other western computers?

After the C64 sold much cheaper than the Atari XL after 1982 and the company's collapse in 1983, Western software companies no longer wanted to develop for Atari.

But in 1984, the company was bought by Jack Tramiel. He was a Jew born in Poland, and he spoke Polish. And he was looking for sales markets for the XE in Central Europe, because in the West they were already considered obsolete. The peak of popularity of Atari XE in Poland was in the years '87-91. Before that, the Spectrum and later the C64 were more popular. The first Polish software companies (LK Avalon, Mirage Media) were established in the early 1990s and wrote for XE and C64. This was very difficult in a market so dominated by piracy.

Atarians often win short Basic competitions.
8bit Atari never fascinated me, but I think that the best reason to become an Atari owner was the community, very nice, helpful and down-to-earth people. Unlike Commodore owners who like to make fun of owners of other machines and can do nothing except break joysticks.

By the way, Alan Sugar is also a descendant of Jews who once lived in Poland. I remember when Brexit was approaching, he appeared on TV and spoke very warmly about his Polish employees, and expressed regret that recently the British had such a bad attitude towards immigrants.

(https://www.me-too.pl/4104-large_default/koszulka-damska-i-speak-polish-what-s-your-superpower.jpg)  (https://g2f.atari8.info/gallery/slides/papajack_atari_piesiu.png)

From the video about Polish "stock exchanges" (https://youtu.be/XSb-PPQEU7k?si=nJQ2Sg-ZhpAtg1a_&t=1248):

(https://i.ibb.co/1zX1DQw/polish-8-bit-market-share.jpg)

These are the number of computers on the market. Some were brought there for sale and others worked there as copying machines. And this is sum of all machines from each company. A8 and ST together, C64/16/128/+4/A500 together, CPC/PCW/PC together. There was quantity in that one day. This was in 1989, a few months before the first survey was published.

Hey ZorrO... One last question. In the "what's your favorite failed vintage computer (https://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/other-retro/failed-vintage-computers-pcjr-sinclair-ql-what-is-your-favorite/)" thread, you mention the Amiga 1200 as one of the most overrated. But here you mention this machine was your chosen one to make the jump directly from the 8 bits to the 32 bits. So my question would be: how was your experience with the Amiga 1200? How many years did you use it in Poland, what year did you buy it, what games did you have, why do you think it's overrated and when did you finally play Doom, Day of the Tentacle and other MS-DOS exclusives?

I've never had MS-DOS, I've never played DotT. My first PC had WinXP, and I bought it because I wanted to watch DiviX movies and I wanted Internet. But start at start. :)

I bought the A1200 because I wanted a computer with a HDD, colorful graphics and a mouse. I had it from 1996 to 2002. And halfway through that time I already knew that 32bit PCs were better than 32bit Amiga.
9 of 10 my favorite Amiga games could run on A500. In my opinion, there is nothing as good like should be on 32bit. Fortunately, I also had PSX at those times, and there was plenty of gorgeous games. I've never been interested in games where you run around with a gun. Maybe because as a kid I used to run around the forest with a stick, playing war. I had demo of Doom on A1200 and PSX in late 90's, boooooring. Gloom was much more fun and it was the only Amiga game I liked and it needed a processor more powerful than 7MHz.

In the 90s, the prices and power of computers were changing rapidly. At the beginning, Polish could barely afford 8-bit. In the mid-90s it was cheaper than a PC because you didn't have to buy a monitor and it had better sound. Because for similar money you could buy 386 B/W VGA and Covox. But at the end there was no money spent on Amiga that would provide as many possibilities. Also, PSX games were much better than Amiga games from 060 or PPC, and PSX cost only a fraction of turbo with 060. Half of the best PSX games were never released on PC.

But the games aren't only disappointment. The driver for CD-ROM for A600/A1200 appeared about in mid-90s. There were difficulties finding drivers for the scanner and modem. Video codecs appeared with a delay of several years. The first scalable vector fonts with Polish characters appeared on Amiga only in the late 90s. And they were already on Atari ST a decade earlier!  In the mid-90s, if someone was rich, they could buy a much better PC than the best Amiga. But at the end, for a fraction of the price of average Amiga (I mean about 030), you could buy a PC that was 100 times better in everything.
To sum up, games from the previous era looked good, modern games didn't exist for a long time, and when they did appear, there were only a few and very slow. Apart from gaming, it was suitable for displaying photos and playing music, but if you needed something for office use, it was a real pain in ass.

I know that Amiga music was better than 8bit chip-tune, but I never heard from Amiga anything like this... (good speaker needed, that's what I call 32bit music):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e0lhwoxwGY

PS.: In my previous post #68 "These are the number of computers on the market."  As "market" I meant something like car boot sale in UK. And in Warsaw were bigest computer car boot in Poland. Source of most piracy software. ;)

This is firmly on offtopic teritory now, but it's funny that around '97 you were super pumped at 26yo or so with NFS3 on the PSX because of the TECHNO music, while at the same time I was headbanging the ROCK music in the same game when I was 18:


The game was fun, but cars looked like shoe boxes and handled as such. Those orange colors for the cars without proper "fake-reflections" applied like Gran Turismo were a bit cringey. But seriously, listen to the part at 2:10!

In NFS 3 you can choose in options Rock or Techno music. I always preferred Techno. Like most European, I guess, Rock is for American.

...

Quote from: ZorrO on 18:31, 23 January 24I already knew that 32bit PCs were better than 32bit Amiga

That is one opinion, mine differs.  My Amiga is better than my PC even though my PC now is faster, has more storage etc... and can even emulate more than one Amiga at once.

I wonder what configuration you have, and what exactly makes it better?
Note that I'm not asking what you would prefer do on Amiga, but what for is it better at? If compared to 32bit PC.

I just found two interesting articles about Amstrad (one of them also about Acorn):

- This one from Anstream is weird because it tells the story of Amstrad without mentioning any negative stuff. It could have been written for a potential official Amstrad website if the company was still alive. Especially shocking is when they bring up the GX4000 simply as an example of "more innovation from Amstrad" without mentioning what happened to it: https://www.antstream.com/post/the-legacy-of-the-amstrad


- Much more serious, this one compares Amstrad with Acorn and tells the good and the bad. It's very long and it also contains some initial bullshit about "America only wanted Nintendos" and "machines with noe creation, just consumerism", saying that good programmers were only available in Britain, but ther est of the article is great: https://www.filfre.net/2016/06/acorn-and-amstrad/

Quote from: cwpab on 20:20, 24 January 24I just found two interesting articles about Amstrad (one of them also about Acorn):

- This one from Anstream is weird because it tells the story of Amstrad without mentioning any negative stuff. It could have been written for a potential official Amstrad website if the company was still alive. Especially shocking is when they bring up the GX4000 simply as an example of "more innovation from Amstrad" without mentioning what happened to it: https://www.antstream.com/post/the-legacy-of-the-amstrad


- Much more serious, this one compares Amstrad with Acorn and tells the good and the bad. It's very long and it also contains some initial bullshit about "America only wanted Nintendos" and "machines with noe creation, just consumerism", saying that good programmers were only available in Britain, but ther est of the article is great: https://www.filfre.net/2016/06/acorn-and-amstrad/

Ooh the Digital Antiquarian is a fantastic site, well worth supporting the guy on his Patreon ($1/article) even though his articles are published for free!

Quote from: ZorrO on 13:57, 24 January 24I wonder what configuration you have, and what exactly makes it better?
Note that I'm not asking what you would prefer do on Amiga, but what for is it better at? If compared to 32bit PC.

Even before I turn it on, asthetically it is better.  I collected home computers which ideally are not big boxes.  Ideally they have the computer inbulit into the keyboard.

Quote from: zhulien on 15:55, 25 January 24

Quote from: ZorrO on 13:57, 24 January 24I wonder what configuration you have, and what exactly makes it better?
Note that I'm not asking what you would prefer do on Amiga, but what for is it better at? If compared to 32bit PC.

Even before I turn it on, asthetically it is better.  I collected home computers which ideally are not big boxes.  Ideally they have the computer inbulit into the keyboard.

I think that's a pretty narrow definition of "better", especially given that "everything built into the keyboard" is pretty much the defacto form factor of modern PCs (albeit typically referred to as a laptop).

Quote from: andycadley on 16:28, 25 January 24

Quote from: zhulien on 15:55, 25 January 24

Quote from: ZorrO on 13:57, 24 January 24I wonder what configuration you have, and what exactly makes it better?
Note that I'm not asking what you would prefer do on Amiga, but what for is it better at? If compared to 32bit PC.

Even before I turn it on, asthetically it is better.  I collected home computers which ideally are not big boxes.  Ideally they have the computer inbulit into the keyboard.

I think that's a pretty narrow definition of "better", especially given that "everything built into the keyboard" is pretty much the defacto form factor of modern PCs (albeit typically referred to as a laptop).

Yes, I could tear the screen off if I didn't want it - but MS Windows nor OSX isn't fun for me.  I already have a Schneider EuroPC and 2 Cybernet PCs (which are like CPC formfactor).  Still not as fun, but at least better asthetically than most new PCs and Macs in my eyes.

First of all, a computer is not a woman, it does not have to be pretty. Secondly, appearance is a matter of taste, even if 80% prefer one option, it is not a reason for the rest to change their preferences.
From an objective point of view, it is easy to compare things that can be measured because you have more of something, or something is done faster, or a given task can be performed more conveniently, with fewer clicks, or in one program instead of two.
And here I see that Zhulien does not have any arguments of this type in favor of Amiga.

At the beginning in '92-93, Amiga 1200 had better graphics and sound and longer file names than a similarly priced PC, and it was more difficult to connect joysticks to PC. Poor office programs, could be replaced with a Mac emulator, but it was neither fast nor convenient. But in the following years, prices, computing power and available games and applications were getting worse for Amiga and better and better for PC. Until Windows XP appeared, Amiga crashed less often than PC, but this was last advantage, a very small one at a time when Amiga was much slower in everything. And it had worse support for scanners, printers, recorders and Internet. It handled PDF, MP3, AVI and 3D games with great difficulty. Only blind fanboys wouldn't admit it. If you had a PSX next to Amiga, you didn't have to worry about games for some time.
In practice, more money you had, or more you needed Works or Office, the sooner you switched to a PC. End of story.

A1200: Underpowered for 1992? - NO. :)
In '93 - maybe No, because you can buy more RAM and faster turbo.
In '95 - I'm afraid Yes. Not because hardware still cheaper than equal good PC, but because software, less quantity and less quality than this for PC.
Mac emulator for Office and PSX for games and no money for change computer could keep you with Amiga next few years, but... you know. Windows was better and better, and prices of PC going down so fast. :)

Quote from: ZorrO on 07:37, 26 January 24First of all, a computer is not a woman, it does not have to be pretty. Secondly, appearance is a matter of taste, even if 80% prefer one option, it is not a reason for the rest to change their preferences.
From an objective point of view, it is easy to compare things that can be measured because you have more of something, or something is done faster, or a given task can be performed more conveniently, with fewer clicks, or in one program instead of two.
And here I see that Zhulien does not have any arguments of this type in favor of Amiga.

At the beginning in '92-93, Amiga 1200 had better graphics and sound and longer file names than a similarly priced PC, and it was more difficult to connect joysticks to PC. Poor office programs, could be replaced with a Mac emulator, but it was neither fast nor convenient. But in the following years, prices, computing power and available games and applications were getting worse for Amiga and better and better for PC. Until Windows XP appeared, Amiga crashed less often than PC, but this was last advantage, a very small one at a time when Amiga was much slower in everything. And it had worse support for scanners, printers, recorders and Internet. It handled PDF, MP3, AVI and 3D games with great difficulty. Only blind fanboys wouldn't admit it. If you had a PSX next to Amiga, you didn't have to worry about games for some time.
In practice, more money you had, or more you needed Works or Office, the sooner you switched to a PC. End of story.

A1200: Underpowered for 1992? - NO. :)
In '93 - maybe No, because you can buy more RAM and faster turbo.
In '95 - I'm afraid Yes. Not because hardware still cheaper than equal good PC, but because software, less quantity and less quality than this for PC.
Mac emulator for Office and PSX for games and no money for change computer could keep you with Amiga next few years, but... you know. Windows was better and better, and prices of PC going down so fast. :)

Im not really sure that that is a fair comparison:

1. There was a paradigm shift from 2D to 3D, all 2D platforms suffered with this shift including the Megadrive and the SNES although limited success solutions were applied to those consoles like expensive SVP in the Megadrive cartridge for Virtua Racing, expensive SFX chip for Starfox for the SNES.
This shift to 3D wasnt affordable until the PSX hit the market in December 94 in Japan and late 95 in the US and Europe.
The A1200 had no dedicated hardware for 3D and due to having only a planar display lower power CPUs like 68000, 68020 lacked power to perform chunky to planar conversion, from 68030 onwards this is significantly reduced and the operation has minimal impact to framerates on a 68060.

2. For processing of MP3's and video a Pentium/68060 or Power PC CPU is required to not significantly impact performance of the OS, i.e. where the whole CPU isnt working 100% just to process the audio or video.
Even in 1995 video processing was still terrible on a Pentium PC with Quicktime and the likes, this wasnt resolved until Intel added MMX support(Simple Instruction Multiple Datastream) to x86 in 1996. PDF was an absolutely terrible CPU hog back in the late 90's, it still is but CPUs can brute force through the processing required.

3. Office Apps etc. The Amiga was never really targeted at the office, that was always PC ground, Apple managed to get M$ Office applications on the MAC but they became outdated compared to the PC versions which were updated far more frequently. It wasnt until the 1997 deal with M$ when Apple were in serious trouble, brought Steve Jobs back, needed cash and support from M$ to keep them afloat and M$ agreeing to release all new Office applications on Apple at the same time as the PC release where Apple had to bundle Internet Explorer with the MACs, i was working in Apple at this time and i remember the boo's when Bill Gates was onscreen at Macworld in August 97. I had no issues with word processing on my A1200, i bought a printer from the UK, just a standard printer, hooked it up, absolutely no issue, used it to print bill heading, for uni work etc.

4. Mainstream(excluding NT which wasnt for home users) Windows OS was awful until Windows 95 was released and that wasnt great, Mac OS didnt support pre-emptive multitasking until Mac OS X in 2001

5. The Motorolla 680x0 was a dead end with the 68060 being the last CPU for that range, Apple struggled when it moved to Power PC, having emulation etc. The PowerPC 603 wasnt great and wasnt really until the PowerPC 604 that performance was acceptable and the first Macs with that CPU werent released until 1997. The Mac Port of doom requires a 68040 as a minimum. An A1200 with 68040 can run Doom fine, in fact i ran it on my lowly 68030@50MHz A1200 in 1997 when the first Amiga port was released.

6. Commodore died in April 1994 so there were no "official" updates to any Amiga computers after that in terms of architecture(im excluding those PowerPC variants which were never really official) so the A1200 was stuck in 1992 with the only upgradability being via the expansion slots it was released with. You could expand and A1200 with a 68060, or a Power PC cpu and BlizzardVision(for native chunky modes), however all the Power PC hardware was limited as Commodore no longer existed, there were no OS update to officially support PPC natively until Amiga OS 4 was released in 2004(and never really official and still caught in legal wrangles).

In summary the A1200 was not built with the huge shift from 2D to fully texture mapped 3D worlds that occured around the time of the PSX's release in the west in 95. 

The concept of better is 100% opinion.  I can't say Amiga is better than PC (in general) as everyone can have their own opinion... but I can say to me it is better than a PC.  I hate the misuse of the term PC also, to me they are all PCs... but then some people don't get that.  Computers I had roughly in order I got them... 464, sc3000h, c64, 664, a500, 286, vz200, ql, bbc b, Mac, msx, cd32, a1200, a4000, 486.... 6128plus, etc...

For me the best ones are the ones I enjoyed and still enjoy using, namely cpcs and amigas. I can say out of ever computer I have had... cpc first, amiga second, c64 third... and PC and Mac are near the end.  I work with PCs and Macs every say, programming them.  There is a little fun on them, but I still place the fun factor at the end.

Like cars, I have a couple... my Honda Civic Type R fn2 is not my most expensive but it is definitely my most fun... 

For me best = the most fun, otherwise what is the point of living... to have less fun?  

If it was best for a specific purpose, my answer would differ depending on the purpose. 

Note... I prefer 2d games not 3d games, in particular 2d shoot em ups.  My favorite game is dodonpachi. No 3d game for me has given me as much fun as that. In fact Galaga is even better than every 3d game I have ever played.

Commodore were terrible at product planning, they just seemed to throw hardware out there and assume someone will buy it. When they should have been transitioning everyone towards the Amiga, they decided to release the C128 - a "business" computer far less capable and inherently flawed in its dual CPU design. And that's before you even look at the madness of other incompatible machines like the Plus/4.

And that madness continued with the Amiga line. The A600 was the result of far too many cooks, half trying to produce a lower cost "Amiga 300" and the other half trying to bolt new features onto the A500. The resultant product was ludicrously expensive and mired in stupidity, like being incompatible with the A500 CD drive expansion released at almost the same time.

And then Commodore apparently decided the best thing to do was ape Amstrad's 664 decision by releasing the A1200 almost straight away, at the same price but with significant hardware improvements. A600 owners, many of whom were already miffed they'd traded in their A500 for a less capable machine, we're fuming.

Not that the A1200 was a great upgrade, it was clear they were rushing out hardware to try and regain lost R&D costs. The CPU was crippled by RAM access speeds, key bits of the chipset (like the blitter) were still left running at the same speed and weren't really up to pushing enough data for all the new bitplanes supported. It's a half baked mess and the Amiga really deserved to go out with a better end, but c'est la vie.

Quote from: zhulien on 15:26, 26 January 24Note... I prefer 2d games not 3d games, in particular 2d shoot em ups.  My favorite game is dodonpachi. No 3d game for me has given me as much fun as that. In fact Galaga is even better than every 3d game I have ever played.

2D shooters have always been confusing for me: love the pixel art, hate the stressing difficulty.

It's funny how often gamers think they have a lot in common with other gamers when they actually have very different tastes. I'm one of the gamers that never plays RPG or strategy games, for example. But other gamers only play RPGs. And we're often debating in forums defending the PSX or the Amstrad in the same debating team as other guys who like totally different games.

Can you imagine a movie convention or debate where people ignore others tastes (10 people who only watch horror, 10 people who only watch sci-fi and 10 people who only watch drama) and mostly center the topic about which was the best format, VHS or Beta? That's what video game culture often feels like.

I wonder if having Space Hawks and Harrier Attack as my 2 first 2D shooters for the CPC had any influence of my perception about this genre. I believe my 3rd and last 2D shooter game was Xenon 2 for MS-DOS, where I always died.