Had some fun reading this this morning :)
(Click "Expand" at the top of the quote)
QuoteThe CPC is just what happens when you have no custom chips and try to move about a 16k screen RAM. Given that the 4mhz Z80 suffers about 15-20% 'bad lines' according to Amstrad experts and the Z80 @ 3.25mhz is about the speed of the 6502 class CPU in the Commodore Plus/4 (TED has the same hardware pixel offset scroll as VIC-II) and Atari 800 etc it is pretty pathetic. Even so, 16k at 320x200 gives you a maximum of just 4 colours for the entire screen, doesn't matter if it's unlimited this is utter garbage and makes the games look worse than the ZX Spectrum 16k classics. No Color/Attribute RAM just shows it was the simplest possible design for a computer, at least the Spectrum has Attribute RAM, the MSX may have similar and the C64 and TED based C= computers all allow 320x200 (256x192 for MSX/Speccy) with 16 colours etc I think. It's a shit design.
That's probably why they allow you to shrink/increase the screen boarders of all 4 corners so most games with scrolling shrink the screen down to an actual 7 or 8 inch square area where there is any actual dynamic graphics (ignoring massive areas).
But really I am talking about the quality of the components. The computer alone cost £199.99 (a TV modulator was £20-25 IIRC) and the keyboard was garbage for this price point. The monitor is some pathetic garbage bargain basement CRT tube on the colour monitor bundle (£349.99 in 1984? vs £299.99 for green screen?) which has no saturation control (it's set to 100% saturation hence the myth it is a very colourful computer) and the brightness and contrast is combined into one control like junk bottom of the barrel TVs. There is also no speaker, the speaker used inside the case is badly located AND a pathetic 1 inch in size and shit quality, 99 pence quality at best. The YM chip isn't actually that bad but with that internal speaker sound horrendous (the RF modulator for the CPC outputs video only, no sound to the TV) and by 1987 you could get a 520STFM for the same price as the 128k CPC6128+ modulator if you shopped around.
The tape deck built in is worse quality than a Boots or W H Smiths tape deck for £9.99.
You can't have the monitor off and the computer on if you bought it with a green screen or colour monitor bundle, the monitor on off switch cuts power to the CPC, another utterly shit idea.
And finally by the time SCART RGB cables appeared which allowed people who bought a green screen bundle to use it on their colour TV too owning such low end hardware was in the 'free school meals' poverty bracket to be quite frank (and still cost the same as a much more powerful 520STFM too so probably low IQ special needs people too).
The funny thing is with such useless hardware technically the coding generally improved over time, sprites on the C64 made coders very lazy and once they discovered sprite multiplexing and using hi-res overlays trick there was bugger all of the 16kb of VIC-II RAM accessible for excellent use of Colour RAM in the character based multi-color mode (the most horrendous mode of 5 the C64 has) and so after about 1988/89 most games looked like garbage of Acorn Electron palette + 2 greys/browns bullshit. Then again to be honest if you were still playing 8bit games in 1989 I feel very sorry for you when the real action was on NEC, Sega, Amiga or even ST (that cost no more than the 128k CPC in reality from 1987 and onward).
You can say what you want but I own ALL of this stuff, I use it to run my channel. I don't use a CPC emulator to review games and then forget to tell you the screen on Road Runner CPC is about the same as the built in screen of an SX-64 to play that version etc, or that the sound volume is something you reach for instinctively because the volume of the audio of the tape being loaded is half that of the volume of the AY chip pumped through the same speaker. The fact that the 'turbo loader' built into the CPC range is only twice as fast as that of the standard tape loader in the ROMs of a VIC-20 etc etc.
Nothing Amstrad made in the 80s was of any kind of quality, nor was it a bargain, the PCW was useless garbage for that sort of money (you needed to spend about £80 for a serial interface and then add the cost of a daisywheel printer if you intended to use it seriously in even a small office, the Amstrad printer supplied is garbage quality etc etc). The PC1512 cost more than an ST and was an inferior business machine thanks to vastly superior packages like 1st Word WP bundled free with every ST vs and £50 Amsoft WP package designed to be sold for that system vs £500 Word Perfect 4.0 non WYSIWYG bullshit 'commercial quality' (if it didn't exist you could write a GEM based application in days using Computer Concepts Fast BASIC)
Their hi-fis are crap too, even the gimmicky vertical turntable/CD tower thingy as the audio quality is £50 system quality at best.
Their VCRs were garbage too, bottom of the barrel crap before that was even a thing in the VCR market.
Amstrad's Sky+ satellite TV set top boxes were the least reliable and the only ones that needed cooling fans (unlike those from Pace etc) so there's that too. Remember I am an engineer, this is our collecting experience at the Sky installation company I worked for briefly.
Everything that Sugar did was shit quality. This is not the same as Sinclair Research, that 100% goes in the bracket of "ambitious BUT RUBBISH"
(rubbish can be down to trying to do too much for a price point hence you get shit compromises which ruin the product).
ImmortalA1000 is offline
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=1598506#post1598506
Really funny :D :D
He's clearly not a fan. Probably right about the Amstrad HiFi though
Quote from: Squeekboxandj on 10:42, 25 February 23He's clearly not a fan. Probably right about the Amstrad HiFi though
Sure, but bundling it together with the CPC... smh
So much hate concentrated, sounds like is holding a grude against CPCs . For some reason the user got banned, no wonder why :laugh:
Oh didn't notice that! But I'd say he does need some cooling off period... :D
Typical of people who have nothing else to talk about.
Thanks for the fun time.
Yeah, found it to good to keep to myself :D
What a dickhead. No wonder he got banned if he's been posting idiotic hate-filled posts like that.
Just a few bits that stood out to me:
"No Color/Attribute RAM just shows it was the simplest possible design for a computer"
Is he saying the lack of colour clash is a bad thing? I like being able to put coloured pixels anywhere I damn well please.
"it's set to 100% saturation hence the myth it is a very colourful computer "
How's it a myth? The palette values worked out by technical minded folk when displaying vintage computer graphic output on PC's and such confirm the CPC palette is bolder and more saturated. By his logic then C64 gamers were missing out on a world of bright colours by having the saturation of the TV set too low?
"The tape deck built in is worse quality than a Boots or W H Smiths tape deck for £9.99. "
So how come games loaded far more reliably on a 464 than either the Spectrum or C64 connected to whatever external tape deck used for those? I never had any loading issues with my 464 back then but at my friend's house we often had issues loading his C64 tapes even on his official Commodore tape deck.
"You can say what you want but I own ALL of this stuff, I use it to run my channel. "
Countless other people with differing opinions also own this stuff too but apparently NOBODY can say anything to contradict the undisputable king of all vintage computer enthusiasts, Mr ImmortalA1000... I hope I never encounter his channel cos it's probably full of the same dumbassery on display in his post.
"Then again to be honest if you were still playing 8bit games in 1989 I feel very sorry for you when the real action was on NEC, Sega, Amiga or even ST (that cost no more than the 128k CPC in reality from 1987 and onward). "
My family wasn't like super poor (we were quite early with Satellite TV at least) but I still didn't get an Amiga until 1993 (the A1200). And NEC? Who used NEC computers for gaming? Did he actually mean NES? Which is 8-bit. As was the only Sega available at the time (the Mega Drive wasn't released in PAL regions until September 1990). I'm kinda surprised he didn't slip the word 'peasant' in there somewhere. "I feel sorry for you peasants.. stuck on 8-bit machines in 1989..."
I wonder if he'll pop up on here now to continue his hate now he's banned from eab.abime.net
Quote from: trocoloco on 10:45, 25 February 23So much hate concentrated, sounds like is holding a grude against CPCs . For some reason the user got banned, no wonder why :laugh:
Perhaps someone used a CPC to bludgeon his parents to death and he grew up angry and mad.
The CPC palette is created from a logic way and covers the RGB spectrum. All the values exist since the EGA on other computers.
The funny thing is that some frieds owning a C64 now discover its true palette using a well decoded S-Video signal (or more advanced RGB solutions) and it looks like a CPC with less colours. (while emulators continue to offer a fake "NTSC" palette to look nice) :laugh:
Wrong from first sentence. The gate array is a custom chip.
Aside from pointing out that (not counting drive belt replacements) I used a 6128 for over a decade without any problems I'm going to move on to the PCW.
"Nothing Amstrad made in the 80s was of any kind of quality, nor was it a bargain, the PCW was useless garbage for that sort of money (you needed to spend about £80 for a serial interface and then add the cost of a daisywheel printer if you intended to use it seriously in even a small office, the Amstrad printer supplied is garbage quality etc etc)."
I knew personally the owner of a small business (4 staff) that used 3 PCWs from 1985 to 1993 or 94.
Total original cost of these £1200
or he could have bought one(!) of these:
https://nosher.net/archives/computers/adve_045
Now my memory (I may be wrong) is that by 1985 the price of the PC was £1500 to £1700 for a machine that had a similar office functionality as the PCW. So 3 for the price of 1 is very very good deal.
So to quote Nauls from the movie The Thing - "Bullshit Bwana!"
> Given that the 4mhz Z80 suffers about 15-20% 'bad lines' according to Amstrad experts
They can't be very good experts because otherwise they'd know the CPC doesn't have any badlines at all...
That's what you get when you ask ChatGPT to badmouth the Amstrad.
Just a few blatant mistakes and rubbish:
- The GA is a custom chip.
- The Amstrad's speaker isn't 1inch in diameter.
- Comparing ANY computer to computers that came out 3 or 4 years later is just stupid. Hey the Nokia 2600 (2004) was shit compared to the iPhone (2007) :D .
- "Given that the 4mhz Z80 suffers about 15-20% 'bad lines'" What does that even mean?
- Why would you want to turn off the monitor and still have the CPC running?
- The CPC tape deck was of very high quality for its time.
- Talking about quality and features and then comparing the Amstrad to a C64 :D The C64 "shielding" was a piece of cardboard covered in tinfoil. It didn't have a proper serial port or printer port, it had attribute RAM and still managed to make everything look brown, it came with NO monitor and still cost more and if the PSU failed it took the entire computer out with it! The SID fails if you just look at it and the PLA isn't much better, the disk drives are slower than many cassette loaders of the time.
Bryce.
I'm enjoying these comments sooo much! Thank you :D
Quote from: Gryzor on 12:44, 25 February 23I'm enjoying these comments sooo much! Thank you :D
I can't speak for the others here, but I certainly spend my Saturday mornings sitting in front of the PC and thinking of Retro related humour purely to keep you amused! :D
Bryce.
Quote from: Bryce on 13:13, 25 February 23Quote from: Gryzor on 12:44, 25 February 23I'm enjoying these comments sooo much! Thank you :D
I can't speak for the others here, but I certainly spend my Saturday mornings sitting in front of the PC and thinking of Retro related humour purely to keep you amused! :D
Bryce.
You're a good guy.
And in the far far future, when humanity has long vanished from the face of this planet, a few remaining artificially enhanced life forms that slightly resemble what we now know as humans keep on fighting the eternal platform wars ..
I saw this over on eab and just grabbed the popcorn, post new thread dropping a bomb with simple 2 line post on Amstrad crap quality products then create a huge follow up post where 70% of the post is bashing the CPC.
Was a blatant troll post so i never replied to the thread ;D
I never understand why people do this, even back in the day while i had an Amstrad, i loved playing on my mates Spectrum's and C64s and enjoyed those machines for their strengths and weaknesses and i never feel the need to comment negatively on any system.
People are strange :picard:
Yeah, I don't know either. Always loved playing at my friends' c64s or Speccies (and the one MSX), and still liked my CPC above all.
Funny reading. And signed "You can say what you want but I own ALL of this stuff"
C64 loosed is mojo and this guy is distraught about CPC abilities.
Quote from: Bryce "Given that the 4mhz Z80 suffers about 15-20% 'bad lines'" What does that even mean?
It's obvious he's catering to a very specific audience and uses their own technical terms to fling mud at the CPC.
I think he alludes to the Z80 in the CPC rounding off the machine cycles to 4 clock cycles so that the GA can fetch bytes for the video circuitry.
That guy throws a temper tantrum on the net like a five year old. The PCW was a good business machine otherwise nobody would have bought it, even if you had to buy a serial card (which - let's get real here - has no priority for machines that close to never were even used to exchange data.)
As to the PC1512 ... anyone remember that the whole PC compatible sector was in uproar because the PC1512 did not use a fan to cool the system? It's power supply was included in the monitor, so it didn't get as warm in the main unit as the typical PC compatible. In the end Amstrad had to include a fan just to silence the crowd. The other companies feared Amstrad that much.
Besides, those who bought a PC1512 wanted a DOS compatible machine. The ST never had a chance in the business sector, regardless of the quality of software. (Why even mention a 68k there?)
And then he goes off on a tangent to mention other Amstrad products as if a Sky+ TV box or VCR had anything to do with the CPC.
Some just cannot let go. I have no qualms to call the C64 a remarkable machine with a few shortcomings which is understandable given the times.
Besides, the PCW was aimed at small and medium sized companies, those that would have had a hard time to justify buying IBM PCs or compatibles (before they eventually were affordable).
Huh, at least we know whatever happened to Bug Powell :laugh:
Quote from: Bryce on 12:23, 25 February 23.
- "Given that the 4mhz Z80 suffers about 15-20% 'bad lines'" What does that even mean?
-
Bryce.
"Bad lines" are a C64 concept, every 8 lines it has to read what characters make up that row as well as having to read what bytes are to be displayed as part of those characters. That requires more bandwidth than is normally available to the video chip (the bus alternates between CPU and VIC access due to the way 6502 is designed).
To accomplish this therefore, the CPU gets stalled on certain lines so that the VIC can make usage of some of the bus cycles to read the characters and therefore code on those lines runs slower - hence "bad lines"
This doesn't apply to the CPC (or indeed any other 8-bit computer) but trying to explain that to some C64 folk is often harder than you'd imagine.
Quote from: Carnivius on 11:28, 25 February 23"Then again to be honest if you were still playing 8bit games in 1989 I feel very sorry for you when the real action was on NEC, Sega, Amiga or even ST (that cost no more than the 128k CPC in reality from 1987 and onward). "
My family wasn't like super poor (we were quite early with Satellite TV at least) but I still didn't get an Amiga until 1993 (the A1200). And NEC? Who used NEC computers for gaming? Did he actually mean NES? Which is 8-bit. As was the only Sega available at the time (the Mega Drive wasn't released in PAL regions until September 1990). I'm kinda surprised he didn't slip the word 'peasant' in there somewhere. "I feel sorry for you peasants.. stuck on 8-bit machines in 1989..."
By NEC, he's probably referring to the NEC Turbografx 16/PC Engine. Still 8-bit, though.
Quote from: mahlemiut on 22:19, 25 February 23Quote from: Carnivius on 11:28, 25 February 23"Then again to be honest if you were still playing 8bit games in 1989 I feel very sorry for you when the real action was on NEC, Sega, Amiga or even ST (that cost no more than the 128k CPC in reality from 1987 and onward). "
My family wasn't like super poor (we were quite early with Satellite TV at least) but I still didn't get an Amiga until 1993 (the A1200). And NEC? Who used NEC computers for gaming? Did he actually mean NES? Which is 8-bit. As was the only Sega available at the time (the Mega Drive wasn't released in PAL regions until September 1990). I'm kinda surprised he didn't slip the word 'peasant' in there somewhere. "I feel sorry for you peasants.. stuck on 8-bit machines in 1989..."
By NEC, he's probably referring to the NEC Turbografx 16/PC Engine. Still 8-bit, though.
I did think of that but that machine didn't officially get released in the UK. The PAL version was cancelled due to poor sales of the US version.
I bought many 8bits after 2000s.
Spent time to learn the hardware and software, at least till my brain goes.
SID rocks, VIC scrolls, but if I had a chance to go back to the 80s, I would pick Amstrad again.
Quote from: Shaun M. Neary on 18:21, 25 February 23Huh, at least we know whatever happened to Bug Powell :laugh:
RIP Bug Powell (21-22), gone but not forgotten
Quote from: tjohnson on 23:28, 25 February 23Quote from: Shaun M. Neary on 18:21, 25 February 23Huh, at least we know whatever happened to Bug Powell :laugh:
RIP Bug Powell (21-22), gone but not forgotten
Sorry, who's Bug Powell?
Somebody who turned up on the CPCwiki board, demanded that people help him with the amazing projects he was totally going to do, and then immediately threw a sook when nobody rushed to offer their services.
Back to the original topic, uh-oh, looks like we've been busted! Reported to the fun police for enjoying the wrong computer. That's a serious list of charges.
The truth of it is that all the 8 bits are all more than capable of hosting somebody's masterpiece. They are all beautiful. The C64 for its SID and VIC chips, quirky palette and similarity to arcade and console hardware. The CPC as an all-rounder, and 80 column text on an RGB monitor made it by far the nicest to learn to program. The Spectrum for being so compact and cheap. The Atari 8 bits for going a completely different way. All of them have been enjoyed now for going on four decades and all are still getting many excellent new releases every year.
Oh, and it looks like Bruce Abbott on the Amiga board lives 20 minutes away from me, how about that. Well it used to be 20 minutes away. Both our towns got hit with a massive cyclone last week and it's smashed all the roads and bridges to bits.
I have to admit I play the 8 bits a lot more than the Amiga these days.
Oh and I realised you were making a joke when you asked who he was. Persona non grata eh
One more thing - complaining that the computer turns off when the monitor turns off is weird. I mean if you really wanted to, you could attach a separate power supply, right? But to expect the CPC monitor to supply pass-through voltage even when it's turned off is just not how CRTs are typically built. The power button on a CRT is always a big chunky thing that cuts power at the mains input, so yes, when the monitor is off it is off.
Yeah I guess he means it should have a big, fat separate power brick to lug around...
I own a ZX81, ZX spectrum, Oric 1, C64 and lots of CPCs. I like them all for what they are. But if you cut me down the middle you read CPC. I guess it is just how you are made. :)
And regarding the cost, the monitor was a godsend in the UK, where many houses still only had the main living room TV as the only TV in the house (if there were two, the second was in the parents' bedroom or old enough that you had to suffer the analogue RF output from the computer).
We were using our CPCs, but our mates weren't using their Spectrums and C64s because Dad was watching the footie or their sister was watching Neighbours.
I note he didn't mention the speed of the C64 disk drive.
The monitor was a godsend to ME as well; we only had one TV in the house. That's probably the whole reason my parents decided to get a CPC. The cost of a C64 disk drive was through the roof as well, wasn't it?
But on the other hand, the cost of actual DISCS for the CPC...
Quote from: Anthony Flack on 07:11, 27 February 23The monitor was a godsend to ME as well; we only had one TV in the house. That's probably the whole reason my parents decided to get a CPC. The cost of a C64 disk drive was through the roof as well, wasn't it?
But on the other hand, the cost of actual DISCS for the CPC...
Exactly! That was a genius move by AMS to make a cheap enough computer so parents could afford one incl. a monitor. And with the 6128 they managed to make it look like a professional computer. When I look back at who had a 6128, it usually was families where the dad was an engineer. Or in my case, where the neighbor was an engineer and referred it to my parents instead of the C64. (fun fact: they told me "and if you he have problems, he can help you" - yeah... a year later I helped him).
The 3" disks were pretty expensive indeed, however, if you didn't swap games, a single disk lasted very, very long. I guess without swapping games I wouldn't have used more than 10 over the lifetime of my CPC. And even if you swapped games, you could get between 5 and 10 games on a single disk.
Oh, I filled up many disks with my own programs and pictures.
Quote from: Anthony Flack on 00:58, 26 February 23Somebody who turned up on the CPCwiki board, demanded that people help him with the amazing projects he was totally going to do, and then immediately threw a sook when nobody rushed to offer their services.
I think you missed the joke that stemmed from the previous comment, sir. ;)
Quote from: Anthony Flack on 05:41, 26 February 23Oh and I realised you were making a joke when you asked who he was. Persona non grata eh
I did initially but then I clicked, I should pay closer attention to who is commenting.
He really is a type who seems to turn up over and over on game development boards.
Quote from: Anthony Flack on 05:41, 26 February 23Oh and I realised you were making a joke when you asked who he was. Persona non grata eh
Only by his own doing...
But damn, was he an amusing source of entertainment for a couple of weeks? :D
I was going to add that all the 8 bit computers have infinite scope for artistic expression, and look, google calculator confirms it:
(https://i.ibb.co/py3H7n7/Screen-Shot-2023-02-28-at-5-12-07-PM.png)
His rant is just what happens when you have no custom chips and try to write 16k of garbage!
Apart from anything else the CPC is the perfect machine to push the 8 bit architecture to the limits, because it can switch in whole 64k banks and execute code in them, unlike some other well known machines that are pretty much stuck in the base 64k. You can do anything with extra ram, multi-tasking o/s and things 8 bits are not supposed to be capable of become possible. To me this is the no 1 geek advantage. I don't think the CPC has been pushed all that hard yet, we've only seen like 25% of it's potential