3 ms·

Well, the C64 for instance had complicated enough video and sound to warrant separate devices, plus a bunch of peripheral ports (joysticks, etc) and then you ne

by a1k0n 16y ago

Well, the C64 for instance had complicated enough video and sound to warrant separate devices, plus a bunch of peripheral ports (joysticks, etc) and then you need address decoding logic to support all of that. It all depends how much of it you can bundle up into your "custom chip". The first Apple had no custom chips and generated video and sound with extremely clever arrangements of standard logic gates.

rbanffy 16y ago
The later incarnations of the C64 had a much reduced chip-count in relation to the first ones. http://www.commodore.ca/products/c64/commodore_64_motherboard_1982_1992.jpg http://www.commodore.ca/products/c64/commodore_64_motherboar... and http://www.commodore.ca/gallery/hardware/c65.jpg http://www.commodore.ca/gallery/hardware/c65.jpg Even if you don't get to 4 chips, a simple and elegant design is very desirable. And, in the case of PCs, quite impossible.
- ido 16y ago
  And as history shows, doesn't matter much - users don't care how many chips are in their computers. It just has to be cheap and run the software they want to use.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Engineers like me care. I find it disturbing that my computer has, somewhere inside its sleek and modern body, a complete IBM 5150, with its ISA bus, serial ports, real-time clock, keyboard micro-controller (with that horrendous A20 hack so that the 286 it can emulate can switch between user and whatever mode OS/2 1.0 would need to run) and CGA display adapter ready to boot up PC-DOS from something it thinks is an MFM hard disk. The only thing missing is Microsoft's BASIC burned in ROM. It's offensive. Really. I have a collection of 80's and 90's computers. No computer in the collection is as inelegant as the IBM PC and its clones. Many of them (original Mac, Apple II - despite the chip count - Ataris) are absolute works of art. Sheer elegance in their simplicity.

by a1k0n 16y ago

rbanffy 16y ago

The later incarnations of the C64 had a much reduced chip-count in relation to the first ones. http://www.commodore.ca/products/c64/commodore_64_motherboard_1982_1992.jpg http://www.commodore.ca/products/c64/commodore_64_motherboar... and http://www.commodore.ca/gallery/hardware/c65.jpg http://www.commodore.ca/gallery/hardware/c65.jpg Even if you don't get to 4 chips, a simple and elegant design is very desirable. And, in the case of PCs, quite impossible.

ido 16y ago
And as history shows, doesn't matter much - users don't care how many chips are in their computers. It just has to be cheap and run the software they want to use.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  Engineers like me care. I find it disturbing that my computer has, somewhere inside its sleek and modern body, a complete IBM 5150, with its ISA bus, serial ports, real-time clock, keyboard micro-controller (with that horrendous A20 hack so that the 286 it can emulate can switch between user and whatever mode OS/2 1.0 would need to run) and CGA display adapter ready to boot up PC-DOS from something it thinks is an MFM hard disk. The only thing missing is Microsoft's BASIC burned in ROM. It's offensive. Really. I have a collection of 80's and 90's computers. No computer in the collection is as inelegant as the IBM PC and its clones. Many of them (original Mac, Apple II - despite the chip count - Ataris) are absolute works of art. Sheer elegance in their simplicity.