7 ms·

I wonder if Ms. Allaire knows about the C65[1]. Her initial sketch of specs[2] is not too far off from that. IMHO Commodore was right to kill the C65 when they

I wonder if Ms. Allaire knows about the C65[1]. Her initial sketch of specs[2] is not too far off from that. IMHO Commodore was right to kill the C65 when they were already making the Amiga 1000. The end of all the 8-bit systems was pretty obvious by '89, when rumors of the c65 started going around - the Mac had been out for five years, the Amiga and Atari ST for four. It would have suffered a fate almost as ignominious as the Sega Saturn. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_65 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_65 2: https://www.c256foenix.com/forum/the-specifications/early-specifications https://www.c256foenix.com/forum/the-specifications/early-sp...

cmrdporcupine 8y ago
Yes, the death of 8-bit systems was obvious by 89, but so was the death of the 68000. Motorola was already pushing the failed 88000 by the late 80s. And the 68000 itself was killed off only a couple years later. So I don't really agree with you here. The 68000 was as big of a dead end, and IMHO was a terrible CPU for home computers and gaming machines. It was fast for 16 and 32 bit integer arithmetic, so basically good for its target market of minicomputer replacements and workstations -- but very slow at memory accesses and interrupt response, two things that slow down gaming/graphics type machines. The Amiga would have been more responsive and really just as powerful with the same custom chipset tied to something like a 65816 clocked at 8mhz. Would have been able to address just as much RAM but would have higher interrupt responsiveness, and Commodore could have made use of its existing 6502 expertise, thrown in a couple SID chips, and maybe even a VICII for C64 portability. What a machine that would have been! Likewise, I think Tramiel could have done something similar instead of diving down the 68000 path with the Atari ST. They could have improved on the excellent Jay Miner designed A8 chipset but tied it to something like the 816, which was just coming out in 84 when they started the ST project. Just some fantasy alternative history :-)
- walkingolof 8y ago
  >Likewise, I think Tramiel could have done something similar instead of diving down the 68000 path with the Atari ST. The Atari ST was built from scratch in less than 8 months after the deal to license the Amiga chipset fell trouhg. The ST is an amazing engineering feat considering the insane schedule. I agree on you that the 68k is a terrible CPU for gaming, but it got better when there was some cache added to it, starting with the 68030. I had an Acorn Archimedes with an ARM 2 clocked 8 Mhz (the same speed as the Atari ST, and 1 Mhz faster than the Amiga 1000/500), it was so much faster than my ST.
  - Lio 8y ago
    I always wonder if considering the processor and the “chunky pixels” of the Archimedes if had had something like a Wolfenstein or Doom back in 1987 if it would have driven sales enough to change. Ofcourse that was probably pretty unlikely considering the Acorn/Olivetti bet so heavily on the education market.
    - the-dude 8y ago
      That was Zarch : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNXypBxNGMo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNXypBxNGMo This was the gold standard at the time.
      - lstodd 8y ago
        Very much like the Zeewolf https://youtu.be/tVwScInZfP8?t=159 https://youtu.be/tVwScInZfP8?t=159 I wonder what the connection is.
        the-dude 8y ago
        Zarch : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarch, 1987 Zeewolf : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeewolf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeewolf, 1994
        lstodd 8y ago
        The visuals look very similar, but I can't see any continuity in the wikipeadia article. OTOH, the sqare grid terrain can be traced to at least https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_Fire although that was a sequel to a completely different game
        walkingolof 8y ago
        Zarch was out out 1988, the port of Zarch, Virus, came out on Atari/Amiga a bit later, this came out 1995...
- kyberias 8y ago
  > The Amiga would have been more responsive What was the problem with Amiga responsiveness? Never heard about this. Interrupt response? What? For several years, it had the best games. The bitplane-based graphics system became a hindrance with FPS-games but that was never about the CPU.
  - cmrdporcupine 8y ago
    If you go back and look at those games again, the frame rate, it's not that great. Many of the 8-bit machines actually had better responsiveness and frame rates. Yes, the Amiga was awesome. It was not perfect. Also, as far as 68000-based machines goes, the X68000 kicks the Amiga's ass.
    - puzzle 8y ago
      The Amiga chipset used DMA very extensively, so the CPU's memory access speed is not as important as on other machines. There were other architectural constraints, like the fact that the CPU had to compete with such chips for access to the same memory. So-called Fast memory was not a default setup for years. And the true solution, dual-ported RAM would have been too expensive. Which games do you think were constrained by the CPU? I can think of other factors first: - sloppy ports - it was a more complex system to tame than most of those that preceded it - the sprites were simply too limited, so you had to use the Blitter a lot - unlike a lot of chips of the era, Denise had no tile or character generator so, again, you had to use the Blitter - the CPU was clocked at 7.14MHz to align with the PAL/NTSC clock even if it could run at 8MHz - if you used more than four bitplanes in low resolution, the Agnus chip would let Denise starve the CPU even on cycles where the latter would normally have access (if you set the right bit, the Blitter could be allowed to win, too) I don't see how a different CPU would have helped with any of the above. In a time period during which memory wasn't typically the limit, the Amiga was one of the first systems where the CPU starved for it. The X68000 was better, sure, but it came out later and, being in the same mold as the arcade systems of the era, it had dedicated video RAM, tiles and more powerful, actually useful sprites.
    - kyberias 8y ago
      Frame rate? I don't see how any lack of framerate on Amiga was due to CPU because peripheral chips performed all the video and audio using DMA from dedicated graphics (CHIP) memory. Again, what "responsiveness"? There doesn't seem to be any problem with that on Amiga other than what you say.
- mschaef 8y ago
  > Yes, the death of 8-bit systems was obvious by 89, but so was the death of the 68000. Motorola was already pushing the failed 88000 by the late 80s. And the 68000 itself was killed off only a couple years later. You may be overstating the death of the 68000... the 68060 was introduced in 1994, and I remember doing embedded work on 68000 based designs in 1999-2000. (In fact, some of the processors are still available, although not recommended for new designs.)
  - jhbadger 8y ago
    And even into the early 2000s, Palm and other handhelds had Freescale Dragonball processors inside, and that was based off of the 68000 core which was licensed from Motorola.
    - cmrdporcupine 8y ago
      Sure, and ColdFire is still around to some degree. But Motorola/Freescale was not promoting this architecture for new desktop designs past the very early 90s. Yes, Apple and others continued to make machines until the mid-90s around 68k, but it was seen as dead in the water and the push was to get onto PowerPC (itself an unfortunate dead-end). I still like the 68k. It has a very nice instruction set. It makes a great target for C compilers. I still enjoy writing assembler for it here and there. I like my Atari STs. But for the market that Atari and Amiga were going for, I am still not convinced it was appropriate. I think Apple made the right choices with the IIgs. Except they underclocked it, overpriced it, and handicapped it in favour of promoting the Macintosh despite the II line being a big profit centre for them.
blue1 8y ago
or this: http://mega65.org/ http://mega65.org/
pwg 8y ago
> The end of all the 8-bit systems was pretty obvious by '89 While it might not have been as easy to see /in/ '89 in hindsight the seeds for the rise (and crowding out of other architectures) of the Intel x86 chips were already well sown and growing rapidly by then: i386: released Oct 1985 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80386 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80386) i486: released April 1989 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80486 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80486)
- walkingolof 8y ago
  We all knew where it was going back in the late 80's, there was no question about that, Motorola had a hard time getting traction where it matter, the PC.
lowbloodsugar 8y ago
I was programming the Acorn Archimedes with its 32 bit CPU in 1988. Took a while for everyone else to get on board tho.
- LeoPanthera 8y ago
  There was a brief discussion on an Acorn forum semi-recently about "If there had been another BBC Micro, what would it have looked like?" And the consensus was, probably it would have looked like the Acorn Archimedes. Acorn really got it right, and they got it right shockingly early.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    The BBC successor was the Acorn Archimedes, really - the only thing it lacked was the branding. Fit the same educational niche, spoke Econet, it even ran BBC basic.
    - LeoPanthera 8y ago
      One of the first ones didn’t even lack the branding. The A3000 was a “BBC Micro”. Even had red function keys. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Acorn_A3000_front_view.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Acorn_A3...
C256_Stef 8y ago
Yes, I am aware of the Mega65. Two different computer from 2 different visions... My take on it, in a nutshell, is really to come up with a bridge in between the C128 and the Amiga500... With the design restriction of the time. At least as much as I can with the resources I have. I won't go about creating a new mold... Cheers!

cmrdporcupine 8y ago

Yes, the death of 8-bit systems was obvious by 89, but so was the death of the 68000. Motorola was already pushing the failed 88000 by the late 80s. And the 68000 itself was killed off only a couple years later. So I don't really agree with you here. The 68000 was as big of a dead end, and IMHO was a terrible CPU for home computers and gaming machines. It was fast for 16 and 32 bit integer arithmetic, so basically good for its target market of minicomputer replacements and workstations -- but very slow at memory accesses and interrupt response, two things that slow down gaming/graphics type machines. The Amiga would have been more responsive and really just as powerful with the same custom chipset tied to something like a 65816 clocked at 8mhz. Would have been able to address just as much RAM but would have higher interrupt responsiveness, and Commodore could have made use of its existing 6502 expertise, thrown in a couple SID chips, and maybe even a VICII for C64 portability. What a machine that would have been! Likewise, I think Tramiel could have done something similar instead of diving down the 68000 path with the Atari ST. They could have improved on the excellent Jay Miner designed A8 chipset but tied it to something like the 816, which was just coming out in 84 when they started the ST project. Just some fantasy alternative history :-)

walkingolof 8y ago
>Likewise, I think Tramiel could have done something similar instead of diving down the 68000 path with the Atari ST. The Atari ST was built from scratch in less than 8 months after the deal to license the Amiga chipset fell trouhg. The ST is an amazing engineering feat considering the insane schedule. I agree on you that the 68k is a terrible CPU for gaming, but it got better when there was some cache added to it, starting with the 68030. I had an Acorn Archimedes with an ARM 2 clocked 8 Mhz (the same speed as the Atari ST, and 1 Mhz faster than the Amiga 1000/500), it was so much faster than my ST.
- Lio 8y ago
  I always wonder if considering the processor and the “chunky pixels” of the Archimedes if had had something like a Wolfenstein or Doom back in 1987 if it would have driven sales enough to change. Ofcourse that was probably pretty unlikely considering the Acorn/Olivetti bet so heavily on the education market.
  - the-dude 8y ago
    That was Zarch : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNXypBxNGMo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNXypBxNGMo This was the gold standard at the time.
    - lstodd 8y ago
      Very much like the Zeewolf https://youtu.be/tVwScInZfP8?t=159 https://youtu.be/tVwScInZfP8?t=159 I wonder what the connection is.
      - the-dude 8y ago
        Zarch : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarch, 1987 Zeewolf : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeewolf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeewolf, 1994
        lstodd 8y ago
        The visuals look very similar, but I can't see any continuity in the wikipeadia article. OTOH, the sqare grid terrain can be traced to at least https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_Fire although that was a sequel to a completely different game
        walkingolof 8y ago
        Zarch was out out 1988, the port of Zarch, Virus, came out on Atari/Amiga a bit later, this came out 1995...
kyberias 8y ago
> The Amiga would have been more responsive What was the problem with Amiga responsiveness? Never heard about this. Interrupt response? What? For several years, it had the best games. The bitplane-based graphics system became a hindrance with FPS-games but that was never about the CPU.
- cmrdporcupine 8y ago
  If you go back and look at those games again, the frame rate, it's not that great. Many of the 8-bit machines actually had better responsiveness and frame rates. Yes, the Amiga was awesome. It was not perfect. Also, as far as 68000-based machines goes, the X68000 kicks the Amiga's ass.
  - puzzle 8y ago
    The Amiga chipset used DMA very extensively, so the CPU's memory access speed is not as important as on other machines. There were other architectural constraints, like the fact that the CPU had to compete with such chips for access to the same memory. So-called Fast memory was not a default setup for years. And the true solution, dual-ported RAM would have been too expensive. Which games do you think were constrained by the CPU? I can think of other factors first: - sloppy ports - it was a more complex system to tame than most of those that preceded it - the sprites were simply too limited, so you had to use the Blitter a lot - unlike a lot of chips of the era, Denise had no tile or character generator so, again, you had to use the Blitter - the CPU was clocked at 7.14MHz to align with the PAL/NTSC clock even if it could run at 8MHz - if you used more than four bitplanes in low resolution, the Agnus chip would let Denise starve the CPU even on cycles where the latter would normally have access (if you set the right bit, the Blitter could be allowed to win, too) I don't see how a different CPU would have helped with any of the above. In a time period during which memory wasn't typically the limit, the Amiga was one of the first systems where the CPU starved for it. The X68000 was better, sure, but it came out later and, being in the same mold as the arcade systems of the era, it had dedicated video RAM, tiles and more powerful, actually useful sprites.
  - kyberias 8y ago
    Frame rate? I don't see how any lack of framerate on Amiga was due to CPU because peripheral chips performed all the video and audio using DMA from dedicated graphics (CHIP) memory. Again, what "responsiveness"? There doesn't seem to be any problem with that on Amiga other than what you say.
mschaef 8y ago
> Yes, the death of 8-bit systems was obvious by 89, but so was the death of the 68000. Motorola was already pushing the failed 88000 by the late 80s. And the 68000 itself was killed off only a couple years later. You may be overstating the death of the 68000... the 68060 was introduced in 1994, and I remember doing embedded work on 68000 based designs in 1999-2000. (In fact, some of the processors are still available, although not recommended for new designs.)
- jhbadger 8y ago
  And even into the early 2000s, Palm and other handhelds had Freescale Dragonball processors inside, and that was based off of the 68000 core which was licensed from Motorola.
  - cmrdporcupine 8y ago
    Sure, and ColdFire is still around to some degree. But Motorola/Freescale was not promoting this architecture for new desktop designs past the very early 90s. Yes, Apple and others continued to make machines until the mid-90s around 68k, but it was seen as dead in the water and the push was to get onto PowerPC (itself an unfortunate dead-end). I still like the 68k. It has a very nice instruction set. It makes a great target for C compilers. I still enjoy writing assembler for it here and there. I like my Atari STs. But for the market that Atari and Amiga were going for, I am still not convinced it was appropriate. I think Apple made the right choices with the IIgs. Except they underclocked it, overpriced it, and handicapped it in favour of promoting the Macintosh despite the II line being a big profit centre for them.

blue1 8y ago

or this: http://mega65.org/ http://mega65.org/

pwg 8y ago

> The end of all the 8-bit systems was pretty obvious by '89 While it might not have been as easy to see /in/ '89 in hindsight the seeds for the rise (and crowding out of other architectures) of the Intel x86 chips were already well sown and growing rapidly by then: i386: released Oct 1985 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80386 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80386) i486: released April 1989 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80486 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80486)

walkingolof 8y ago
We all knew where it was going back in the late 80's, there was no question about that, Motorola had a hard time getting traction where it matter, the PC.

lowbloodsugar 8y ago

I was programming the Acorn Archimedes with its 32 bit CPU in 1988. Took a while for everyone else to get on board tho.

LeoPanthera 8y ago
There was a brief discussion on an Acorn forum semi-recently about "If there had been another BBC Micro, what would it have looked like?" And the consensus was, probably it would have looked like the Acorn Archimedes. Acorn really got it right, and they got it right shockingly early.
- pjc50 8y ago
  The BBC successor was the Acorn Archimedes, really - the only thing it lacked was the branding. Fit the same educational niche, spoke Econet, it even ran BBC basic.
  - LeoPanthera 8y ago
    One of the first ones didn’t even lack the branding. The A3000 was a “BBC Micro”. Even had red function keys. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Acorn_A3000_front_view.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Acorn_A3...

C256_Stef 8y ago

Yes, I am aware of the Mega65. Two different computer from 2 different visions... My take on it, in a nutshell, is really to come up with a bridge in between the C128 and the Amiga500... With the design restriction of the time. At least as much as I can with the resources I have. I won't go about creating a new mold... Cheers!