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Meanwhile, yesterday one of the top HN articles was on a brand new port of Super Mario Brothers to the Commodore 64. There's more new good software coming out f

Meanwhile, yesterday one of the top HN articles was on a brand new port of Super Mario Brothers to the Commodore 64. There's more new good software coming out for 8-bit machines today than there was in 1986 when I bought mine. Depends on what your definition of "obsolete" is, I suppose.

Florin_Andrei 8y ago
> Depends on what your definition of "obsolete" is, I suppose. I mean, the paintings at Altamira are still admired today, 36 thousand years after they were made.
- doctorpangloss 8y ago
  I agree. It's pretty rich that engineers are mocking cultural products for obsolescence.
  - c0vfefe 8y ago
    Rather, mocking products that claim they're immune to it.
avian 8y ago
> There's more new good software coming out for 8-bit machines today than there was in 1986 when I bought mine. Not surprising IMHO. These machines had 30+ years to be thoroughly analyzed, obscure hardware tricks found, undocumented features documented, etc. We have internet now and all this knowledge is relatively easy to access. Back then you had perhaps a magazine, two books and a limited social circle to work with. Not to mention how much easier everything is when you have a powerful computer to develop on. You can precalculate complex things, there are decent text editors, graphics editors, assemblers, disassemblers, emulators, etc. Compare that to the fact that for a lot of micros in 1980s the edit-run-debug cycle included a pencil and a notebook.
JohnFen 8y ago
To this day, of all of the different machines that I've programmed for, the C64 remains my favorite.
- yardstick 8y ago
  Interesting, having only used one a handful of times, what makes it your favourite?
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    A lot of things! I really liked working with the VIC and SID chips, I really enjoyed how utterly hackable the system was in terms of adding custom-made hardware or modifying the board, and so forth. But I think what I liked best about it was the memory banking. There was RAM installed in the same address space as the system ROMs. You could always write to the RAM, and could choose whether reading would happen from the RAM or the ROM. This meant that you could easily modify the system by copying the ROM contents into the underlying RAM and then edit them to your heart's content. Or just turn the ROM off entirely and write machine code utilizing the full 64K. It was tons of fun. Also, although this is not C64 specific, I loved the floppy drive because it was a real standalone computer in its own right, which you could program. This let you do multiprocessor stuff back when multiprocessor systems were expensive niche things.
    - GlenTheMachine 8y ago
      "This let you do multiprocessor stuff back when multiprocessor systems were expensive niche things." I did that! Got a trip to the International Science Fair for it.
    - yardstick 8y ago
      That is interesting, thanks!
microwavecamera 8y ago
Obsolete is definitely a relative term. I'm from gen-x and there's plenty of systems out there older than me doing critical things. But it's still funny to see not much has changed on the marketing side of the tech industry.

Florin_Andrei 8y ago

> Depends on what your definition of "obsolete" is, I suppose. I mean, the paintings at Altamira are still admired today, 36 thousand years after they were made.

doctorpangloss 8y ago
I agree. It's pretty rich that engineers are mocking cultural products for obsolescence.
- c0vfefe 8y ago
  Rather, mocking products that claim they're immune to it.

avian 8y ago

> There's more new good software coming out for 8-bit machines today than there was in 1986 when I bought mine. Not surprising IMHO. These machines had 30+ years to be thoroughly analyzed, obscure hardware tricks found, undocumented features documented, etc. We have internet now and all this knowledge is relatively easy to access. Back then you had perhaps a magazine, two books and a limited social circle to work with. Not to mention how much easier everything is when you have a powerful computer to develop on. You can precalculate complex things, there are decent text editors, graphics editors, assemblers, disassemblers, emulators, etc. Compare that to the fact that for a lot of micros in 1980s the edit-run-debug cycle included a pencil and a notebook.

JohnFen 8y ago

To this day, of all of the different machines that I've programmed for, the C64 remains my favorite.

yardstick 8y ago
Interesting, having only used one a handful of times, what makes it your favourite?
- JohnFen 8y ago
  A lot of things! I really liked working with the VIC and SID chips, I really enjoyed how utterly hackable the system was in terms of adding custom-made hardware or modifying the board, and so forth. But I think what I liked best about it was the memory banking. There was RAM installed in the same address space as the system ROMs. You could always write to the RAM, and could choose whether reading would happen from the RAM or the ROM. This meant that you could easily modify the system by copying the ROM contents into the underlying RAM and then edit them to your heart's content. Or just turn the ROM off entirely and write machine code utilizing the full 64K. It was tons of fun. Also, although this is not C64 specific, I loved the floppy drive because it was a real standalone computer in its own right, which you could program. This let you do multiprocessor stuff back when multiprocessor systems were expensive niche things.
  - GlenTheMachine 8y ago
    "This let you do multiprocessor stuff back when multiprocessor systems were expensive niche things." I did that! Got a trip to the International Science Fair for it.
  - yardstick 8y ago
    That is interesting, thanks!

microwavecamera 8y ago

Obsolete is definitely a relative term. I'm from gen-x and there's plenty of systems out there older than me doing critical things. But it's still funny to see not much has changed on the marketing side of the tech industry.