> 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+ yea

> 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.