3 ms·

During the 80s, I often traded software with Europeans in the C64 and Amiga scenes. I'd send them US software, and they'd send me European software. Most Americ

During the 80s, I often traded software with Europeans in the C64 and Amiga scenes. I'd send them US software, and they'd send me European software. Most Americans had C64, 1541 drives, 2400 baud modems, etc. The Europeans typically had datasettes and 300-1200 baud modems, because the cost of equipment was higher, phone calls were more expensive, and there was even a modem tax in Germany apparently. So the protocol we used was that Americans would send them a 2400 baud modem, and make international calls to them, in exchange for hot new European game releases, because the extra speed would reduce the expense. There's simply no way Europeans were going to buy overpriced, underpowered Apple hardware at that point in time. There was nothing an Apple 2 could do that a C64 couldn't, and a C64 could do substantially more than an Apple 2. The results of the demoscene, which still exists for C64s, Amigas, Atari STs, and Spectrums, but is almost non-existent for the Apple 2, shows how under capable and uninteresting the platform was.

vidarh 6y ago
> So the protocol we used was that Americans would send them a 2400 baud modem, and make international calls to them, in exchange for hot new European game releases, because the extra speed would reduce the expense. I never was that involved in trading. My circle stuck to mailing floppies, mostly within Norway. It was fun seeing how that too became optimised for quick turnaround - sometimes mailed without an envelope, just the protective cover taped in place... And with a lot of the more prolific traders eventually getting caught using wax over the stamps to allow them to scrape off the post mark and reuse the stamp to save money. But, yeah, especially the lack of unmetered local calls in Europe was a massive limiting factor on modems, and coupled with no single standard for type approval of telecoms equipment which drove up the modem cost massively, especially in the smaller markets, it was a massive luxury until early 90's at least. I didn't get one until '93.
- rukuu001 6y ago
  > It was fun seeing how that too became optimised for quick turnaround - sometimes mailed without an envelope, just the protective cover taped in place... And with a lot of the more prolific traders eventually getting caught using wax over the stamps to allow them to scrape off the post mark and reuse the stamp to save money. Same in Australia. My friend had feds staking out his place for reusing stamps :/
apricot 6y ago
The C64 has no equivalent to the Apple II system monitor, which allows you to examine, change, and disassemble memory interactively, and includes a mini-assembler as well. It provides a very natural pathway to understanding the inner workings of the computer. The C64 also has no equivalent to the seven expansion slots of the Apple II, which allow you to customize your computer (by installing a CP/M card to run Wordstar and dBase II, for instance, or by adding bank-switched RAM) and to easily develop your own hardware. The graphics and sound capabilities of the C64 are superior to those of the stock Apple II, and I think that explains why demos are still popular on it.
- cromwellian 6y ago
  > The C64 has no equivalent to the Apple II system monitor, which allows you to examine, change, and disassemble memory interactively, and includes a mini-assembler as well. It provides a very natural pathway to understanding the inner workings of the computer. Supermon has been around since the PET days. I had no problem exploring my C64, I just had to load it from disk. However, did Apple 2 have anything like an Action Replay cartridge. Not only does it provide normal machine language monitor capabilities, but it does it through an NMI (non-maskable interrupt) that takes over the entire system, freezes it, and allows you to inspect all aspects of the hardware, including write only latches. It includes sprite editor, font inspector, and can even 'core dump' the entire C64 into a suspended state that you can load and resume. This was used to "crack" copy protection much of the time by just dumping a freezed copy of the game after it had fully loaded. > seven expansion slots of the Apple II The C64 had both a User slot and a cartridge slot, in addition to RSS-488 serial bus which allowed daisy chaining like Firewire. So for example, you could plug 2 joysticks into the joy ports, a Ram Expansion Unit (REU 128k or 512k) into the cartridge port for GEOS or your BBS, and a RS-232 UART into the User port to get 9600 baud modems working. My C64 had a 9600bps modem with UART in the User port, an Action Reply in the cartridge port, two printers, two disk drives. I never needed many "slots". The Apple II did not have the ability to talk to a printer or external disk drives without an interface card.
  - apricot 6y ago
    The point is that the system monitor is in ROM, always accessible, and easy for a beginner to discover and experiment with. It feels part of the system in a way a disk-loaded monitor does not. Yes, the Apple II had several so-called "copy cards" that allowed you to interrupt a running program, explore memory, dump it to disk, etc. Very useful for debugging, and as you say, automatically cracking single-load programs. My Apple //e had a Senior PROM installed, which provides similar features without taking up a slot. I don't think you can compare the hardware accessories for the C64 with the wide variety of expansion cards available for the Apple II. You could really customize your hardware. My Apple //e had the above-mentioned Senior PROM, a CP/M card for running Turbo Pascal, a 4 MHz accelerator, 9-voice music card, an EPROM burner, and a "Quikloader" card that allowed me to put my most-used programs on EPROMs and have them instantly available at a moment's notice. Not quite like having a hard drive, but close. Later, I removed the CP/M card and music card I didn't use anymore and added 1 megabyte of battery-backed RAM. > The Apple II did not have the ability to talk to a printer or external disk drives without an interface card. And that means you could connect it to your choice of a parallel or serial printer (just get the appropriate kind of card), or go with third-party disk drives that had 2x or 4x the capacity. That's a good thing. Man, I feel like I'm 16 again, arguing with my Commodore-owning friends about who has the better computer. Thanks, this is fun.

vidarh 6y ago

> So the protocol we used was that Americans would send them a 2400 baud modem, and make international calls to them, in exchange for hot new European game releases, because the extra speed would reduce the expense. I never was that involved in trading. My circle stuck to mailing floppies, mostly within Norway. It was fun seeing how that too became optimised for quick turnaround - sometimes mailed without an envelope, just the protective cover taped in place... And with a lot of the more prolific traders eventually getting caught using wax over the stamps to allow them to scrape off the post mark and reuse the stamp to save money. But, yeah, especially the lack of unmetered local calls in Europe was a massive limiting factor on modems, and coupled with no single standard for type approval of telecoms equipment which drove up the modem cost massively, especially in the smaller markets, it was a massive luxury until early 90's at least. I didn't get one until '93.

rukuu001 6y ago
> It was fun seeing how that too became optimised for quick turnaround - sometimes mailed without an envelope, just the protective cover taped in place... And with a lot of the more prolific traders eventually getting caught using wax over the stamps to allow them to scrape off the post mark and reuse the stamp to save money. Same in Australia. My friend had feds staking out his place for reusing stamps :/

apricot 6y ago

The C64 has no equivalent to the Apple II system monitor, which allows you to examine, change, and disassemble memory interactively, and includes a mini-assembler as well. It provides a very natural pathway to understanding the inner workings of the computer. The C64 also has no equivalent to the seven expansion slots of the Apple II, which allow you to customize your computer (by installing a CP/M card to run Wordstar and dBase II, for instance, or by adding bank-switched RAM) and to easily develop your own hardware. The graphics and sound capabilities of the C64 are superior to those of the stock Apple II, and I think that explains why demos are still popular on it.

cromwellian 6y ago
> The C64 has no equivalent to the Apple II system monitor, which allows you to examine, change, and disassemble memory interactively, and includes a mini-assembler as well. It provides a very natural pathway to understanding the inner workings of the computer. Supermon has been around since the PET days. I had no problem exploring my C64, I just had to load it from disk. However, did Apple 2 have anything like an Action Replay cartridge. Not only does it provide normal machine language monitor capabilities, but it does it through an NMI (non-maskable interrupt) that takes over the entire system, freezes it, and allows you to inspect all aspects of the hardware, including write only latches. It includes sprite editor, font inspector, and can even 'core dump' the entire C64 into a suspended state that you can load and resume. This was used to "crack" copy protection much of the time by just dumping a freezed copy of the game after it had fully loaded. > seven expansion slots of the Apple II The C64 had both a User slot and a cartridge slot, in addition to RSS-488 serial bus which allowed daisy chaining like Firewire. So for example, you could plug 2 joysticks into the joy ports, a Ram Expansion Unit (REU 128k or 512k) into the cartridge port for GEOS or your BBS, and a RS-232 UART into the User port to get 9600 baud modems working. My C64 had a 9600bps modem with UART in the User port, an Action Reply in the cartridge port, two printers, two disk drives. I never needed many "slots". The Apple II did not have the ability to talk to a printer or external disk drives without an interface card.
- apricot 6y ago
  The point is that the system monitor is in ROM, always accessible, and easy for a beginner to discover and experiment with. It feels part of the system in a way a disk-loaded monitor does not. Yes, the Apple II had several so-called "copy cards" that allowed you to interrupt a running program, explore memory, dump it to disk, etc. Very useful for debugging, and as you say, automatically cracking single-load programs. My Apple //e had a Senior PROM installed, which provides similar features without taking up a slot. I don't think you can compare the hardware accessories for the C64 with the wide variety of expansion cards available for the Apple II. You could really customize your hardware. My Apple //e had the above-mentioned Senior PROM, a CP/M card for running Turbo Pascal, a 4 MHz accelerator, 9-voice music card, an EPROM burner, and a "Quikloader" card that allowed me to put my most-used programs on EPROMs and have them instantly available at a moment's notice. Not quite like having a hard drive, but close. Later, I removed the CP/M card and music card I didn't use anymore and added 1 megabyte of battery-backed RAM. > The Apple II did not have the ability to talk to a printer or external disk drives without an interface card. And that means you could connect it to your choice of a parallel or serial printer (just get the appropriate kind of card), or go with third-party disk drives that had 2x or 4x the capacity. That's a good thing. Man, I feel like I'm 16 again, arguing with my Commodore-owning friends about who has the better computer. Thanks, this is fun.