5 ms·

You cannot post something about the C64 without mentioning the activity the platform still has: http://csdb.dk http://csdb.dk New releases every day! Also it

by bullen 5y ago

You cannot post something about the C64 without mentioning the activity the platform still has: http://csdb.dk http://csdb.dk New releases every day! Also it can be good to understand that the reason the C64 was such a success was that it pushed 8-bit as far as it could go, specifically in audio and video. It was peak 8-bit, and in some ways peak computer in terms of repairability and simplicity, even someone like me can understand and repair the hardware! The only thing peak 64-bit offers (Jetson Nano at comparable power draw) beyond the C64 is OpenGL. SID music is more compressed than mp3 f.ex.

rbanffy 5y ago
The C64 mini (and maxi) are 64-bit computers (mosty likely) and offer everything a c64 can ;-) If someone is interest in getting a C64, I urge them to get the maxi replica. It feels like a 64 without the pain of composite video and slow floppies.
- Annatar 5y ago
  Stick a Final Cartridge III or Action Replay MK VI on it and there are no slow floppies any more. But there are now solutions like SD2IEC or Ultimate II, so that's even faster. The mini and maxi aren't really the real thing.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    > The mini and maxi aren't really the real thing. The Maxi can fool most people (I find the C64 profile keycaps with PET-like Microgramma labels a bit incongruous for the VIC-20 themed one I have, and the non-locking Caps Lock key is a dead giveaway it's not a real unit). The composite video output (color distortion, scanlines, etc) is well simulated on a modern screen, if you want to - I prefer to run it on 1x1 pixel mode. Someday someone will sell a monitor based on a flexible screen that pretends it's a Trinitron tube, but that day isn't today (I'd buy it without thinking once). The emulation is close enough, however, and I wouldn't let my 9yo daughter's friends play with a Sacred Relic the way they can with the Maxi. The physical keyboard is very important to maintain the illusion - the VIC-20/64/128 use a TTY layout (" on top of 2) - and using it with a PC keyboard is a jarring experience. I just wish the it could also emulate PET's and the C128 (not that I like the 128 that much - it's a kludge - but the completeness would be cool). The compute power in that little thing is more than enough.
- bullen 5y ago
  I use RR-Net and pipe software over Ethernet directly from my PC in 1 second. Also worth a mention is the Nunchuk64 that allows you to connect your (S)NES classic/mini i2c controllers for that extra jump button (mapped to up)...
Annatar 5y ago
It didn't push "8-bit as far as it can go": for example, an AMSTRAD CPC is more powerful and has still lots of potential left in it. SID music isn't compressed in any way: it's a replayer routine with raw data to bang into the SID chip, which is a synthesizer. Rather than playing back the data, it tells the SID chip how to generate sound and which effects to apply to the generated wave forms. The SID will then easily generate megabytes of wave form data in seconds. What it was though, is that the Commodore64 was the PC of the era so lots of people had it, and with such mass momentum there were and still are lots of innovations on it.
raverbashing 5y ago
> Also it can be good to understand that the reason the C64 was such a success was that it pushed 8-bit as far as it could go, specifically in audio and video. I think the MSX 2+ gets that award on video. On Audio it's more contentious (an interesting discussion ) https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/5ekcvn/in_terms_of_hardware_which_8bit_home_computer_was/ https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/5ekcvn/in_term...
forinti 5y ago
I'm a BBC Micro fan myself, but the most impressive 8 bit micros I've ever come across are the Fujitsu FM 77: http://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/computer/personal/0017.html http://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/computer/personal/0017.html
stakkur 5y ago
As someone who was an adult when the Commodore came out (it was the first computer I bought), I can say firsthand there were several reasons it was successful: it was extremely cheap, there was a lot of software available, and there were few alternatives that you could just plug and play. Back then nobody talked about ‘8-bit’ they way they do today—it was just a computer, and you could even buy one at Toys r Us. I think I paid $399 for mine, an unheard of cheap price back then, even cheaper than Radio Shack’s Trash 80s.
kragen 5y ago
> Also it can be good to understand that the reason the C64 was such a success was that it pushed 8-bit as far as it could go, specifically in audio and video. You seem to be saying that the Commodore 64 had audio and video equivalent or superior to those of the Casio SK-1, the Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Tektronix 4014. This does not seem plausible to me.
- bullen 5y ago
  Those machines are not comparable, the VIC uses the same memory as the 6510; while the NES uses separate memory and another CPU! (Fun fact: Commodore was supposed to build the NES for Nintendo but Tramiel bailed in the last minute, a great testament to Chucks 6502) Of course you can build a modern GPU and soundcard with a 6502, but the point here is that the VIC and the 6510 are at 1MHz and the DRAM is at 2MHz so they access it interleaved. The VIC2 was the first home GPU with hardware sprites. Also the memory access is 16-bit so it's complicated, but the audio is 8-bit and the video output is generated with 8-bit precision = very limited color = why we get the 2 pixel wide 4 color mode. So the C64 cheats; in one way it's actually not a pure 8-bit system, but the others cheat even more. The point is "the architecture of the system is as complicated/simple as it needs to be for maximum 8-bit price value and repairability". I guess that is what I meant. 64K DRAM is the most effective cheat saturating 16-bit while everyone else was struggling with worse workarounds, the NES has a pretty bad solution; shipping memory chips in every cartridge (what a waste of hardware for only anti-piracy/anti-development "gain")! Just look at the NES dev. community today, even if the NES outsold the C64 by 3x it's almost non-existent! As for sound the SID is still unsuperceeded, it's the pinnacle of 8-bit sound. Lastly the fact that you could copy software is really a big point on the + side. Piracy is the feature! Nintendos legacy is non-piracy only, even today with the patching of the bootloader bug in the Switch! Fortunately I have an original Switch and can run linux on mine! Xo
  - kragen 5y ago
    > Those machines are not comparable No, they certainly aren't. Nor is the C64 comparable to the Heathkit H-89 I grew up on, or to the 16-MIPS AVR in my Arduino; but all three of them, as well as the SK-1, the NES, and the S1 MP3, are 8-bit computers. (The Tek 4014 wasn't even a computer, but it was 8-bit digital hardware.) Your claim was that the C64 "pushed 8-bit as far as it could go," and the admitted fact that other (existing, non-hypothetical) 8-bit computers are "not comparable" makes nonsense of that claim. > The VIC2 was the first home GPU with hardware sprites. The Atari 2600 had hardware sprites and came out in 01977, five years before the Commodore 64 and its VIC-II in 01982. (They were amazingly shitty hardware sprites, but they were hardware sprites.) Generally doing things in hardware makes them faster but less flexible, so normally you only want to do it if the CPU is too slow. An AVR or SX chip is 8-bit, but fast enough that you don't really need much hardware; I've done baseband monochrome NTSC video output in software on an 8-bit AVR with the video output hardware being only a couple of resistors. The AVR isn't fast enough to bitbang color, though. > Also the memory access is 16-bit so it's complicated, but the audio is 8-bit and the video output is generated with 8-bit precision = very limited color = why we get the 2 pixel wide 4 color mode. When we say that a computer is "an 8-bit computer", we mean that its instructions manipulate primarily or exclusively 8-bit quantities, for example because all of its architectural registers are 8 bits wide. The Commodore 64's data bus to memory was not 16-bit; it, too, was an 8-bit bus. Like every 8-bit computer I've ever seen or heard of, the address bus to memory was wider than 8 bits; it was 16 bits wide. (Most 8-bit computers had a few 16-bit instructions, too, for things like pointer arithmetic, but not the 6502.) Most digital video output is generated with 8-bit precision, or even less. You know 24-bit color, like in JPEG, PNG, most TIFFs, and most desktop and laptop GPUs? That's 8 bits of red, 8 bits of green, and 8 bits of blue. That's 8-bit precision. The reason the C64 had very limited color was that it only had 64 KiB of RAM, not because "the video output is generated with 8-bit precision". > As for sound, the SID is still unsuperseded; it's the pinnacle of 8-bit sound. The SID isn't a digital audio chip at all. It doesn't output PCM; it outputs analog audio. So it's meaningless to say that it's "8-bit". The only 8-bit thing about it is its data bus, which is 8 bits wide because that's how wide the CPU's data bus was; by contrast, its I/O registers are a mix of 1 bit wide, 4 bits wide, 8 bits wide, and 16 bits wide. (Because the data bus is 8 bits wide, you read or write them 8 bits at a time.) Its internal registers are of many different widths; the phase accumulator is 24 bits wide, for example, and the white-noise generator is 23 bits wide. Every sound card on an IBM PC ISA bus also used an 8-bit data bus, including things like the Gravis UltraSound and the Sound Blaster AWE32. Current USB and single-lane PCIe sound devices, not to mention SPI and I2C ADCs and DACs, use a 1-bit data bus. So the width of the data bus is of absolutely no consequence for the capabilities of the audio. If we're talking about 8-bit audio rather than 8-bit computers, the SK-1 (from 01985, two years later) shows you what you can do with 8-bit-wide digital audio. (It was also an 8-bit computer, but the reason its pianos, trumpets, and human voices sound like pianos, trumpets, and human voices is that they're sampled.) Or, say, Sprint's digital long-distance telephone service, launched in 01980 as United Telecommunications and turning a profit for the first time in 01989: entirely 8-bit mulaw audio. (That's not why telephone-quality voice sounds bad, though; that happens because of the sample rate, not the bit depth.) > Lastly the fact that you could copy software is really a big point on the + side. Piracy is the feature! Well, of course, but that's a feature of computers in general; it has nothing to do with 8-bitness. There's a continuing effort by bad people to prevent computers from being programmable, but it's mostly unsuccessful.

by bullen 5y ago

rbanffy 5y ago

The C64 mini (and maxi) are 64-bit computers (mosty likely) and offer everything a c64 can ;-) If someone is interest in getting a C64, I urge them to get the maxi replica. It feels like a 64 without the pain of composite video and slow floppies.

Annatar 5y ago
Stick a Final Cartridge III or Action Replay MK VI on it and there are no slow floppies any more. But there are now solutions like SD2IEC or Ultimate II, so that's even faster. The mini and maxi aren't really the real thing.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > The mini and maxi aren't really the real thing. The Maxi can fool most people (I find the C64 profile keycaps with PET-like Microgramma labels a bit incongruous for the VIC-20 themed one I have, and the non-locking Caps Lock key is a dead giveaway it's not a real unit). The composite video output (color distortion, scanlines, etc) is well simulated on a modern screen, if you want to - I prefer to run it on 1x1 pixel mode. Someday someone will sell a monitor based on a flexible screen that pretends it's a Trinitron tube, but that day isn't today (I'd buy it without thinking once). The emulation is close enough, however, and I wouldn't let my 9yo daughter's friends play with a Sacred Relic the way they can with the Maxi. The physical keyboard is very important to maintain the illusion - the VIC-20/64/128 use a TTY layout (" on top of 2) - and using it with a PC keyboard is a jarring experience. I just wish the it could also emulate PET's and the C128 (not that I like the 128 that much - it's a kludge - but the completeness would be cool). The compute power in that little thing is more than enough.
bullen 5y ago
I use RR-Net and pipe software over Ethernet directly from my PC in 1 second. Also worth a mention is the Nunchuk64 that allows you to connect your (S)NES classic/mini i2c controllers for that extra jump button (mapped to up)...

Annatar 5y ago

It didn't push "8-bit as far as it can go": for example, an AMSTRAD CPC is more powerful and has still lots of potential left in it. SID music isn't compressed in any way: it's a replayer routine with raw data to bang into the SID chip, which is a synthesizer. Rather than playing back the data, it tells the SID chip how to generate sound and which effects to apply to the generated wave forms. The SID will then easily generate megabytes of wave form data in seconds. What it was though, is that the Commodore64 was the PC of the era so lots of people had it, and with such mass momentum there were and still are lots of innovations on it.

raverbashing 5y ago

> Also it can be good to understand that the reason the C64 was such a success was that it pushed 8-bit as far as it could go, specifically in audio and video. I think the MSX 2+ gets that award on video. On Audio it's more contentious (an interesting discussion ) https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/5ekcvn/in_terms_of_hardware_which_8bit_home_computer_was/ https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/5ekcvn/in_term...

forinti 5y ago

I'm a BBC Micro fan myself, but the most impressive 8 bit micros I've ever come across are the Fujitsu FM 77: http://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/computer/personal/0017.html http://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/computer/personal/0017.html

stakkur 5y ago

As someone who was an adult when the Commodore came out (it was the first computer I bought), I can say firsthand there were several reasons it was successful: it was extremely cheap, there was a lot of software available, and there were few alternatives that you could just plug and play. Back then nobody talked about ‘8-bit’ they way they do today—it was just a computer, and you could even buy one at Toys r Us. I think I paid $399 for mine, an unheard of cheap price back then, even cheaper than Radio Shack’s Trash 80s.

kragen 5y ago

> Also it can be good to understand that the reason the C64 was such a success was that it pushed 8-bit as far as it could go, specifically in audio and video. You seem to be saying that the Commodore 64 had audio and video equivalent or superior to those of the Casio SK-1, the Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Tektronix 4014. This does not seem plausible to me.

bullen 5y ago
Those machines are not comparable, the VIC uses the same memory as the 6510; while the NES uses separate memory and another CPU! (Fun fact: Commodore was supposed to build the NES for Nintendo but Tramiel bailed in the last minute, a great testament to Chucks 6502) Of course you can build a modern GPU and soundcard with a 6502, but the point here is that the VIC and the 6510 are at 1MHz and the DRAM is at 2MHz so they access it interleaved. The VIC2 was the first home GPU with hardware sprites. Also the memory access is 16-bit so it's complicated, but the audio is 8-bit and the video output is generated with 8-bit precision = very limited color = why we get the 2 pixel wide 4 color mode. So the C64 cheats; in one way it's actually not a pure 8-bit system, but the others cheat even more. The point is "the architecture of the system is as complicated/simple as it needs to be for maximum 8-bit price value and repairability". I guess that is what I meant. 64K DRAM is the most effective cheat saturating 16-bit while everyone else was struggling with worse workarounds, the NES has a pretty bad solution; shipping memory chips in every cartridge (what a waste of hardware for only anti-piracy/anti-development "gain")! Just look at the NES dev. community today, even if the NES outsold the C64 by 3x it's almost non-existent! As for sound the SID is still unsuperceeded, it's the pinnacle of 8-bit sound. Lastly the fact that you could copy software is really a big point on the + side. Piracy is the feature! Nintendos legacy is non-piracy only, even today with the patching of the bootloader bug in the Switch! Fortunately I have an original Switch and can run linux on mine! Xo
- kragen 5y ago
  > Those machines are not comparable No, they certainly aren't. Nor is the C64 comparable to the Heathkit H-89 I grew up on, or to the 16-MIPS AVR in my Arduino; but all three of them, as well as the SK-1, the NES, and the S1 MP3, are 8-bit computers. (The Tek 4014 wasn't even a computer, but it was 8-bit digital hardware.) Your claim was that the C64 "pushed 8-bit as far as it could go," and the admitted fact that other (existing, non-hypothetical) 8-bit computers are "not comparable" makes nonsense of that claim. > The VIC2 was the first home GPU with hardware sprites. The Atari 2600 had hardware sprites and came out in 01977, five years before the Commodore 64 and its VIC-II in 01982. (They were amazingly shitty hardware sprites, but they were hardware sprites.) Generally doing things in hardware makes them faster but less flexible, so normally you only want to do it if the CPU is too slow. An AVR or SX chip is 8-bit, but fast enough that you don't really need much hardware; I've done baseband monochrome NTSC video output in software on an 8-bit AVR with the video output hardware being only a couple of resistors. The AVR isn't fast enough to bitbang color, though. > Also the memory access is 16-bit so it's complicated, but the audio is 8-bit and the video output is generated with 8-bit precision = very limited color = why we get the 2 pixel wide 4 color mode. When we say that a computer is "an 8-bit computer", we mean that its instructions manipulate primarily or exclusively 8-bit quantities, for example because all of its architectural registers are 8 bits wide. The Commodore 64's data bus to memory was not 16-bit; it, too, was an 8-bit bus. Like every 8-bit computer I've ever seen or heard of, the address bus to memory was wider than 8 bits; it was 16 bits wide. (Most 8-bit computers had a few 16-bit instructions, too, for things like pointer arithmetic, but not the 6502.) Most digital video output is generated with 8-bit precision, or even less. You know 24-bit color, like in JPEG, PNG, most TIFFs, and most desktop and laptop GPUs? That's 8 bits of red, 8 bits of green, and 8 bits of blue. That's 8-bit precision. The reason the C64 had very limited color was that it only had 64 KiB of RAM, not because "the video output is generated with 8-bit precision". > As for sound, the SID is still unsuperseded; it's the pinnacle of 8-bit sound. The SID isn't a digital audio chip at all. It doesn't output PCM; it outputs analog audio. So it's meaningless to say that it's "8-bit". The only 8-bit thing about it is its data bus, which is 8 bits wide because that's how wide the CPU's data bus was; by contrast, its I/O registers are a mix of 1 bit wide, 4 bits wide, 8 bits wide, and 16 bits wide. (Because the data bus is 8 bits wide, you read or write them 8 bits at a time.) Its internal registers are of many different widths; the phase accumulator is 24 bits wide, for example, and the white-noise generator is 23 bits wide. Every sound card on an IBM PC ISA bus also used an 8-bit data bus, including things like the Gravis UltraSound and the Sound Blaster AWE32. Current USB and single-lane PCIe sound devices, not to mention SPI and I2C ADCs and DACs, use a 1-bit data bus. So the width of the data bus is of absolutely no consequence for the capabilities of the audio. If we're talking about 8-bit audio rather than 8-bit computers, the SK-1 (from 01985, two years later) shows you what you can do with 8-bit-wide digital audio. (It was also an 8-bit computer, but the reason its pianos, trumpets, and human voices sound like pianos, trumpets, and human voices is that they're sampled.) Or, say, Sprint's digital long-distance telephone service, launched in 01980 as United Telecommunications and turning a profit for the first time in 01989: entirely 8-bit mulaw audio. (That's not why telephone-quality voice sounds bad, though; that happens because of the sample rate, not the bit depth.) > Lastly the fact that you could copy software is really a big point on the + side. Piracy is the feature! Well, of course, but that's a feature of computers in general; it has nothing to do with 8-bitness. There's a continuing effort by bad people to prevent computers from being programmable, but it's mostly unsuccessful.