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> I'm still somewhat amazed at how long computer models stuck around for back then > On one hand, it was probably a mindset thing that you built things to last

by timr 5y ago

> I'm still somewhat amazed at how long computer models stuck around for back then > On one hand, it was probably a mindset thing that you built things to last, and the concept of iterative development wasn't really there I don't think so. There were some really cheap bits in the C64 -- the power supplies were prone to burning up, and the floppy drives were so fragile that if you looked at them funny, the head would mis-align. One of the first electronics projects I remember as a kid was building a jury-rigged cooling fan for the 1541, because otherwise it would get too hot and stop working on long reads. I think it's just a function of the primitive state of the industry at that time. It's a bit like any other startup: they had to build demand for the product before they could afford to version-cycle it. But also, the manufacturing, sales, and marketing infrastructure didn't exist. Consider that literally none of the modern electronics industry existed back then -- Steve Jobs was going to Japan to convince companies to sell him disk drives! Today, if you want to get hardware made, you can pretty much dial up custom fab in China. Back then, if you wanted to build a new computer, it meant building a factory in Texas or California and sitting in conference rooms in Tokyo to convince people to sell you the latest components. It wasn't really until the first generic PCs that the rate of change began to skyrocket.

rbanffy 5y ago
> they had to build demand for the product before they could afford to version-cycle it. That mindset didn’t really exist back then. Instead of releasing a better C64, Commodore made the C16, the Plus 4 (both nice, twice as fast as the 64). The first backwards compatible was the C128, but it isn’t really an upgrade over the 64, but a different computer with a 64 built in - when running 64 software, it’s not even faster. In that sense, it’s a bit funny they didn’t learn the IBM 360 lesson - that a family of compatible computers can outlast the individual models essentially forever.
- rob74 5y ago
  The problem with the C64 (and the Amiga later) was that it had games which depended on the exact timing and other details of the hardware, so it was hard to create a downward compatible improved system. Arguably Commodore also wasn't really interested in that - the Amiga certainly had a window of opportunity to survive as a platform, but when Commodore decided to invest into new models, it was too little too late...
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    > games which depended on the exact timing PC's solved that with the then-ubiquitous turbo button. The C64 had scan-line timed interrupts, and games could tie to that to work properly on faster machines, had they been available.
    - grujicd 5y ago
      Same for Amiga, games could (and most probably did) use scan line hardware interrupts to change colors, sprites, even screen modes as scan line progressed. Faster CPU or blitter wouldn't mess up anything for most games which properly used available hw resources. Of course, you can always make code dependent on CPU timing, but it was not necessary on these machines.
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        The big architectural problem of the Amiga was that so much of its graphics and sound was tied to TV signal clocks. It's not a big issue if you are building a gaming console, but it became a problem for a computer when it was much more complicated to make it output higher resolutions than 400i (and 400i was already quite painful to use). When PCs with VGA cards started to become commonplace, it became abundantly clear the graphical prowess of the Amiga would be surpassed in a very short time and that it's only remaining role would be in the analog TV production niche.
        grujicd 5y ago
        Yeah, true. Bitplanes were also problematic... It was a nice way to get 32 or 64 colors. Without bitplanes you were limited to what would fit in a byte - so you typically had 2, 4 or 16 colors per pixel in that era, full byte for 256 colors was too much. Amiga could display 32 or 64 colors as well, by having each bit in an independent bitplane. Which is fine if you were copying blocks for 2d games, especially with hw blitter. But if you had to draw individual pixels, you had to touch 5 or 6 bytes for each pixels. You were DOOMed :)
sime2009 5y ago
> it's just a function of the primitive state of the industry at that time I'll expand on that idea. Basically, very little on a C64 or similar machine of the time was standardised and interchangeable or "insulated" from the rest of the system. Nor were applications insulated from the hardware. You couldn't upgrade the speed of the CPU, or replace the gfx chip without breaking a ton of software. The modular nature of computer systems today simply didn't exist back then. So upgrades had to be system wide upgrades of everything in many cases, basically whole new systems and new software would have to be written for them.

by timr 5y ago

rbanffy 5y ago

> they had to build demand for the product before they could afford to version-cycle it. That mindset didn’t really exist back then. Instead of releasing a better C64, Commodore made the C16, the Plus 4 (both nice, twice as fast as the 64). The first backwards compatible was the C128, but it isn’t really an upgrade over the 64, but a different computer with a 64 built in - when running 64 software, it’s not even faster. In that sense, it’s a bit funny they didn’t learn the IBM 360 lesson - that a family of compatible computers can outlast the individual models essentially forever.

rob74 5y ago
The problem with the C64 (and the Amiga later) was that it had games which depended on the exact timing and other details of the hardware, so it was hard to create a downward compatible improved system. Arguably Commodore also wasn't really interested in that - the Amiga certainly had a window of opportunity to survive as a platform, but when Commodore decided to invest into new models, it was too little too late...
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > games which depended on the exact timing PC's solved that with the then-ubiquitous turbo button. The C64 had scan-line timed interrupts, and games could tie to that to work properly on faster machines, had they been available.
  - grujicd 5y ago
    Same for Amiga, games could (and most probably did) use scan line hardware interrupts to change colors, sprites, even screen modes as scan line progressed. Faster CPU or blitter wouldn't mess up anything for most games which properly used available hw resources. Of course, you can always make code dependent on CPU timing, but it was not necessary on these machines.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      The big architectural problem of the Amiga was that so much of its graphics and sound was tied to TV signal clocks. It's not a big issue if you are building a gaming console, but it became a problem for a computer when it was much more complicated to make it output higher resolutions than 400i (and 400i was already quite painful to use). When PCs with VGA cards started to become commonplace, it became abundantly clear the graphical prowess of the Amiga would be surpassed in a very short time and that it's only remaining role would be in the analog TV production niche.
      - grujicd 5y ago
        Yeah, true. Bitplanes were also problematic... It was a nice way to get 32 or 64 colors. Without bitplanes you were limited to what would fit in a byte - so you typically had 2, 4 or 16 colors per pixel in that era, full byte for 256 colors was too much. Amiga could display 32 or 64 colors as well, by having each bit in an independent bitplane. Which is fine if you were copying blocks for 2d games, especially with hw blitter. But if you had to draw individual pixels, you had to touch 5 or 6 bytes for each pixels. You were DOOMed :)

sime2009 5y ago

> it's just a function of the primitive state of the industry at that time I'll expand on that idea. Basically, very little on a C64 or similar machine of the time was standardised and interchangeable or "insulated" from the rest of the system. Nor were applications insulated from the hardware. You couldn't upgrade the speed of the CPU, or replace the gfx chip without breaking a ton of software. The modular nature of computer systems today simply didn't exist back then. So upgrades had to be system wide upgrades of everything in many cases, basically whole new systems and new software would have to be written for them.