4 ms·

Funny how all the "PC = newer = better" comments get refuted here. Let's be honest: early 80's homecomputers were more bang/$ than the earliest PC's. Graphics

Funny how all the "PC = newer = better" comments get refuted here. Let's be honest: early 80's homecomputers were more bang/$ than the earliest PC's. Graphics & sound, BASIC built in, fast-expanding software libraries, etc. They were however more suited for games than business applications.

forinti 3y ago
80 columns were also important. Some 8-bitters couldn't even produce 40 columns. The Beeb could handle 80 columns and so was used in all sorts of areas. But I'd argue that PCs had unequivocal advantage when 386s came out.
- flohofwoe 3y ago
  80 columns were pretty much a requirement for CP/M though, which was basically the MS-DOS of the 8-bit era (for instance the Amstrad CPC had an 80 column mode and supported CP/M as optional operating system, and the Commodore 128 also added 80 column support because the whole point of the additional Z80 CPU in the C128 was proper CP/M support).
AnotherGoodName 3y ago
I think it's interesting to think about the biggest outliers in performance in the past. I was lucky enough to experience the Apple 2 and then later Amiga 1000 in their respective eras. Each of these were ~5 years earlier than similarly capable machines. I had color games on my Apple 2 (Woz and his incredible NTSC/PAL coloring hacks) long before i had color video games on any other system, including the much later IBM PC era where CGA/EGA/VGA was an add-on feature. When the much later C64 came out the Apple 2 still played pretty much the same games, just without the audio. The Amiga had hardware acceleration for graphics and sound as standard, long before other systems did the same thing and again was way ahead of contemporaries. Less Woz style cleverness in hardware and more "throw in every feature from the start" architecture. Still there's a reason this system is so popular in the demoscene today. This used to wow people with the graphics even in the Windows 95 era and i used to explain to people "we've had this computer since 1985" to much disbeleif.
- timbit42 3y ago
  The Apple II was only two years ahead of the Atari 800 which came out in 1979 and was the most advanced until the Amiga in 1985.

forinti 3y ago

80 columns were also important. Some 8-bitters couldn't even produce 40 columns. The Beeb could handle 80 columns and so was used in all sorts of areas. But I'd argue that PCs had unequivocal advantage when 386s came out.

flohofwoe 3y ago
80 columns were pretty much a requirement for CP/M though, which was basically the MS-DOS of the 8-bit era (for instance the Amstrad CPC had an 80 column mode and supported CP/M as optional operating system, and the Commodore 128 also added 80 column support because the whole point of the additional Z80 CPU in the C128 was proper CP/M support).

AnotherGoodName 3y ago

I think it's interesting to think about the biggest outliers in performance in the past. I was lucky enough to experience the Apple 2 and then later Amiga 1000 in their respective eras. Each of these were ~5 years earlier than similarly capable machines. I had color games on my Apple 2 (Woz and his incredible NTSC/PAL coloring hacks) long before i had color video games on any other system, including the much later IBM PC era where CGA/EGA/VGA was an add-on feature. When the much later C64 came out the Apple 2 still played pretty much the same games, just without the audio. The Amiga had hardware acceleration for graphics and sound as standard, long before other systems did the same thing and again was way ahead of contemporaries. Less Woz style cleverness in hardware and more "throw in every feature from the start" architecture. Still there's a reason this system is so popular in the demoscene today. This used to wow people with the graphics even in the Windows 95 era and i used to explain to people "we've had this computer since 1985" to much disbeleif.

timbit42 3y ago
The Apple II was only two years ahead of the Atari 800 which came out in 1979 and was the most advanced until the Amiga in 1985.