The Spectrum is a computer for GIRLS !!!
in [Commodore]
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From: Sam Gillett on 24 Nov 2006 20:26 "Ville Muikkula" wrote ... > > Nathaniel Shurtleff, ed. Records of the Governor and Company of the > Massachusetts Bay in New England, Vol I. Boston, 1853. p.204: > "The 12th of the 8th m. was ordered to bee kept a day of publicke > thanksgiving to God for his great m'cies in subdewing the Pecoits, > bringing the soldiers in safety, the successe of the conference, & good > news from Germany." Seems to be a completely different day of thanksgiving than the one that was the origin of the holiday that we call Thanksgiving Day now. There was nothing to keep one colony from celebrating different days of thanksgiving than those celebrated by other colonies. There was also nothing to prevent different colonies from celebrating their day, or days, of thanksgiving for entirely different reasons. The festivals of various ancient civilizations shared certain themes -- fertility, death, resurrection, harvest, and thanksgiving -- that are recognized in modern holidays around the world. In the United States today, each state proclaims its own holidays, but the U.S. government establishes legal holidays for the District of Columbia and for all federal employees nationally, and by tradition, the states also observe these holidays. Note that the day of thanksgiving you referenced was celebrated on the 12th day of August. The one we celebrate now as a national holiday is on the 4th Thursday of November, a little over a three month difference. Our modern holiday of Thanksgiving is an annual holiday celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November. It originated in three days of prayer and feasting by the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony in 1621, although an earlier thanksgiving was offered in prayer alone by members of the Berkeley plantation near present-day Charles City, Va., on Dec. 4, 1619. The first national Thanksgiving Day, proclaimed by President George Washington, was celebrated on Nov. 26, 1789. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln made it an annual holiday to be commemorated on the last Thursday in November. For three years (1939-41), under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the day was celebrated one week earlier, but thereafter, by act of Congress, it is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. -- Best regards, Sam Gillett Change is inevitable, except from vending machines!
From: Simon on 24 Nov 2006 21:17 On Sat, 25 Nov 2006 01:03:38 +0000, spike1 wrote: > Simon <sscott(a)westnet.nospam.com.au> did eloquently scribble: >> On Fri, 24 Nov 2006 11:29:56 +0000, Duncan Snowden wrote: > >>> DanSolo wrote: > >>>> I'll see your Starstrike II and raise a Space Rogue. Filled polygons. >>>> Fast. Colours. And it's an RPG too. >>>> http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=7098&h=0 >>> >>> Fair enough. Still at least 2 years late, though. :-) > >> So now the c64's longevity counts *against* it? Now Ive heard everything >> :D > > Longevity? by one year? > Spectrum production: 1982-1992 > C64 production: 1982-1993 When did I say it lasted longer than the Speccy? You guys are seriously paranoid.
From: Sam Gillett on 24 Nov 2006 21:42 <spike1(a)freenet.co.uk> wrote ... > Simon <sscott(a)westnet.nospam.com.au> did eloquently scribble: > >> So now the c64's longevity counts *against* it? Now Ive heard everything >> :D > > Longevity? by one year? > Spectrum production: 1982-1992 > C64 production: 1982-1993 Was the 48K Spectrum still being produced in 1992? Or, perhaps you are lumping together the original Spectrum and the 128K Spectrum. The later C64's had a different case design, but still had the same keyboard layout, the same amount of RAM, the same ports, etc., etc. -- Best regards, Sam Gillett Change is inevitable, except from vending machines!
From: spike1 on 25 Nov 2006 03:21 Simon <sscott(a)westnet.nospam.com.au> did eloquently scribble: > On Thu, 23 Nov 2006 17:48:57 +0000, spike1 wrote: >> Duncan Snowden <dss(a)ukonline.co.uk> did eloquently scribble: >>>> Then you could PRINT VT$(y)TAB(x)"your message" anywhere and get the >>>> same effect as your PRINT AT command. >> >>> Aye, never let it be said Commodore BASIC was complicated. >> >> Well they had to do print at somehow, and using cursor control characters >> was their only way of doing it... poor things. > I know what you mean, but quite seriously, at the time it seemed quite > easy and intuitive. That is, for the 5 minutes I actually coded BASIC > before progressing to MC. Well. It's not as if you had that much choice, considering it was the only way to get at the hardware. :) -- ______________________________________________________________________________ | spike1(a)freenet.co.uk | | |Andrew Halliwell BSc(hons)| "The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't | | in | suck is probably the day they start making | | Computer science | vacuum cleaners" - Ernst Jan Plugge | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Vanessa Ezekowitz on 25 Nov 2006 16:27
spike1(a)freenet.co.uk wrote: > follow-ups restored. Now why would I allow that followup-to setting? That's my fault I think...this newsreader requires me to manually set the follow-up field if I want the message to go to more than one group. > them. Boots the chemist, WH Smiths the news-agent, etc. Now, you'd have > expected them to maybe sell in TV, Hi-Fi and electrical shops, but > CHEMISTS? Now that's an odd one... > The interface 1 came with a drive. Ahh. The article on Wikipedia implies that the interface could be purchased without the drive though (for about 50 pounds)...admittedly, one would surely want the drive with it. > Feature by feature, the spectrum would by then only lack hardware sprites > (woopydoo). But it would GAIN on the microdrive. No arguement there - the Microdrive is fast. Third-party setups for C64+1541 setups do approach that though (parallel cables, mostly). As for sprites, well, we've already visited that issue in the past. Hardware sprites are faster than software, but you can of course do software sprites on any computer with a graphics display. > Everyone had a tape recorder back then, any old tape recorder would do. > And if you DID need a new one, you could pick one up for 15 quid from any > electrical retailer. At one time there was a small interface you could buy for the C64 that let you use a normal cassette recorder in place of the datasette. Seem to recall that being in the $20 range. > Hmmm, well I've not been able to find the retail prices over here in the > uk yet. But we're not called rip-off britain. Quite often we have a direct > dollar-pound conversion on some inports. I can understand some of that cost, simply because it costs money to ship stuff overseas, but even that has limits. > Are you doing currency conversion? > Or are you actually using the UK RRPs? Currency conversion using historical tables. > And of course, price drops in the uk, lagged behind. > If they happened at all. Which is disappointing, really. I can understand why the Spectrum is popular there - it's cheap and it works well. > Every spec sheet on the c64 I've found on the web so far lists the > datasette as being 300bps as standard. The spec sheets are a little off.. Hell, the retail box for the C64 claims 256 sprites (in reality, there are 8). > No, sorry... But our tape drive was quicker than your disk in many > situations. Given a standing start with the tape in the right place. >> An easy way to check is to turn the volume all the way up so that you can >> hear the digital background noise, and then load a large program. Each >> burst of noise you hear represents 254 bytes, and you'll hear a little >> less than 2 such bursts per second. > > I again suspect a bit/byte mixup. Nope, definitely 254 bytes (the other 2 bytes per block are used by the filesystem). > And listening? That's no way to measure bit speed in transfers. Fine, let's use a stopwatch. Using VICE 1.20 to emulate a C64 and 1541 drive at their real speeds, and no fast loader, I loaded a 158 block file from a 1541 disk image. Assuming the last block of the file is only half-used, the file is about 40005 bytes in size (157.5 * 254). Timing from the moment I hit enter on the LOAD command until the moment the READY prompt appears. Total load time: 1 minute, 41 seconds (101 seconds) Approx. speed: 396 bytes per second. Now let's exclude the time it takes the drive to seek to the first byte of the file, by first loading the directory to force the drive to track 18, then hard resetting both the C64 and 1541. Then, start the LOAD command, wait for the SEARCHING message to appear, and then start the timer when the "LOADING" message appears. Stop the timer as soon as the READY prompt returns. Total load time: 1 minute, 38 seconds (98 seconds) Approx. speed: 408 bytes per second. Let's try another test, this time with a(n emulated) 1581 drive. The biggest file I have handy on a 1581 disk image is 202 blocks, PRG. I know for sure the last block is full. That's 51308 bytes (202 * 254). First test (as above): Total load time: 1 minute 39 seconds (99 seconds) Approx. speed: 518 bytes per second Second test (as above, to exclude first block seek time): Total load time: 1 minute, 38 seconds (98 seconds) Approx. speed: 523 bytes per second. I was a little off on the upper limit; I might be thinking of the CMD HD, which has a faster load speed (using the same stock loader) than any other serial device I know of. Clearly dead on accurate for the lower limit of about 400 bytes per second. >> ENTIRELY different hardware profile. > >> For data I/O, the VIC-20 used 6522 chips. The C64 used 6526's. >> For video, the VIC-20 had it's VIC-I chip, the C64 used the VIC-II. >> For sound, the VIC-20 used the sound generators in the VIC-I. The C64 >> used a SID chip. >> The VIC-20 had a variable system memory map, the C64's was fixed. >> The VIC-20 came with 5KB of RAM. > > 3.5K of RAM. I remember that much. 5K, of which 1.5K was used by the system for variables and the like. This extra bit of RAM could be used by machine code if desired, as with the C64's first ~2KB. > The C64 has 64K. >> As I said, the hardware profile is entirely different. The VIC-20 is >> nothing like the C64 under the hood - all similarity stops at the >> keyboard mechanism and case itself. > > I didn't argue against it being entirely different. In fact, I said the > hardware was completely different. Your posting history disagrees with you... I wrote: > > The C64 has an entirely different hardware profile than the VIC-20, with > > a different KERNAL ROM to go with it. The API was mostly the same, with > > only one or two minor differences. The BASIC ROM on the other hand, > > makes sense to re-use. And you you responded, quoting the above text: > No, it doesn't. > If it had a completely different hardware profile to the vic, why didn't > they include ANYTHING in the rom for handling that hardware? EVERYTHING > required pokes or machine code. Really helpful Clearly, you think the hardware is the same, and questionably, you think it was a bad business decision as well. > All I argued about was the fact the ROM was essensially the same between > the two in spite of these differences. Every time sinclair released a new > machine, he'd update the BASIC to take advantage of the new features. Similar things did happen with the Plus/4 (BASIC 4.0?), the C128 (BASIC 7.0), and the unreleased C65 (BASIC 10.0), just not during the VIC20 -> C64 transition. At least one other machine had BASIC 3.5 also, though I don't remember which one that was. When the spectrum came out the BASIC was massively updated, with the > addition of sound, colour, graphics, better dimensional and string > variable handling, DEFFN, READ/DATA/RESTORE, stream handling with OPEN > #/CLOSE # PRINT #, etc. Fixed ROM hooks for future additions like the > interface one. (cat, erase, format, etc) The C64 also had DEF FN, READ/DATA/RESTORE, stream handling with OPEN/CLOSE/PRINT/GET/INPUT, multiple-dimensional strings (any number of dimensions, limited by the size of the array). Not sure how you compare the variables - C64 had integer, floating point and character/string variables. > When the spectrum 128 came out the machine's ROM underwent another step > up. Now the basic could be entered using typed keypresses in 128 mode or > the traditional single keyword entry in 48k mode. The spectrum 128 only > added 2 new commands, play and spectrum (which switched to 48k mode for > BASIC), but some commands were modified to allow access to RAM disks, > etc... But the 128 mode's menu system added some new features too. Such as > a built in calculator, renumber, tape loader, better line editor, etc. > > Meanwhile, throughout all this, the commodore 64 had exactly the same > version of BASIC as the commodore PET from 5 years before! C128 was released a couple of months before the Spectryum 128K. It came with the RENUMBER command, a full compliment of sound and graphics commands, machine code monitor/assembler/disassembler, sprite editor, and of course hardware-assisted fastloading standard with 1571 and later drives. Ramdisk is an interesting thought; Commodore had released such a utility with the 1764 REU, I'm surprised it didn't make it into BASIC 7.0. However, commands were included to deal with the expansion RAM, so a ramdisk with it's own filesystem/DOS wasn't really necessary anyway. The line buffer/editor was extended to 160 characters. >> To me, an OS is just a kernel and a handful of basic utilities to handle >> stuff like copying files, moving things around, installing more software, >> and maybe compiling programs. A full operating environment in my mind >> means a full blown GUI like KDE or similar. > > But then how do you seperate things out when comparing it with windows? > You can't strip the GUI from XP and still have a working operating system. > OK, in linux, you can dump the GUI altogether, or switch between any one > of a few dozen alternatives (I use blackbox, not KDE for example) Actually, I use Linux as well - I don't trust windows with my personal data :-) >> 45 bytes per second is 450 bits per second, not 2400. I think you got >> something confused here. > > You're multiplying by 10? One byte is 8 bits plus 1 each of start and stop bits. That makes 10 bits per byte. 45 bytes * 10 bits per byte = 450 bits. > 60 bytes per second X 8 (8 bits in a byte) = 2400 bits per second. Your math is way wrong here. 60 bytes * 8 bits each = 480 bits. > KBps is kilo bytes per second for example [...] This is the notation I used to use, but I found that people got confused by it, so I generally write out the word "bytes" when I mean to measure in bytes. Otherwise, you can probably safely assume I mean bits. > OK.... I admit I screwed up on the maths. It was a bit late. > :) > I plead tiredness. I'll accept that, I get the same way when I'm tired. But it's 4:15pm here and I'm quite alert. My numbers regarding the 1541 are dead on balls accurate. I'd do a test of the tape routines also, but I don't know how to use the emulated tape drive in VICE. -- "Life is full of happy and sad events. If you take the time to concentrate on the former, you'll get further in life." Vanessa Ezekowitz <vanDEesLEsaeTEzekTHowiIStz(a)gmail.com> ("DELETE THIS" to email me :-) ) |