The Spectrum is a computer for GIRLS !!!
in [Commodore]
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From: DanSolo on 20 Dec 2006 12:52 spike1(a)freenet.co.uk wrote: > How could commodore "OWN" the z80 when it was clocked at the same speed as > the 6510 in the commodore 128? > > The main argument you lot have for the 65xx family is that the instructions > are less clock cycle hungry and thus, the programs run at a comparable speed > on the 64 as the spectrum. But with the 128, the z80 must've been crawling. It was never used for anything except 80 column word processors, so I'll admit it was only a bit of a curio. Is there a "benchmarking" piece of compatible BASIC that would sort the speed comparison out for good? > You had the entire north american sub-continent to produce software. > We had Great britain and a few bits of europe. (Which also brings in the > language problem) Hardly Commodore's fault thier machine was vastly more popular! Sinclair did try to sell overseas you know, they just couldn't do it. Judging by the sizes of the software catalogues, a roughly similar ratio of owners ended up as releasers. Any superiority in the Spectrum's ease of programming didn't seem to help people write stuff for it. > Did everybody write games for the 64? > No. > So why should the spectrum be expected to be used for writing games by > everyone who owned them? So then you've accepted my point that BASIC commands such as "print at" were used by such a tiny percentage of the user base as to be virtually superfluous. Anyone who wanted to do serious programming would have ended up writing their own ML routines, unless Z80 coders called the "print at" command from assembly? I doubt that.
From: spike1 on 20 Dec 2006 13:28 DanSolo <daniel.otoole(a)ucd.ie> did eloquently scribble: >> You had the entire north american sub-continent to produce software. >> We had Great britain and a few bits of europe. (Which also brings in the >> language problem) > Hardly Commodore's fault thier machine was vastly more popular! Only in its country of origin though. Just as the spectrum was more popular in ITS country of origin. Your country's just bigger, that' all. And timex totally fecked up marketting the spectrum in the USA leaving it too late and then releasing a version that wasn't even compatible with the real thing. > Sinclair did try to sell overseas you know, they just couldn't do it. Ah, but they DID do it. In spain and other european countries it was quite popular, and where it wasn't sold, clones like the hobbit, scorpion and pentagon sprang up (in the eastern block) > So then you've accepted my point that BASIC commands such as "print at" > were used by such a tiny percentage of the user base as to be virtually > superfluous. Anyone who wanted to do serious programming would have > ended up writing their own ML routines, unless Z80 coders called the > "print at" command from assembly? I doubt that. We could, with a few well placed RST16s (and associated commands) out print control codes were more efficient than just using tabs and cursors movements. We actually had tab (n) and at (m,n) in print control codes too. RST 16 printed the character in A to screen at the current cursor position. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | spike1(a)freenet.co.uk | Windows95 (noun): 32 bit extensions and a | | | graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit | |Andrew Halliwell BSc(hons)| operating system originally coded for a 4 bit | | in |microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company, that| | Computer Science | can't stand 1 bit of competition. | -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: agila61 on 20 Dec 2006 21:41 spike1(a)freenet.co.uk wrote: > DanSolo <daniel.otoole(a)ucd.ie> did eloquently scribble: > >> You had the entire north american sub-continent to produce software. > >> We had Great britain and a few bits of europe. (Which also brings in the > >> language problem) > > Hardly Commodore's fault thier machine was vastly more popular! > Only in its country of origin though. > Just as the spectrum was more popular in ITS country of origin. Congratulations, you were the $FF'th caller in this threat on the CSC newsgroup (the CSS newsgroup passed that milestone a little while ago). And beyond that, the quite startling information that Commodore originated in Australia. I spent a decade in Newcastle, NSW, and I had no idea of that ... I always thought the whole "Toronto" thing was Toronto, Ontario, not Toronto in Lake Macquarie!
From: Daniel Mandic on 20 Dec 2006 23:04 DanSolo wrote: > platforms have their chamber of horrors) by about 3 to 1. Why would > this ? If the Spec is so easy to program on, wouldn't everybody would > have been writing games for it? Who said game writing is easy? I just remember the argument that the speecy is more comfortable for beginner, due to its strong ROM. Best Regards, Daniel Mandic
From: Sam Gillett on 21 Dec 2006 02:03
<spike1(a)freenet.co.uk> wrote ... > > How could commodore "OWN" the z80 when it was clocked at the same speed as > the 6510 in the commodore 128? FYI, the Commodore 128 used an 8502 CPU rather than the 6510 CPU used by the C64. The Z-80 in the C128 was clocked at 4 MH, but, due to having to share the bus with the 8502 had an effective speed of 2 MH. -- Best regards, Sam Gillett Change is inevitable, except from vending machines! |