I couldn't resist. :-)
I was being as diplomatic as I could be in describing these very good 6502
machines.
Really though, there are several points about the three machines that
make them unique:
The Apple II was very expandable, had fast paralell i/o for drives at the
outset, and a very flexible DOS and filesystem which allowed the machine
to make use of it's other strengths. It had moderate graphics and poor
sound. DOS allowed long filenames, time/date stamping, a directory tree,
and a comand line interface. The open buss had expansion capabilities that
dwarfed the Comodore line of machines and made the Atari look difficult
(stacked like ZX81 vs cardcage like Apple internal). Both main
competitors to Apple used TTL serial for drives which hurt performance.
The Atari 8-bit had a great DOS/filesystem (Spartados), fast paralell i/o
for hard disks and floppies, great graphics, great sound, and the ability
to use most any upgrade conceivable (ram up to 4MB, dual sound chips, you
name it). In addition the Atari has a real-time clock, time-date stamping
of files, a command line interface, a directory tree, and tons of other
modern features the original designers didn't think of but provided for.
The XE series had a crappy keyboard that I rather liked, and the XE series
XF551 drive was as sturdy as toilet paper under a running faucet. Earlier
machines weren't so, but for the XE this is true. Fortunately, a modified
XL series drive or third party drive worked for everyone and so we were
happy.
The Atari 8-bits' floppies are ten times faster STOCK (than C=). With a
$25.00 mod they are thirty times faster. A hard disk on the C= runs at
about 2.5kbit. Stock Atari floppies run at 19.2kbit, modified is 56kbit -
the XE tissuepaper drive at 38.4kbps. The Atari's hard disk options, in
addition to a real filesystem, run at 3,500,000bps - yes, that is the
right number of zeros 3500kbps. In fact, this translates to something like
35Kbytes per second throughput for reads versus a lucky 2kbps for the C=.
There is also a practical, software compatible (almost all) network (mux)
for the Atari that would be impossible for the C=. I ran my bbs on one
for years. It saved me a bunch of money on hard disks for each machine
and made multi-line BBS'ing possible. All while running any software I
wanted.
Spartados is third-party, so is the high-speed fdd upgrade, the real-time
clock, the hard disk upgrade and almost all ram upgrades. In fact, most of
the cool stuff was third party.... Nevertheless, they are all compatible
with original software and interoperate perfectly. There are no comperable
C= products, nor are there from other makers for the C= machine.
The Commodore 64 had the worlds worst rom operating system ever created.
Most publishers just mapped it out and went straight to hardware to get
good results. The sound was somewhat better than the Atari and MUCH
better than the Apple. The C='s main fault was the i/o. The machine
could read tape ok, but to read disks it had to emulate the tape drive and
run at it's speed. This is really horrible. My Atari's hard disk is
divided into several 16mb partitions (firmware limit is 64mb per partition
but that is still waiting for a new dos). Specs are 1428 files per
directory with a 254 char limit for a path. You can stack paths but why?
A single 16mb hard disk on the C= would have to be partitioned into 180k
'floppy-sized' chunks and then addressed using machine calls to the
drive's rom in order to get a simple directory. There are no directories
or even CP/M-like 'user areas' to separate data. All that has to be
virtualized by each application within it's own code.
There is no DOS for the C=. At least none that allows you to run the
majority of software. There is none because the i/o and ram schemes never
allowed for one. GEOS does not count because it bypasses or manipulates
the original ROM os for greater functionality at the expense of near total
incompatibility with non-GEOS software.
In <200011160250.SAA11566_at_stockholm.ptloma.edu>, on 11/15/00
at 10:44 PM, Cameron Kaiser <spectre_at_stockholm.ptloma.edu> said:
>> Even back in the z80 dayz, machines were incomperable. A C=64, an Atari
>> 8-bit, and an Apple II might all score about 52 drystones, but both the
>> Commodore and the Atari were much faster at graphical tasks than the Apple
>> because they had dedicated coprocessors for the purpose.
>Well, speaking as a Commodore freak, actually I would consider ANTIC more
>of a graphics co-processor than the C64's VIC-II, especially considering
>display lists. Wish we had something that cool for the 64 instead of
>having to write complicated raster interrupts for the same purpose. But
>we're content that SID kicks POKEY's fat Sunnyvale butt. :-)
>On the other hand, the point that the Apple II just had the single
>overworked 6502 to do *everything* is well-taken. Ditto for the ZX81's
>Z80.
--
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Received on Wed Nov 15 2000 - 21:44:32 GMT