Another C65 sold, record so far?

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

Commodore made the same mistake but had a lot less reason, they already had 16-bit hardware and knew the price would come down to a reasonable amount. The C65 just made no sense at all.

Yeah, the Amiga 500 was basically a games console in the shape of a computer. They should've just sold it as the AmigaGS but with a cartridge port, and possibly cheaper too. Nobody would be crazy enough to spend 500 pounds on a kids' toy

[malko]

Originally Posted by Cris1997XX

Yeah, the Amiga 500 was basically a games console in the shape of a computer. [...]

Have you ever seen a console with paint programs, coding languages, word processors, spreadsheets, PAO, HD partitioning tools, etc, etc. ? If we follow your reasoning, the latest PC is basically a game console in the shape of a computer as well.

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by malko

Have you ever seen a console with paint programs, coding languages, word processors, spreadsheets, PAO, HD partitioning tools, etc, etc. ? If we follow your reasoning, the latest PC is basically a game console in the shape of a computer as well.

Well, correct me if I'm wrong but the machine actually started as a videogame console, at least from what its hardware designers said. It only became a computer because Commodore wanted it to, so obviously paint programs and word processors were created to make the whole thing more professional.

[Megalomaniac]

Unless the C65 could have been significantly cheaper than the A500, I'm not sure there was enough of a market for it. America wanted consoles at the budget level by then. At least in the UK, the Spectrum and C64 were still selling pretty well, because they were competitive with the consoles but were a 'proper computer'

If the compatibility issues were primarily with C64 disks, that would have been less of an issue in the UK, but a big deal in much of Europe where the C64 still had an audience.

Hopefully one day the C65 can be emulated and people can experiment with programming for it, see just how close it could have got to the A500 (and indeed the Amstrad Plus and SAM Coupé).

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by Cris1997XX

Yeah, the Amiga 500 was basically a games console in the shape of a computer......

A500 in the right hands was a rival to 16bit console games but for all but office workers it was also a better personal computer than anything else for £400-500, especially content generators.

It was priced between a console and a 80186 we had in college, a low end 512k EGA PC.

You could buy the Mega65 full size replica and spend the rest on a BMW M2 or something lol there's no software worth owning for it anyway.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

8><———-
Hopefully one day the C65 can be emulated and people can experiment with programming for it, see just how close it could have got to the A500 (and indeed the Amstrad Plus and SAM Coupé).

In case you missed it…
https://mega65.org/
Although its more powerful than the original.

The C65 was cancelled about a year before the A600 came out (late). So I guess the idea was to do a low end Amiga instead (A300) as by then 16bit was ”enough low end”. An 8-bit C65 would have a hell of an uphill battle to attract developers..
Its like the NEC Supergraphics that was supposed to replace the PC Engine.. It got, what… 5 games? ;-)

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

In case you missed it…
https://mega65.org/
Although its more powerful than the original.

The C65 was cancelled about a year before the A600 came out (late). So I guess the idea was to do a low end Amiga instead (A300) as by then 16bit was ”enough low end”. An 8-bit C65 would have a hell of an uphill battle to attract developers..
Its like the NEC Supergraphics that was supposed to replace the PC Engine.. It got, what… 5 games? ;-)

Well, at least the Supergrafx was actually sold in stores and got some games

[Megalomaniac]

Someone spending €35000 on a prototype computer probably already has several BMWs, in fairness.

Do we know what the likely launch price of the C65 would have been, and whether the intended primary market was the US or Europe? Considering how poorly the Amstrad Plus sold (despite 100% CPC compatibility), I doubt it would have succeeded without being significantly more powerful than that, and would have needed some really impressive launch software to compete.

[VladR]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

In case you missed it…
https://mega65.org/
Although its more powerful than the original.

Thanks for the update. Last time I looked at it was about ~2 yrs ago. But the price is 800 EUR

I wish they had just an FPGA board, like ZX-Uno, in some cheapo case, at minimum price - though I wonder how expensive that particular FPGA is - probably 200-ish these days....

The 40 MHz 4502 sounds pretty intriguing from developer's perspective, though I wonder what kind of sentiment C64 community has towards it - is it pure vitriol-fueled hatred like towards Vampire in the Amiga land ("That's not C-64, it's an abomination!"?

Originally Posted by eXeler0

The C65 was cancelled about a year before the A600 came out (late). So I guess the idea was to do a low end Amiga instead (A300) as by then 16bit was ”enough low end”. An 8-bit C65 would have a hell of an uphill battle to attract developers..
Its like the NEC Supergraphics that was supposed to replace the PC Engine.. It got, what… 5 games? ;-)

A year before A600 ? That's too late even for the "what-if" standards of this board
The NEC would most likely beat this at the games library count

[VladR]

From the C-65 wiki:

True bitplane graphics:
320 x 200 x 256 (8-bitplane) non-interlaced.
640 x 200 x 16* (4-bitplane) non-interlaced (plus sprite and border colours).
1280 x 200 x 4* (2-bitplane) non-interlaced (plus sprite and border colours).
320 x 400 x 256 (8-bitplane) interlaced.
640 x 400 x 16* (4-bitplane) interlaced (plus sprite and border colours).
1280 x 400 x 4* (2-bitplane) interlaced (plus sprite and border colours).

Colour palettes:
Standard 16-colour C64 ROM palette.
Programmable 256-colour RAM palette, with 16 intensity levels per primary colour (for a total of 4096 colours).

Those modes would have been real nice for things like 2D HUD in flight simulators or racing games (keeping the main window in the fastest mode).

Or things like maps (e.g. Star Raiders Galaxy Map)...

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Cris1997XX

Well, correct me if I'm wrong but the machine actually started as a videogame console, at least from what its hardware designers said. It only became a computer because Commodore wanted it to, so obviously paint programs and word processors were created to make the whole thing more professional.

That transition was made long before the A500 was conceived. And saying it was just because Commodore wanted it to change is oversimplifying to the point of ignoring the underlying reason: the videogames market had utterly imploded and launching a console (either with the Commodore brand, the Atari brand or going it alone as Amiga) would have been corporate suicide. The decision was thus made to produce a computer that a couple of years later became the A1000.

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Considering how poorly the Amstrad Plus sold (despite 100% CPC compatibility)

They're beautiful machines, but 100% compatible they are not. And I say that despite them being my favourite retro system.

[ché]

Well ->> Ended: Apr 01, 2024 11:01:21 PDT <<-

:-)

[Megalomaniac]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

They're beautiful machines, but 100% compatible they are not. And I say that despite them being my favourite retro system.

Apologies, the way the Wikipedia article about the Amstrad Plus is written makes it sound 100% compatible, as it defaults to standard CPC mode and the Plus features need specifically accessing in a way that can't be done accidentally. How close would you say it is - better than A500+ / STe / Spectrum +2A? Which games do have issues running on the Plus, and why? Might be worth editing the Wiki article to clarify that?

It certainly is aesthetically beautiful, in part because the design is so close to an A500. Actually, if you asked ChatGPT to create an Amiga with a tape deck, that's probably what it would concoct.

[S0ulA55a551n]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Apologies, the way the Wikipedia article about the Amstrad Plus is written makes it sound 100% compatible, as it defaults to standard CPC mode and the Plus features need specifically accessing in a way that can't be done accidentally. How close would you say it is - better than A500+ / STe / Spectrum +2A? Which games do have issues running on the Plus, and why? Might be worth editing the Wiki article to clarify that?

It certainly is aesthetically beautiful, in part because the design is so close to an A500. Actually, if you asked ChatGPT to create an Amiga with a tape deck, that's probably what it would concoct.

I agree, ive never owned one, I own to gx4000, one brand new unopened boxed.

I am holding out for a 6128 plus, but they go for silly money

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Apologies, the way the Wikipedia article about the Amstrad Plus is written makes it sound 100% compatible, as it defaults to standard CPC mode and the Plus features need specifically accessing in a way that can't be done accidentally. How close would you say it is - better than A500+ / STe / Spectrum +2A? Which games do have issues running on the Plus, and why? Might be worth editing the Wiki article to clarify that?

It certainly is aesthetically beautiful, in part because the design is so close to an A500. Actually, if you asked ChatGPT to create an Amiga with a tape deck, that's probably what it would concoct.

I'd put it in the same sort of category as the A500+, STe and +2A for sure. In that it's not actually as bad as some made out at the time, but owning one you'd almost certainly run in to at least some compatibility issues.

It's not actually the "Plus" parts of the hardware that are the issue, the locking mechanism on them works pretty well and I've certainly never come across anything that accidentally enables the additional hardware registers.

The number one issue you tend to encounter is keyboard scanning. It's a messy business on the CPC as it's connected to the AY sound chip, which itself is accessed via an 8255 PPI. Amstrad produced documentation for the original CPC which specified the exact process for reading the keyboard (and joysticks), but a lot of developers found that you could cut out certain steps and read the keyboard quicker. With every cycle being squeezed, that kind of code became common. But the Plus emulated the 8255 inside the ASIC chip and that emulation is a lot more fussy - the end result being software that just fails to read key presses.

Lesser issues were timing issues with the lower power disc drives in the 6128+. Didn't cause an issue with AMSDOS, but software that hit the disc controller directly to do faster or fancier track loading could fail under certain circumstances. Then there were minor issues around how the 27 colour palette is almost, but not quite the same 27 colours, or little things like the exact moment a palette change takes effect being just ever so slightly different.

There were also a few inevitable quirks with external hardware devices like memory expansions or multiface style hacking devices, which might work most of the time when using only old software but don't necessarily behave correctly once the new hardware comes is enabled.

Finally there were CRTC differences in edge cases too, although given there were already 4 different variants of CRTC in use, it's inevitable the result wouldn't be compatible with all of them. The ASIC emulation does at least fall into the "good" set of CRTCs and you get the benefit that, when writing Plus only software, you know they all have the same CRTC and thus which tricks will work (though the new features of the hardware mostly make such tricks unnecessary).

[S0ulA55a551n]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

I'd put it in the same sort of category as the A500+, STe and +2A for sure. In that it's not actually as bad as some made out at the time, but owning one you'd almost certainly run in to at least some compatibility issues.

It's not actually the "Plus" parts of the hardware that are the issue, the locking mechanism on them works pretty well and I've certainly never come across anything that accidentally enables the additional hardware registers.

The number one issue you tend to encounter is keyboard scanning. It's a messy business on the CPC as it's connected to the AY sound chip, which itself is accessed via an 8255 PPI. Amstrad produced documentation for the original CPC which specified the exact process for reading the keyboard (and joysticks), but a lot of developers found that you could cut out certain steps and read the keyboard quicker. With every cycle being squeezed, that kind of code became common. But the Plus emulated the 8255 inside the ASIC chip and that emulation is a lot more fussy - the end result being software that just fails to read key presses.

Lesser issues were timing issues with the lower power disc drives in the 6128+. Didn't cause an issue with AMSDOS, but software that hit the disc controller directly to do faster or fancier track loading could fail under certain circumstances. Then there were minor issues around how the 27 colour palette is almost, but not quite the same 27 colours, or little things like the exact moment a palette change takes effect being just ever so slightly different.

There were also a few inevitable quirks with external hardware devices like memory expansions or multiface style hacking devices, which might work most of the time when using only old software but don't necessarily behave correctly once the new hardware comes is enabled.

Finally there were CRTC differences in edge cases too, although given there were already 4 different variants of CRTC in use, it's inevitable the result wouldn't be compatible with all of them. The ASIC emulation does at least fall into the "good" set of CRTCs and you get the benefit that, when writing Plus only software, you know they all have the same CRTC and thus which tricks will work (though the new features of the hardware mostly make such tricks unnecessary).

Thanks for that. Helpful

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Someone spending €35000 on a prototype computer probably already has several BMWs, in fairness.

Do we know what the likely launch price of the C65 would have been, and whether the intended primary market was the US or Europe? Considering how poorly the Amstrad Plus sold (despite 100% CPC compatibility), I doubt it would have succeeded without being significantly more powerful than that, and would have needed some really impressive launch software to compete.

Doubt it, most of them drive fwd garbage lol

It's closer to SNES than A500+ but the profit margin was much lower so it got canned so Gould could make more $$$ I bet. It did 640x400 in 256/4096 colours and had a blitter also had lightning fast char based screens. C64 sprites are also less crappy than ECS

[Megalomaniac]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

Doubt it, most of them drive fwd garbage lol

It's closer to SNES than A500+ but the profit margin was much lower so it got canned so Gould could make more $$$ I bet. It did 640x400 in 256/4096 colours and had a blitter also had lightning fast char based screens. C64 sprites are also less crappy than ECS

The C65 Wiki quoted here says that 640x400 was only 16 colours (not that interlaced modes would be any use for moving graphics for games, and probably too hungry for disk (let alone cassette) space and loading time to be worthwhile. Would the C65 have had the processing power and custom chips to move even 320x200x256 colours quickly enough? And what can C64 sprites do that ECS ones can't?