04 February 2024, 15:42 | #21 | |||
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QBlit and the corresponding dequeue interrupt *are* written in assembler, actually. While I do not know which compiler you use, SAS/C only pushes the registers its compiled code uses on the stack. |
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04 February 2024, 16:19 | #22 | ||
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I wonder how this came about ... did CSG run into problems making a 8088? Did management not ask CSG if this is something they could do beforehand? |
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05 February 2024, 00:31 | #23 | ||
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05 February 2024, 05:13 | #24 |
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I only knew of the Commodore 128D lookalike called the PC-1. That was the same price as the Atari PC1 (almost identical specs) and these 8088 PCs came a fair bit after the Amstrad PC1512, also cost £100 more than the 8086 based PC1512.
From wikipedia Commodore PC 5 Introduced in 1984, at $1395, the Commodore PC 5 is the low-budget option with a monochrome video card. It has a Intel 8088 running at 4.77 MHz and 256 KB RAM on-board (expandable to 640 KB) Commodore PC 10 The Commodore PC 10 is a PC 5 with a added color video card and two floppy drives (so still 256kb) Then it gets confusing with the following... Commodore PC 10-1 512 KB RAM and single floppy drive version. $519 Commodore PC 10-2 640 KB RAM and dual floppy Drives. $619 So looking at $100 for 128k and 5 1/4 disk drive I can only guess that $619 = extra 384kb of DRAM and a color (EGA? CGA?) video card over the cost of the PC 5, which is like $2000 in 1984. These sound like Gould 1984 projects to me. "Gould replaced Tramiel with Marshall F. Smith, a steel executive without a computer or consumer marketing experience." The time when the chicken head company became the headless chicken company. If Tramiel wanted your market segment you would know about it. This 256k $1400 mono 4.77mhz 8088 PC without monitor doesn't sound like a Tramiel product at all, it makes no sense and the person who came up with this damp fart of an idea would be Jack Attacked out the building more like Tramiel is the sort of person who would be at MOS first finding out if they could make a compatible CPU and pay nothing to anybody, just like with the 6800 vs 6501 (then 6502). Remember he took his eye off the low selling/high profit PET and focussed on the massive selling/massive profit root MOS engineers in his back pocket allowed. Clearly MOS told him they couldn't competively make LCD displays so he went out and acquired Eagle Pitcher to make the Commodore LCD feasible at prototype stage. Getting a licence, finding out they can't produce the 8088 in house cheaper, giving up....this sequence of events is 100% arse over tit work of the losers Gould had replaced Tramiel with. Just like the Plus/4 costing more than the C64 idea LOL Last edited by CCCP alert; 05 February 2024 at 05:20. |
05 February 2024, 05:51 | #25 | ||
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If you want to preserve backward compatibility, the SpritePort would fit between the VSprite structure and the raw sprite hardware buffer. SimpleSprites don't allow multiple SpritePorts to be allocated from the same channel making them just as inflexible as the VSprites are heavy. Both SimpleSprites and VSprites would be rendered obsolete. Quote:
The header of the copper node structure contains the approximate raster position for the CWAIT to be generated from. It is followed by 1 or more CMOVEs computed at compile time using preprocessor macro functions. A typical use case for sorted copper nodes are palette changes that scroll at different speeds from each other vertically along with other changes that need to interleave with each other at various different intervals. The positions in the headers for the CWAITs to be generated from are almost always quazi-random ordered relative to one another prior to being sorted. |
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05 February 2024, 08:20 | #26 | |
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Why? It also only runs the blitter, just through a different path. The only thing it does not do is interleaved. Frankly, I doubt that introducing another sprite engine after the last one was not used is not particularly helpful at all.
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MrgCop() is a merge sort - of three sorted lists. It does, however, do a bit more than that. I'm not sure what you mean. The sprite copper lists for example already set sprite colors "at arbitrary vertical positions", namely where the vsprites end up. |
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05 February 2024, 10:39 | #27 | ||||
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The 8 MHz 8086 wasn't as fast as you might think either. One reason is that it has 8 bit instructions that tend to split memory accesses so it's only ~1.5 x faster than an 8088 at the same clock speed. The other reason is the peripherals and video controller are still all 8 bit running at ~5 Mhz. I had a PC1512 with hard drive and 'paper-white' analog monochrome monitor. The screen display looked pretty nice but the long-persistence phosphor made action games awkward. My workmates and I had fun playing Leisure Suit Larry on it in 4 glorious shades of grey and PC speaker sound! Quote:
Very few PC-1's were made. It was designed to counter Atari's PC1, which was introduced in 1987 for $599. They needn't have bothered though because Atari's PC clones bombed. Atari PC1: The Atari IBM-compatible Quote:
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Commodore did a lot better with their PC clones than Atari did. This blows out of the water the theory that Jack would have managed it a lot better. BTW Commodore wasn't the only one to get a license to make 8088's and not make use if it. MOSTEK did the same. They didn't receive any of the assets required (schematics, chip layout etc.) to clone it. The same may have applied to Commodore. The rights may have just been so they could get another manufacturer to make the chips for them without worrying about being sued. |
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05 February 2024, 14:14 | #28 | |
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They went from Nr. 1 DRAM producer with >60% market share to almost bankruptcy in 1985, because a Japanese cartel was dumping RAM chips, forcing eventually all US RAM manufacturers out of that business... (Courts ruled the dumping was illegal and from 86 on the US put tariffs on DRAM from Japan - but it was too late by then. Jack Tramiel's Atari got involved in some illegal importing of DRAM the following years...) MOSTEK not only got a 8088 license but a general x86 license, that would have allowed them to eventually produce 286, 386, 486 - and in fact they did, but only after they were acquired by French STMicroelectronics. Cyrix CPUs up to the 386 were produced by STM, since Cyrix did not have a fab nor the rights ... MOSTEC's licenses and patents made eventually hundreds of millions for STM, which only payed $70 million for MOSTEK in 1985. MOSTEK also had a second source license for the 68000 and the Z80 by the way. If I were a time traveling billionaire I would acquire Amiga Inc. in 84, MOSTEK in 85 and Sinclair in 86 - that would be an unstoppable combination. |
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05 February 2024, 14:42 | #29 |
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05 February 2024, 15:05 | #30 |
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because Clive was desperate in 86 - it was sold to Amstrad for only £5 million (+ £10 million for outstanding contracts ...)
It was a steal - the inventory of Spectrums was worth about the same.. The Spectrum kept on selling quite well under Amstrad for a couple of years. The QL was stopped already under Clive, but an Amiga could have provided a nice upgrade path and even provide full compatibility: QDOS4Amiga Sinclair also had partnered up with Samsung in Korea for cheap production. And it had all the necessary distribution channels all over Europe. And even if the brand did not stand for high quality, at least Sinclair was known all over Europe and that would have made it much easier compared to a total newcomer in the business. |
05 February 2024, 15:44 | #31 |
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All these "what-if" threads might be useless wishful thinking, but I'm still learning a lot about the old days of the personal computer market
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05 February 2024, 22:37 | #32 |
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This is comparing apples with oranges. Tramiel would have different conditions if he stayed at Commodore. We can't draw conclusions so easily.
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05 February 2024, 22:45 | #33 | |
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Either is was cheaper anyway to buy the 8088 (and the V20 in other Commodore products) elsewhere, or acquiring a expensive license to produce it in your own fab. Acquiring a incense without being able to produce it (in quantities) and therefore buy it elsewhere, that is just wasting money. Last edited by Gorf; 05 February 2024 at 23:04. |
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05 February 2024, 22:55 | #34 | |
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The PC-1 was followed by PC-2 and by 1990 they had a whole series of PCs... PC-3, PC-4, PC-5 going up to 80386 processors ... The last model was the ABC386DXII |
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06 February 2024, 05:42 | #35 |
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06 February 2024, 06:06 | #36 | ||
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06 February 2024, 06:49 | #37 | ||
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One of the most common scrolling effects of the copper is a "tube" scroller where the bottom of the screen buffer has a negative modulo assigned by the copper to wrap the bitplane around to the beginning of the buffer and another copper instruction to restore the modulo to its previous value a pixel row lower. There will likely be additional copper instructions in between those 2 CWAIT CMOVE sequences for color changes (most likely NOT limited to vsprite color changes). This allows infinite vertical scrolling with little blitter involvement. |
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06 February 2024, 07:33 | #38 | |||
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Actually, the copper is probably too limited as concept anyhow - it was a rather simple solution for creating richer displays, a problem that is solved today by the render pipeline of the graphics card. That's a much more flexible approach. |
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06 February 2024, 08:06 | #39 | ||
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New technology is off-topic for this thread. |
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06 February 2024, 12:53 | #40 |
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Not necessarily. Being able to produce a product you then buy from a supplier has strategic advantages. You could set up your own "second source" for the part (if you can't get them any more) and you could put pressure on the supplier to provide the part cheap enough to not make you build it yourself.
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