Pushing the limits of original 8bit computers with modern programming techniques

[BrianHG]

We began a 32bit video card project with RCS management.  At this time, the SoundBlaster 16 came out with CD quality audio and we saw data sheets for the next generation of GPUs from S3 and Trident (bought/became Nvidia) with their geometry 2D and 3D capabilities as I clearly remmeber being told and asking WTF are Z-buffers.  Most of the Amiga blitter functions could be emulated / translated while tons of new graphics functions the Amiga couldn't dream of were only a few years away.  The Amiga OS was lean, memory efficient and had a community of fans, and if Commodore listened to us, their OS would have run circles around Windows at the time with X86 just beginning to pass 50MHz.  Commodore didn't have a clue AGP and 75-125 Mhz CPUs were coming which would trample their hardware, albeit a more expensive in the beginning, but for how long?

VLB and soon after PCI provided a huge increase in video performance a few years before AGP.

I meant PCI, not AGP.  My mistake.  AGP was much later.  Also, I totally forgot about VLB, I mean, I heard it mentioned once or twice but never considered it anything special.

[Canis Dirus Leidy]

Talking about "8-bit computer limits". Review of software for ATM-turbo (ZX Spectum enhanced clone):

[BrianHG]

Here is what a Commodore Pet can do:



Though, it's not a game...

[Bruce Abbott]

The Amiga OS was lean, memory efficient and had a community of fans, and if Commodore listened to us, their OS would have run circles around Windows at the time with X86 just beginning to pass 50MHz.

Amiga OS did run circles around Windows at the time, except in a few critical areas. But even if it was better in every way it wouldn't have helped. The Amiga's fate was already sealed on August 12, 1981 when IBM launched the PC.   

Commodore didn't have a clue AGP and 75-125 Mhz CPUs were coming which would trample their hardware

Commodore declared bankruptcy on May 6, 1994, essentially freezing development of the Amiga at that point. And a good thing it was too, because the next generation would be incompatible and vastly more complex.

It always annoyed me that just as I got familiar with a particular platform and started to push the limits a new one would come out that made all my efforts redundant. Over the years I sold, gave away or trashed  most of my earlier computers as I upgraded, but I kept the A1200 because it was such a joy to use that I couldn't bear to part with it. But it got little use until a few years ago when I was goaded into getting it online again - by people on this very forum who accused me of being a 'criminal' for using the 'insecure' Windows XP.

Recent developments for the Amiga have been amazing. One big reason for that is cheap powerful PCs, which make development much easier for the hobbyist. 'Back in the day' sophisticated hardware was much more difficult and expensive to produce, and few of us could afford a high-end PC with cross-compiler etc. for software development. Another problem was the breakneck rate of change in the computer industry, which meant you were always looking toward the future and often didn't have time to do a proper job.

Now that we don't have to compete with the latest and greatest we can take our time to really push the limits of these retro computers, so they are starting to reach their full potential. For example I developed an an expansion for the Mattel Aquarius that replaces its bulky 'Mini Expander' with a unit that fits inside the machine and includes a USB port, extra RAM and a ROM emulator. This would have very difficult to do back in the 90s. Today, with excellent freeware PCB design software, cheap professional quality PCB manufacturing, fast macro assembler and an emulator, it was a fun project ('back in the day' I would have had to use the actual Aquarius for much of this, which would be been a pain since it is one the least user-friendly machines of that era). I also completed a couple of software projects for the Amstrad CPC, again using an emulator which made development a breeze.

My Amiga 1200 is powerful enough (with 50MHz 030 and 32MB Fast RAM) that I can enjoy developing software directly on it - helped by its excellent multitasking. The PC is still useful here though for doing stuff the Amiga would struggle with such as viewing pdf files and software repositories on github, printing to modern inkjet printer etc. PCs can also do stuff like compressing files using algorithms that would be way too slow on the Amiga but extract quickly on a stock A500, and creating high quality optimized images and video that would take far too long to render on the Amiga. With UAE you can safely test your software on various configurations, and track down bugs at the 'hardware' level with cycle-accurate emulation.         
         
 
 
     

[rsjsouza]

We began a 32bit video card project with RCS management.  At this time, the SoundBlaster 16 came out with CD quality audio and we saw data sheets for the next generation of GPUs from S3 and Trident (bought/became Nvidia) with their geometry 2D and 3D capabilities as I clearly remmeber being told and asking WTF are Z-buffers.  Most of the Amiga blitter functions could be emulated / translated while tons of new graphics functions the Amiga couldn't dream of were only a few years away.  The Amiga OS was lean, memory efficient and had a community of fans, and if Commodore listened to us, their OS would have run circles around Windows at the time with X86 just beginning to pass 50MHz.  Commodore didn't have a clue AGP and 75-125 Mhz CPUs were coming which would trample their hardware, albeit a more expensive in the beginning, but for how long?

VLB and soon after PCI provided a huge increase in video performance a few years before AGP.

I meant PCI, not AGP.  My mistake.  AGP was much later.  Also, I totally forgot about VLB, I mean, I heard it mentioned once or twice but never considered it anything special.

Despite quite cumbersome mechanically, VLB was what created the thirst of the PC users/enthusiasts to see beyond their ISA bus and the expensive ATI All-in-Wonders, Video7s, etc. I remember very well how such video cards became instantly obsolete by several somewhat "off-brands" of the time. Then VLB moved to the IDE/SCSI controller, which immediately killed those ISAs as well.

The jump from VLB to PCI w.r.t. performance was not as perceptible as the jump from ISA to VLB.

[Zero999]

The Amiga's fate was already sealed on August 12, 1981 when IBM launched the PC.

What makes you think that? The IBM PC was not designed for graphics and performed poorly at gaming compared to hardware of a similar price. The CGA graphics card lacked hardware sprites and scrolling.

[David Hess]

The Amiga's fate was already sealed on August 12, 1981 when IBM launched the PC.

What makes you think that? The IBM PC was not designed for graphics and performed poorly at gaming compared to hardware of a similar price. The CGA graphics card lacked hardware sprites and scrolling.

The most successful systems at the time included card based expansion, which the Amiga lacked until 8 years after the Apple 2, and 4 years after the IBM PC.

[Kleinstein]

The Amiga1000 from the start included to option for expansion. It just got a little tricky with more than 1 card. However with all the basic functions on board, there was no need for an expansion card in most cases.  The original IBM PC needed extra cards for the floppy controller, Printer and usually RAM expansion - so not sure they had more than 1 free slot after that.

The big problem with the Amiga system was that the OS was kind of hard wired to the graphics, that made is very hard to get a different graphis. At the start the graphics was relatively good ( the Mac was still monochrome and many PCs too).  The later versions did a little upgrade (more colors), but it was still limited and fell way behind the VGA graphics. It was only later (~1994)  that really useful graphcs cards come out and even these still had compatibilty problems, as much of the SW was writtlen with the original graphics in mind and the OS handled graphics different than most others:  Colors were handled with separate bit planes  and not  1 byte or 3 consecutuve bytes per pixel.  This was OK and good with low color depth, like 4 or 16 colors, but got stupid with 256 or more colors.

[Zero999]

The Amiga1000 from the start included to option for expansion. It just got a little tricky with more than 1 card. However with all the basic functions on board, there was no need for an expansion card in most cases.  The original IBM PC needed extra cards for the floppy controller, Printer and usually RAM expansion - so not sure they had more than 1 free slot after that.

The big problem with the Amiga system was that the OS was kind of hard wired to the graphics, that made is very hard to get a different graphis. At the start the graphics was relatively good ( the Mac was still monochrome and many PCs too).  The later versions did a little upgrade (more colors), but it was still limited and fell way behind the VGA graphics. It was only later (~1994)  that really useful graphcs cards come out and even these still had compatibilty problems, as much of the SW was writtlen with the original graphics in mind and the OS handled graphics different than most others:  Colors were handled with separate bit planes  and not  1 byte or 3 consecutuve bytes per pixel.  This was OK and good with low color depth, like 4 or 16 colors, but got stupid with 256 or more colors.

I would say the Amiga 500 had better graphics, than the PCs with a VGA card at the time. It's true the VGA had more colours, but the Amiga had hardware acceleration which meant the CPU didn't have to work so hard.

[David Hess]

The Amiga1000 from the start included to option for expansion. It just got a little tricky with more than 1 card. However with all the basic functions on board, there was no need for an expansion card in most cases.  The original IBM PC needed extra cards for the floppy controller, Printer and usually RAM expansion - so not sure they had more than 1 free slot after that.

That is the same argument made by all of the other systems of that time which lacked card cage type expansion, especially the TI99/4A.  Even Apple relented and eventually released a Macintosh with expansion.  The commercially successful systems from that time are the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh, and Apple almost did not make it.

Was there some other reason that none of the other systems became the future standard?

[Alex Eisenhut]

I humbly suggest that GEOS already pushed the limits of the C64 back in the '80s. With other '80s Commodore goodies like the 1581 3.5" floppy, 1764 256K RAM expansion, and 1351 proportional mouse it made the 64 into a Mac-Lite.

https://monochromeeffect.org/wp/en/2018/05/19/305/

OK OK that's a 128, still an 8 bitter!

[m k]

The Amiga1000 from the start included to option for expansion. It just got a little tricky with more than 1 card. However with all the basic functions on board, there was no need for an expansion card in most cases.  The original IBM PC needed extra cards for the floppy controller, Printer and usually RAM expansion - so not sure they had more than 1 free slot after that.

That is the same argument made by all of the other systems of that time which lacked card cage type expansion, especially the TI99/4A.  Even Apple relented and eventually released a Macintosh with expansion.  The commercially successful systems from that time are the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh, and Apple almost did not make it.

Was there some other reason that none of the other systems became the future standard?

I'd say that the primary reason was a wrong market segment, or missing pro segment.
IBM PC was a general number crunching thing and Apple found a publishing segment.
Animation was what Amiga world tried later but it was sort of officially unsupported event, and pretty small segment.

Now it's pretty obvious that special stuff can survive with higher prices but minimal volume must be reached.
Gaming have lifted some unusual or atypical programming areas onto their own feet, like landscapists.

[Kleinstein]

With computers the more common systems have an inherent advantage of good software choices, available preriphery and more people knowing how to use it. So it is natural that there are only a few systems to really do well, even if others are from the technical side better.

The main advantage of the IBM PC was the brand IBM behind it and available periphery and later the software side. It was fortuous that the graphics was upgradable seprate from the rest of the system. So the graphis could get imporved while still keeping the old DOS compatibility.
The Amiga lacked a good flicker free graphics and was thus very limited for professional use (a few exceptions for video) - it just took too long to change this.