exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Conversely, with the high energy barrier to annoying your parents it would have stopped a lot of people experimenting.

Being able to quickly and easily make annoying noises and draw things on the screen would be a hook to go further and then learn assembly language to make your programs run faster. c.f. the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro.

stephen_usher wrote: 06 Mar 2022 10:38 Conversely, with the high energy barrier to annoying your parents it would have stopped a lot of people experimenting.

Being able to quickly and easily make annoying noises and draw things on the screen would be a hook to go further and then learn assembly language to make your programs run faster. c.f. the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro.

Of course, the BBC Micro had a lovely BASIC. But if you had a C64 and no money for any enhancements (a situation I found myself in at 13 :lol: ) you would, I guess, pick the better option; ASM. i.e. if both were going to be hard work to learn, go for the language with the better results.

I believe asm on a 6510 8 bit CPU is a bit easier/simpler (even though maybe not as elegant) than the later 68k architecture to learn...especially if you had that book I mentioned earlier. :)

But I do see your point. I guess we just had different circumstances. However much I would have liked the BBC, I think the retail price was (IIRC) ~£500+ back in 84-85; far beyond anything I would have been allowed at that time, being just starting secondary school. Plus I was too naiive at the time to try to play the 'its for education' card! :lol:

stephen_usher wrote: 05 Mar 2022 18:10 My goodness. Isn't C64 BASIC rudimentary?

No sound commands and no line drawing commands. You have to manually POKE stuff into memory just to do basic stuff. How did they manage to get away with that and selling so many? I guess no-one programmed in BASIC.

I think although on the face of things this was a negative, it probably was a positive as it forced so many people into learning 6502 assembly/ML.

Just me own perspective anyhow.

Oh, back in the early/mid 80s I could never have afforded a Beeb. But the ZX Spectrum, although not as loud, could quickly and easily be made to draw things and make sounds in an intuitive way. The push to go further with assembly was, of course, the speed of BASIC. This was helped by having the Z80 mnemonics and values at the back of the manual along with the memory map etc. which tantalised and showed there was something more.

There was such a lower energy barrier to entry level programming on the speccy than the C64 that it allowed people to get a taster for programming as they could do "interesting" things easily, if slowly. Not having native basic graphics and sound commands, even though the POKEs are documented in the manual, seems short signed.

Remember, Commodore UK was counting upon the C64 as a Spectrum killer in late 82, after they'd abandoned the VIC=30 and VIC=10. They had to rapidly reduce the price of the C64 in the UK to just get traction.

The argument that making things hard pushed people to program in assembler is only partially true. It probably put off some people who would have been truly talented because it just seemed to steep a mountain to climb at the time. Those who did continue on often have survivors' bias as no-one saw those who gave up prematurely.

My Kung-Fu Flash has arrived... I picked the random colour case and no USB options from TFW8b.com, so I wonder what colour I got...


And it's green!

stephen_usher wrote: 08 Mar 2022 15:21 My Kung-Fu Flash has arrived... I picked the random colour case and no USB options from TFW8b.com, so I wonder what colour I got...


And it's green!

Nice!!!

We of course need a full demonstration and overview with pictures :)

Hehe. OK. I'll have to download some cart images (and possibly D64s). The supplied (16GB!) SD card is empty.

stephen_usher wrote: 08 Mar 2022 15:27 The supplied (16GB!) SD card is empty.

How rude!!!

:dizzy:

I'll PM you a useful link @stephen_usher

PhilC wrote: 08 Mar 2022 15:42 I'll PM you a useful link @stephen_usher

:dualthumbup: