From: Dave Ross (watsonc64@ten.tsacmoc)
Subject: Re: Why do you think...
 
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Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Date: 2004-03-17 21:20:38 PST

Dave Haynie wrote:

> For one, on the C128, the primary goal was a wicked level of
> compatibility. I don't think we hit 100%, but it was awfully good. And
> there were a number of terribly squirrely things necessary to make
> this happen (I was the guy in charge of making the expansion port
> compatible, which basically meant testing everything we could find,
> when they didn't work, finding out why, then hacking the early C128
> prototype to fix the problem). 

When Bill Herd spoke at one of the Commodore expos a few years back, he 
told us the Koala Paint story.

All you guys did was make the font prettier, and it caused an app to 
fail miserably.

Let's face it, C64 hardware & software developers used (and still do 
use) every trick in the book to make their products do what they wanted 
them to.  And, those tricks must have been a total pain in the butt for 
you guys.

 From undocumented opcodes to shadow registers, 100% C64 compatibility 
means either creating an exact clone of the 64 or using emulation.  You 
guys deserve a pat on the back for what you managed to do with the 128. 
    The Z80 bootstrap idea is kludgy but effective.

The C65 project never could have reached that level of compatibility the 
way it was designed.  There were just too many architectural 
differences.  The same goes for the Amiga.

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Message 22 in thread
From: Jim Brain (brain@jbrain.com)
Subject: Re: Why do you think...
 
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Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Date: 2004-03-16 21:40:17 PST

> Here's also something to chew on -- when you run MS-DOS programs in
> Windows 2000 or XP, you're not running on the 80x86 directly, you're
> running in an emulator. 

<popping in>

Technically, but not in the context you were earlier describing.  The 
VM86 environment is implemented in silicon...

Same with Windows 3.1 support, to the extent

I guess it depends on how you define emulation.  The Win16 subsystem is 
not really emulated, it is there, but the low level graphics and IO 
routines are replaced by "transitions" to the 32 bit layer.  So, if we 
are speaking about the core I/O routines, they are emulated, in the 
sense that the new calls have a calling convention (thunk) that makes a 
version of them appear in the old subsystem as the old calls.

> it still exists. That's the reason that MS-DOS and Windows 3.1
> programs actually ran on every version of Windows NT: MIPS, PowerPC,
> and Alpha. There's a built-in emulator. 

On the x86, it was in silicon.  On the others, yes, it was an app.

You can't _really_ have 16-bit
> stuff multitasking along with 32-bit stuff in the x86, or in MS-DOS,
> or in the PC's BIOS. Even they had to "cheat" :-)

No, but I think the original poster is stating that you can take a 20 
year old copy of MS-DOS 2.0 (or maybe 1.0), pop it into a 5.25" drive on 
a P4 (assuming you have a 5.25" drive hanging around) and get it to 
boot.  Intel has molded the IA86 architecture so that the old 8088/86 
core is still there, and the legacy ISA/IRQ stuff is still present.  Of 
course, to be fair, I think the original real mode 8086 and IRQ/ISA 
stuff is simply VHDL that gets dumped into the P4 and 
northbridge/southbridge now.

Basically, nit picking on the technical details.  The thought and 
comments are still true.  As a primary 64 user until 1992, I can concur 
with Dave's position.  I drooled over the Amiga 1000 when it was 
announced (I even received AmigaWorld for years, even though I never did 
own an Amiga).  The unit was just too expensive for me.  But, if I 
bought it, I would not have really expected 64 compatibility, any more 
than I expext my P4 to have 64 compatibility.  Sure, it would have been 
nice, but I would have simply kept the 64 running, as I do now with the 
P4 sitting here (I am not retired, just 32 (well, 33 tomorrow)).

I can't prove this, but many 64/128 users that I knew did not get an 
Amiga for 1 of 2 reasons, one was money.  The C64, going to $150.00 in

1984, was mere pocket change to the Amiga base price.  The other was the 
way CBM treated the 64/128 users.  Now, it had long been established by 
1984 that the 64 and VIC thrived due to pricing but IN SPITE of the 
marketing department at CBM.  But, the brand had zealots (I was one, I 
suppose, you tended to be a computer brnad zealot in those days). 
Iniially, the Amiga was heralded by the 64 crowd as the next stone to 
steop onto.  But, as it took time to ramp up to buy one, people put that 
in their long range plans.  CBM then started trying to entice users to 
get an Amiga by offering a (can't remember if it was $500 or $600) 
rebate if you gave them your 64.  (I think you had to turn it into a 
local dealer).  Well, given the above discussion about how a user moving 
to an Amiga would simply keep their 64 running for the older stuff, this 
idea was dumb.  Sure, a few edge folks did the swap, but many took 
offense to the idea.  (Sending in the original front page of the user 
manual or something like that would have been welcomed, but don;t ask me 
to give up my main PC without a transition period, and no one had a 
spare 64 at the time...)  That, coupled with numerous rumors about how 
CBM wanted people to move over so they could kill the 64 line just 
raised the level of frustration.  The 128 users (who as Dave points out 
had just bought their new unit a month before the 1000 debut) were hit 
especially hard.  Now, this rebate and rumor stuff didn;t happen 
overnight, it started in year 2 I think, once CBM noticed the sales of 
the Amiga and the dwindling profit on the 64/128 line...  In any case, 
by that time, the 64 had a cottage industry of its own, so many wrote 
CBM and the Amiga off (by association).  I know I did.

I don't dispute the reasons CBM had for doing these things, and maybe 
they truly did not realize the impact they would have, but the earlier 
bad marketing/support issues with this "orphan" attitude later did a lot 
of CBM fans in...

The 1000 was an extremely impressive product for its day.  The initial 
team (Chuck Peddle comes to ming) shoudl be congratulated.  We groaned 
that CBM cheapened the machine, but they were shrewd about costs, and 
that was probably the right thing to do, to get units sold.  They did 
miscalculate how gingrly to handle the 64/128 crowd as they moved on, 
and they suffered some excellent hardware and software talent (Hi Dave) 
in an environment that I think cut too many corners.

I agree that device drivers and abstraction layers make today's machines 
the upgradeable units they are.  Bare metal is great for speed, bad for 
enhancement.  Still, one needs to note that I know of NO ONE that keeps 
a 386/40 or P2 around because they like the machine.  If it offers 
utility, it stays.  If not, it either gets sent off or upgraded.  The 
quirks and specialty of the early machines is exactly why they live on. 
  As well, we now have cycles to burn (I know of no sane parental units 
that need a 2.4 GHz anything to read email and surf web...) so there is 
no awe in seeing things on the screen.  People still are in awe that a 
1MHz (or 6 MHz) machine can do IP or run a graphical OS...  And, they 
always will be. But, as Dave correctly notes, eventually, they will all 
do it via emulation.

Jim

</popping in>

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Message 23 in thread
From: Niklas Ramsberg (realbacon@hotmail.com)
Subject: Re: Why do you think...
 
View this article only
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Date: 2004-03-17 00:19:09 PST

dhaynie@jersey.net (Dave Haynie) wrote in message news:<40570f70.2516453068@news.jersey.net>...

> August 1985 vs. September 1985. No one at Amiga or C= imagined for a
> femtosecond that the Amiga was supposed to be a C64/C128 followup. It
> was to the C64 very much what the Mac was to the Apple ][... the
> future.

As one of the C64 revivalists/nostalgics I have to agree. In the 80s I
didn't expect a new computer to be compatible with an old one from the
same company. I started out with the VIC20 in 1982. When me and my
brother could afford a C64 in 1984 we sold all our VIC stuff without a
second thought. Why keep an obsolete computer when the future was
here? Same thing when the Amiga became affordable with the 500 in
1987. We never even considered the possiblity that it could have been
compatible with the 64. We wanted an Amiga so we sold our C64, 1541
drive, MPS 801 printer and all the disks. Why would we want to hang on
to all that old stuff when we had an Amiga?

To answer the original question: the reasons for me starting to play
with C64s and 128s and not as much with Amigas (though I have a few of
them too) are that they have a greater sentimental value to me,
they're easier to find at flea markets, there is (it seems) a livelier
community around them, and (this is subjective) I find them more
accessible. Something to do with not having to wait for the computer
to boot from disk and not having to use a mouse and a GUI (my Amiga
500s actually feel slower than my C128s and C64s), I think.

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Message 24 in thread
From: Dave Haynie (dhaynie@jersey.net)
Subject: Re: Why do you think...
 
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Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Date: 2004-03-17 21:07:32 PST

On 17 Mar 2004 00:19:08 -0800, realbacon@hotmail.com (Niklas Ramsberg)
wrote:

>dhaynie@jersey.net (Dave Haynie) wrote in message news:<40570f70.2516453068@news.jersey.net>...
>
>> August 1985 vs. September 1985. No one at Amiga or C= imagined for a
>> femtosecond that the Amiga was supposed to be a C64/C128 followup. It
>> was to the C64 very much what the Mac was to the Apple ][... the
>> future. 
>As one of the C64 revivalists/nostalgics I have to agree. In the 80s I
>didn't expect a new computer to be compatible with an old one from the
>same company.

And, in fact, they never were. Well, there was a level of
compatibility between some of the CBM machines, but not 100%. The C64
didn't try to run VIC-20 programs. Atari upgrades were hit and miss.
Apple did a little better with the Apple ][ series, but they were also
less aggressive on improvements. 

The C128, of course, was compatible -- actually, with both the C64 and
the old Kaypro CP/M machines to a large extent, if you want to get
technical. But this was also a different era, or at least the
beginning of one. While we were developing the C128, we saw where
other systems were going, with a real OS and all. Hell, we even sort
of had one, with GEOS on the C64 (and eventually, 128). 

>I started out with the VIC20 in 1982. When me and my
>brother could afford a C64 in 1984 we sold all our VIC stuff without a
>second thought. Why keep an obsolete computer when the future was
>here?

If you bought new, it was expensive, but eventually, it wasn't a big
price hit to upgrade, compared to Amigas, much less Macs or PCs in the
day. C= was also fairly good at keeping the peripherals compatible.
Until the Amiga, there had only been the IEEE peripherals and the
serial peripherals (the C= serial bus, of course, was basically the
IEEE bus implemented in bit-banging serial). 

>Same thing when the Amiga became affordable with the 500 in
>1987. We never even considered the possiblity that it could have been
>compatible with the 64. We wanted an Amiga so we sold our C64, 1541
>drive, MPS 801 printer and all the disks. Why would we want to hang on
>to all that old stuff when we had an Amiga?

Right. And there really was no precedence, in those days, of
compatibility with upgrades, at least not in the consumer market. So
there was no expectation. We're all used to compatible upgrades now
(even occasionally in video games!), but that was a product of a more
complex design. 

>To answer the original question: the reasons for me starting to play
>with C64s and 128s and not as much with Amigas (though I have a few of
>them too) are that they have a greater sentimental value to me,
>they're easier to find at flea markets, there is (it seems) a livelier
>community around them, and (this is subjective) I find them more
>accessible. 

I think these systems, the C64 and C128, were the last of the sort of
computer you could totally master yourself, and that is part of their
allure. I started on computers in 1973... first on a programmable HP
calculator (with core memory and a CRT). That was easy -- I learned
everything there was to learn in a week or so. So I got my Dad to hook
me up with a computer at Bell Labs, which turned out to be a fairly
serious scientific computer, but what did I know. This one was way too
complex, and the information was hard to come by. 

Some years later, my best friend bought a PET 2001, and man did I go
to town on that one. That was a computer that I could program out the
wazoo, no worries about 300 baud, thermal paper, etc. And you could
learn each and every secret about the machine, only, not in a week. So
it was challenging. That was the case with most of the systems of
those days. I used others; I still like the C= best (and not just
because my name's hidden inside one of 'em...). 

>Something to do with not having to wait for the computer
>to boot from disk and not having to use a mouse and a GUI (my Amiga
>500s actually feel slower than my C128s and C64s), I think.

And NO ONE knows everything about an Amiga. Otherwise, I never would
have had a chance becoming something of an expert on a piece or two of
it. It was cool, for users, because all thse "stuff" extended what
programmers could deliver, but it was far harder for anyone to get The
Big Picture. 




Dave Haynie       | Chief Toady, Frog Pond Media Consulting
dhaynie@jersey.net| Take Back Freedom! Bush no more in 2004!
"Deathbed Vigil" now on DVD! See http://www.frogpondmedia.com

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Message 25 in thread
From: Niklas Ramsberg (realbacon@hotmail.com)
Subject: Re: Why do you think...
 
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Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Date: 2004-03-17 00:19:28 PST

dhaynie@jersey.net (Dave Haynie) wrote in message news:<40570f70.2516453068@news.jersey.net>...

> August 1985 vs. September 1985. No one at Amiga or C= imagined for a
> femtosecond that the Amiga was supposed to be a C64/C128 followup. It
> was to the C64 very much what the Mac was to the Apple ][... the
> future.

As one of the C64 revivalists/nostalgics I have to agree. In the 80s I
didn't expect a new computer to be compatible with an old one from the
same company. I started out with the VIC20 in 1982. When me and my
brother could afford a C64 in 1984 we sold all our VIC stuff without a
second thought. Why keep an obsolete computer when the future was
here? Same thing when the Amiga became affordable with the 500 in
1987. We never even considered the possiblity that it could have been
compatible with the 64. We wanted an Amiga so we sold our C64, 1541
drive, MPS 801 printer and all the disks. Why would we want to hang on
to all that old stuff when we had an Amiga?

To answer the original question: the reasons for me starting to play
with C64s and 128s and not as much with Amigas (though I have a few of
them too) are that they have a greater sentimental value to me,
they're easier to find at flea markets, there is (it seems) a livelier
community around them, and (this is subjective) I find them more
accessible. Something to do with not having to wait for the computer
to boot from disk and not having to use a mouse and a GUI (my Amiga
500s actually feel slower than my C128s and C64s), I think.

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Message 26 in thread
From: Dave Haynie (dhaynie@jersey.net)
Subject: Re: Why do you think...
 
View this article only
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Date: 2004-03-16 06:18:51 PST

On Sun, 14 Mar 2004 09:59:36 GMT, ""Azrael" <afn04314ATafn.org>"
<"Azrael".<afn04314ATafn.org>@p0.f0.n0.z0.fidonet.org> wrote:

>In message <0043741b@elebbs.bbs>, Joona.I.Palaste@p0.f0.n0.z0.fidonet.org
>wrote: 
>> Backwards compatibility with the C64 for the Amiga is pretty much
>> impossible. T 
>I realize that it was impossible given the way in which it was designed. But
>it could have been designed in from the beginning and this was the point I
>was trying to make.

Ok... no, it couldn't have been. Period. End of story. C64
compatibility would have crippled in the Amiga in heinous ways, for
very little added value. 

There are times when it makes sense to try for backward compatibility,
and times when it doesn't. 

>Of course the Amiga wasn't designed by Commodore so that
>would never have been a consideration. It certainly would have been possible
>to do. I can run 8088 software on my P4

There is more in common between the original IBM PC and a modern PC
than between the C64 and the Amiga. And even at that, once things get
even a little complicated, what you claim isn't true. You probably
can't run most MS-DOS programs on a Windowx XP machine. Or CGA. Or
whatever that 1982-1985 PC used for sound. Stuff just isn't supported
anymore. But hey.. it'll all work in an emulator.

> and PS1 games on my PS2.

That was a design decision that probably did add complexity to the
PS2. But you're also talking about a totally different age. Sony's
making their own CPUs there, along with the graphics chips and all,
they're not using anything off-the-shelf in the PS2, other than the
Direct Rambus memories. Such things were not possible, at this level,
back in 1982-1983 (when the Amiga was started).

And even at that, it only works because of the way the PSX1 was done.
It's a game machine, and it only needs to talk to a small bit of I/O.
How would you get the unchanged C64 ROM loading programs from an Amiga
floppy or hard drive? With all the hacks, that sort of stuff never
worked very well on the C64 itself. You basically have to fool the C64
environment into thinking there's a 1541 (or something similar) there.
Especially when the C64 application launches a program on the 1541's
CPU :-). EMOULATORs. They do this perfectly, without complicating the
new thing.

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Message 27 in thread
From: Terminator (c64dungeonNOSPAM@yahoo.com)
Subject: Re: Why do you think...
 
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Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Date: 2004-03-17 23:57:25 PST

> Ok... no, it couldn't have been. Period. End of story. C64
> compatibility would have crippled in the Amiga in heinous ways, for
> very little added value.

Just to add to all the comments i read...
I think adding backwards compatibility (in theory) would have been
stupid.
Not to mention it would piss off the amiga users...  Heck why include
any C64 compatibility
at risk of reliable OS when C64s sold for next to nothing? ($400 i'm
gonna guess in 1984??)
You could have bought amiga and c64.

To those critical of AMIGA (if any):
As for those who are still to "cheap" to get into amiga...  Get it and
you won't regret it.
Quit whining about low prices - everyday i meet people that say that.

i got my Amiga 2000, with picasso 2, GVP 68040, flickerfixer, 16 mb RAM
(only but thats enough)OS 3.1/3.9 with multiface card and network card,
SCSI cdrom and zip drive and man i'm impressed.  In fact i'm ordering
the Amiga One and look forward to making it my flagship of all my
computers.  I won't need P4 or any crap that microsoft feeds down my
throat (yeah i diss that OS which i used from 1991 till 2003 - i still
use it at work/university).
It crushes, its unreliable  (even XP/2000) and its nothing like LINUX or
Amiga OS (i might add Mac OS X is neat too)

With Linux PPC, Morph OS, MOL (mac on linux) and Amiga OS 4 (no its not
vaporware) we commodore and amiga users should unite and get what has
been in our roots from start.  Thats Amiga One.
Those seriously interested should contact me. (i'm considering building
enough of these systems if there's sufficient interest: www.nishtek.com
- cbits at  ebay dot com)

i had 386 DX 40 (1991), 486 DX100, P166, and AMD 500 mhz and been cursed
by the CISC curse...  i should have stuck with amiga instead of moving
to pceee.  Now i'm going back to roots.  RISC all the way.  
For starters try WINUAE or UAE for linux and install workbench 3.1 (3.9
works tooo!!!!) and you will understand what you mean.  Cloanto provides
a lot of this software too.  I will post screenshots if anyone
requests...
AMIGA FOREVER now and future.  People convert.  :-)
G3/G4 PPC :-)

> even a little complicated, what you claim isn't true. You probably
> can't run most MS-DOS programs on a Windowx XP machine. Or CGA. Or

In fact running any apps that were made for 386 is a bitch under win