Re: The Apple ][ was cool!

[Jason <tmr@c64.org>]

william strutts:
> Rubywand, I think you hit it on the head there.  It was cheaper.  In
> Flint, they used to give you a Commodore when you made major
> purchases.  Come on in and buy this refrigerator and you will
>receive the Commodore 64 FREE.  Or if you paid for it, it cost
>between $49 to $99.  Compare that to the hundreds or thousands
>an Apple II user paid for hardware.

That's not really the case outside the US, the C64 was one of the more
expensive options for a fair few countries but still held it's own in
sales.  The only time the C64 was around the ninety nine pound mark
(technology tends to get priced at a direct $1 to one pound ratio) was
the Terminator 2 pack, the last produced and it wasn't supplied with a
datasette.

> The Disk Drives which were as slow as their Casssette drives was the
> major reason I didn't get one.  I mean it took my friend eight or nine
> minutes to load games like Kareteka. He eventually bought that
> accellerator you speak of but it still was slow compared to computers
> with real disk controllers like the Apple II.

It's not really the controller at fault, more the speed limit imposed...

> I think the reason that they were slow was that the disk drives
> connected to the Commodore serial port.  I don't think the baud rate
> could have been that good or it would have been faster.

The default baud rate was terrible, a hang-over from where the standard
originated (the VIC20 and it's a long story as to why it's so naff).

> Was the accellerator a faster serial port card?

Nope, it just cranked up the baud for the stock one - the Breadbin's top
speed through that port is way higher than the default, 25x faster if
you turn the screen off to get the timing right and I have some very
reliable 10x and 5x (with IRQs running during disk operations) loaders.
-- 
Jason  =-)
     _______________________________________________________________________
TMR /     /     /     /  /     /     /                                     /\
   /  /__/  /  /  /__/  /  /  /  /__/         Email: tmr@c64.org          / /
  /  /\_/  /  /__   /  /  /  /  __//           TMR_C0S on IRC            / /
 /  /__/  /  /  /  /  /  /  /  /  /    http://www.tmr.cosine.org.uk     / /
/_____/_____/_____/__/__/__/_____/_____________________________________/ /
\_____\_____\_____\__\__\__\_____\_____________________________________\/