Re: Apple II vs Atari 800

[Payton Byrd <plbyrd@gmail.com>]

On Apr 15, 2:33 pm, "Ensor" <none@localhost> wrote:
> Don't forget, it was some 64 times faster than the CBM serial bus which ran
> at what, 300bps?

That's just plain silly.  Even the stock IEC speed was much faster
than 300bps.  When equipped with JiffyDOS the 1541 is capable of
speeds equivalent to the Apple II using ProDOS.  With a good protocol
such as JiffyDOS, the IEC bus was not the bottleneck, the drive was.
The 1541 also used a 2mhz 6502 which was very well suited for pulling
data from the drive as fast as the drive could read it, once the IEC
protocol problems were solved it was an extremely fast and effective
drive.

>
>   >....the need for a DOS in the Atari's RAM....
>
> Which to my mind (and those of the designers of the vast majority of
> computers) is a great ADVANTAGE.

Since the Commodore has been thrown into this discussion by others, I
guess it's fair to point out that Commodore gave you the best of both
worlds: a complete DOS in ROM that is shadowed in RAM (if wanted) as
well as the ability to completely replace the DOS in both the computer
and peripherals if wanted (such as for JiffyDOS).