Re: If you could design a $300 homecomputer today, what would you

[TJ Edmister <damage_x@hotmail.com>]

> On 18 Jul 2001 18:41:16 GMT, Byron Desnoyers Winmill wrote:
>
> > helgetu (h.schaefer@tu-bs.de) wrote:
> >: What might be the purpose of this $300 machine?
> >
> > It was originally targeted for computer hobbiests.  Given the groups we are
> > posting to, it would share some of the characteristics of the 8 and 16 bit
> > machines of the 80's, or would suit the tastes of the current users of
> > these machines.
> >
> > I was thinking of something easy enough for an amateur to understand the
> > electronics, and low level programmaming of the device.  (My view is that
> > modern machines are too complex and too poorly documented to fit this
> > market.)
> >

This right here is what I am thinking. A lot of other posts in this thread have
talked about PC components. Come on people! PCs are no fun! We all like our
obsolete computers (whether you consider them obsolete or not, I personally
couldn't find anything useful to do on my Atari if I tried) right? We just want
something a little more powerful so we can do all the things we need to do and
throw out those stupid PCs which are just a bunch of parts sloppily thrown
together. Even if there were an OS for PC that we liked it wouldn't matter much
because PC hardware just sucks. Maybe you don't agree but this is certainly my
opinion. I'm an assembly language person and I find C++ (the language that
"everyone" uses now) to be completely unnatural. It isn't practical to program PCs
in assembler because there is so much different hardware (can't find programming
info for most of it either) and because most of it looks like it was designed by
crazy people.

Sooo... I use my PCs for internet access, for games (just emulators and Doom
network games actually), for playing music, the occasional school assignment, and
for programming (for non-PC systems of course, like the Turbo Grafx 16 for which
I've written half of an RPG in Hu6280 (like a 6502) assembly). One of the many
things I like about my Atari is the fact the motherboard is not too dense, I can
go in and unsolder stuff and solder other stuff on. There is no way to do that
with a PC motherboard (at least on anything newer than a 286) because of all those
tiny little pins on the chips and the four-layer construction. Taking all of this
into account, my system would look like this:

1. nice, simple CPU (since I'm a fan of the 6502 I'd use one of those great
Western Design Center 65816's. one of those eZ80s that I've heard about would be
good I guess. 80x86 chips are out of the question of course), with a clock speed
in the double digits (decimal digits, not hex :))

2. 2 MB or so of RAM would be fine for what I'm doing

3. A cool video chip like old computers had, that means something other than just
a frame buffer and a DAC, something with sprites and layers and maybe polygons. I
would like something with 256 colors at 640x480  (the V9990 chip used in the 3DO
would be great, the chips from the later MSX computers would be OK)

4. A likewise sound chip, something with 16-bit stereo PCM but also with some good
old FM channels or square waves or something

5. an EIDE interface

6. built-in ethernet

7. some REAL joystick ports (the kind where you read a register and each button is
represented by a bit)

8. expansion slots

9. An OS which isn't bloated and slow, which includes a command line interface,
and which isn't designed to protect idiot users from themselves

Perhaps within the next year or two, when I have some money and some time, I'll
build something out of a 65816 development board. Then again, I might spend all my
money on mods/paint for my BMW (which is around the same age as my Atari 8-bitter
of course).

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