Re: The Apple ][ was cool!

["william strutts" <wrstrutts1@nospam.home.com>]

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"Jason" <tmr@c64.org> wrote in message
GyMyO1BEQGV7EwfK@cosine.demon.co.uk">news:GyMyO1BEQGV7EwfK@cosine.demon.co.uk...

> 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.

Really.  They were giving them away at near cost in the US.

> 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).

What was the baud rate??? 300?

> > 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.

That reminds me of a trick I used to do in Visual Basic in Excel 5
to make it recalc the spreadsheet faster.  I would turn the screen
off and let it run.  When it recalced, I would turn it back on.  It
gave me a 10 fold increase in speed.  I could do something in a
couple of minutes versus 20-30 minutes.
--
William R. Strutts - wrstrutts1@nospam.home.com - Whatever!

C'est moi!  http://www.facelink.com/wrstrutts

Just hacking away...

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