Re: General public machines (Was: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[allison]

On 12/23/2016 02:30 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
>
>> At the time, I was in my (almost) young teens - and at least in the
>> circles
>> I traveled, the TRS-80 / Osborne and Kaypro were viewed as boring,
>> stodgy
>> machines without any redeeming entertainment qualities - no color
>> graphics,
>> no sprites, poor or nearly non-existent audio, expensive joysticks
>> and so
>> on.
>
> Boring, certainly.
> Not sure if it was sophisticated enough to be stodgy.
>
As Z80 machnes of the day the Kaypro was meant for work and screen games
like Adventure
played well on it as it was responsive.

But there was always a divide between games/graphics/sound and those
with good text terminal.

An example of oddballs was S100 Cromemco with a dazzler and terminal board .

>> The ability of the machines to serve multiple roles - for both 'serious'
>> work and video gaming / music - was a huge selling point in the early
>> days.
>> This is one of the reasons that the C64 was so massively successful - it
>> pretty much had something for everyone, as the saying goes. That, and
>> the
>> price of the base machine was just amazingly low for the time. Ditto for
>> the VIC-20.
>
> Ah! Therein lies the rub.
> The TRS-80 wasn't any good for some things.  As a primarily
> entertainment machine, it was rubbish.  No color, no sound, no
> joysticks, grossly inadequate graphics.   (some of which could be
> worked around)
> If you were looking for an games/entertainment machine, it would be
> outside of the consideration set.  Of the set of people looking for a
> games/entertainment machine, "NOBODY has one."
> Best game on it was "Adventure". Best graphics was Lim's "Android Nim"
>
Or maybe Startrek.

TRS80 was one of the "packaged systems" aka allinone that tried to be
broad and mostly was limited
at all.

>
> On the other side of the market, the TRS-80 did not have 80x24 text,
> and had a memory map that was incompatible with CP/M.   Parasitic
> Engineering (Howard Fullmer!) and Omikron, both made [somewhat
> expensive] sandwich boards for the TRS-80 to change that memory map,
> and to add 8" SSSD drive support.
>
> Of the original "Big three" (Radio Shack, Apple, Commodore), who came
> first, Apple was the only one with entertainment capabilities, but
> they priced it out of your market.
>
All of them were trying to find a market and it was a market that was
changing at the same time.

> Later, the Commodore Vic-20 and C64 were aimed at your segment of the
> market, and priced appropriately.
> Radio Shack's later "Color Computer" (6809!) was far more appropriate,
> but it also suffered some crippling design decision errors.
>
And it was late to the game.  Cool machine but it misses again.

>
>> the very early 1980s, when I was about 15, my father decided to buy a
>> home computer. (Before that, he had a TI Silent 700 that dialed up to a
>> Univac mainframe.) I remember him doing hours of research comparing the
>> Apple II, the TRS-80, the Commodore PET, and probably some of the S-100
>> machines. He eventually chose the Heathkit H89. I^@^Yll have to ask him
>> exactly why, but I know that he^@^Ys always liked good-quality tools,
>> and the combination of the Heathkit design, the Z80 CPU, and CP/M seemed
>> like the best combination of tools at the time.
>
> Apple II, TRS-80, and Commodore PET didn't have 80x24 screen text!
> THAT was why my cousin rejected them and went with a Heathkit.
> If you want to be able to use it as a terminal, . . .
>
Yes the H89, DEC Vt180 (costly though), and many others had decent terminal,
Good processing and disks.  Games not so much.

> Later, add-on cards for Apple2 came out for 80 column.
> TRS-80 didn't get 80x24 text until the Model 4 (which is what the
> Model 3 should have been)   (Model 2/12/16 was never intended to be a
> "Home" computer, and was marketed for small business)
>
The TRS80 later mods were late enough to loose presence. Apple With
80x24 helped it firm up
its footing as a useful business machine.

I still go back at if the desired software was available then the
machine was suitable for the
Commies and Apples that included games.  The other is  was Editors, high
level languages,
spreadsheet, and database, that group favored machine with z80, 6502 and
good 80x24 screens.
That last group barely included TRS80, Apple with Softcard and all was
in, then there were the
multitude of other z80 systems that nearly all ran CP/M even if they
came with something else.

If I had to call a year 1980 was a breakpoint for systems. I will call
it the year of rising expectations.
It bridges from early 1979 though 1980 in a broad way.If you ran a
widely used OS your had
a good start.  If you ran the popular and desired software you had a
good start.  The number of
CPUs in the running were few and usually Z80 or 6502.  The 16biters were
being talked about
as the next thing but not really there yet.   Then it was more about
what you did and how well. 
An example of that is 80x24, if you had sparklies and 

Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Eric Smith]

On Sat, Dec 24, 2016 at 8:10 AM, Peter Corlett  wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 23, 2016 at 04:14:28AM -0700, Eric Smith wrote:
> > The same trick works perfectly well with a 6502, and in fact was
> invented by
> > Don Lancaster using a 6502 years before the ZX80 was designed. That
> doesn't
> > really explain the choice of the Z80.
>
> Interesting. I was of the understanding that the Z80 video hack didn't
> work on
> the 6502 due to the latter being slightly pipelined and so the instruction
> fetch cycle couldn't be abused in the same way. Perhaps Sinclair couldn't
> get
> it to work on some dodgy 6502s that fell off the back of a lorry.
>

The details aren't identical, but on the 6502 it's abusing the fetch of
both an opcode and an immediate operand.

If there was nothing in it, then it's a mystery why the Z80 was selected.
> However, Sinclair wasn't exactly one for making rational design decisions
> based
> on technical merit or industry best practice.


As much as I like the 6502, the Z80 is better in some ways, particularly if
you want to do a lot of 16-bit add and subtract.

Re: General public machines (Was: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[geneb]

On Fri, 23 Dec 2016, Cameron Kaiser wrote:


Commodore's Z80 in the 128 was due to unnecessary fear that they might lose
market share to CP/M, when IBM should have been their big worry.
I don't know all of the details of the ST/Amiga technology swap, but BOTH
were too late, if the primary goal was competing with IBM.


That might be Commodore marketing - Bil Herd said that he threw the Z-80
into the design essentially because he could. :)  He's done a few talks on
how the C-128 came about.  It's pretty interesting.


It also saved the 100% compatibility problem (in this case, with Commodore's
CP/M cartridge by designing it onto the board, and with Commodore Magic Voice,
which fouled banking by altering the memory configuration lines in realtime:
the 8502 would crash, but the Z80's activity would not be detected and the
C= key could be checked to force a C64 memory map).


Yep.  The group actively kept one step ahead of management to keep them 
from screwing with the project too badly. :)


g.

--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby.  Geeks collect hobbies.

ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
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Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Peter Corlett]

On Fri, Dec 23, 2016 at 04:14:28AM -0700, Eric Smith wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 23, 2016 at 3:59 AM, Peter Corlett  wrote:
>> People who know Uncle Clive's unwillingness to spend a penny more than he
>> has to on bulding computers may wonder why they selected the relatively
>> expensive Z80 over the 6502, but it was because they managed to trick the
>> Z80's address-fetcting and instruction decoding cycle into generating video
>> on the ZX80 and ZX81, and thus saved more money elsewhere.
> The same trick works perfectly well with a 6502, and in fact was invented by
> Don Lancaster using a 6502 years before the ZX80 was designed. That doesn't
> really explain the choice of the Z80.

Interesting. I was of the understanding that the Z80 video hack didn't work on
the 6502 due to the latter being slightly pipelined and so the instruction
fetch cycle couldn't be abused in the same way. Perhaps Sinclair couldn't get
it to work on some dodgy 6502s that fell off the back of a lorry.

> Also, by the time the ZX80 was introduced, both the Z80 and 6502 were
> basically dirt cheap. Any premium price the Z80 had once commanded had long
> since evaporated.

If there was nothing in it, then it's a mystery why the Z80 was selected.
However, Sinclair wasn't exactly one for making rational design decisions based
on technical merit or industry best practice...

Re: General public machines (Was: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Liam Proven]

On 24 December 2016 at 05:02, geneb  wrote:
>> Commodore's Z80 in the 128 was due to unnecessary fear that they might
>> lose market share to CP/M, when IBM should have been their big worry.
>> I don't know all of the details of the ST/Amiga technology swap, but BOTH
>> were too late, if the primary goal was competing with IBM.
>>
> That might be Commodore marketing - Bil Herd said that he threw the Z-80
> into the design essentially because he could. :)  He's done a few talks on
> how the C-128 came about.  It's pretty interesting.

Seconded. I don't think CBM was scared of CP/M at all. I think it
maybe thought it was a handy extra.

Some of the story is here:

https://hackaday.com/2013/12/09/guest-post-the-real-story-of-hacking-together-the-commodore-c128/

I am somewhat irritated by Bil Herd's claim that it was the last 8-bit computer.

The MSX TurboR was arguably the greatest Z80 home computer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX#MSX_turboR

It came out in 1990:
https://www.msx.org/wiki/MSX_Turbo_R

But its R800 CPU is arguably 16-bit although MSX-DOS doesn't use that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R800_(CPU)

It is in part based on the Z800:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog_Z800

The SAM Coupé was pure Z80 machine, a lovely British design, a
much-enhanced ZX Spectrum 48, and it came out in 1989 and went on sale
in 1990:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAM_Coup%C3%A9

The Acorn BBC Master wasn't all-new but neither was the C128. The
Master was an elegant upgrade to the BBC Micro, and was released in
1986:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Master

I'm sure there are many more.

So no, Herd is definitely wrong. The C128 was _not_ the last new 8-bit
computer. It wasn't even the last new Commodore 8-bit computer -- the
C65 was arguably that (and a more logical successor to the C64, IMHO).


-- 
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Re: General public machines (Was: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Cameron Kaiser]

> > Commodore's Z80 in the 128 was due to unnecessary fear that they might lose 
> > market share to CP/M, when IBM should have been their big worry.
> > I don't know all of the details of the ST/Amiga technology swap, but BOTH 
> > were too late, if the primary goal was competing with IBM.
>
> That might be Commodore marketing - Bil Herd said that he threw the Z-80 
> into the design essentially because he could. :)  He's done a few talks on 
> how the C-128 came about.  It's pretty interesting.

It also saved the 100% compatibility problem (in this case, with Commodore's
CP/M cartridge by designing it onto the board, and with Commodore Magic Voice,
which fouled banking by altering the memory configuration lines in realtime:
the 8502 would crash, but the Z80's activity would not be detected and the
C= key could be checked to force a C64 memory map).

-- 
 personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckai...@floodgap.com
-- FORTUNE: You learn from your mistakes. Today will be very educational. -

Re: General public machines (Was: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[geneb]

Commodore's Z80 in the 128 was due to unnecessary fear that they might lose 
market share to CP/M, when IBM should have been their big worry.
I don't know all of the details of the ST/Amiga technology swap, but BOTH 
were too late, if the primary goal was competing with IBM.


That might be Commodore marketing - Bil Herd said that he threw the Z-80 
into the design essentially because he could. :)  He's done a few talks on 
how the C-128 came about.  It's pretty interesting.


g.


--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby.  Geeks collect hobbies.

ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!

Re: General public machines (Was: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Terry Stewart]

On 24/12/2016 8:32 AM, "Fred Cisin"  wrote:

NO source is completely reliable.
>>
> On Fri, 23 Dec 2016, allison wrote:

Most number and data I see to day in the popular media is just plain wrong.
>

particularly on anything like this.

Surely, there must have been some [relatively] objective compilations of
the sales data?


Interesting discussion. Of course sales was only part-reflective of price
point and technical capability/suitabily for a particular market segment.
There was also marketing and distribution.  Get all four right and sales
boom.  Commodore seems to have excelled at all four by the time the C64
came along.

Personally I never saw the C64 as one that was suitable for serious work
however.

When it came out I was using my own disk based TRS80 M1 clone (System 80)
for writing my graduate thesis.   I was also president for a local club so
kept membership records.  I'd also computerised our home finances and used
to write my own statistic programs for the research work I was doing.

The System 80 was great for these non-gaming productivity things.

I had the opportunity to try the C64 when it came out.   The high set
keyboard. ..the mushy keysthe slow disk drivethe 40 column
screenthe limited BASIC..the lack of a decent OS..the weird (to me)
character set. I did not feel envious at all and would not have swapped my
machine for a C64 given what I was doing.

If I was a kid or gamer however the C64 would have won hands down!

In the early 1980s period it was only the Apple II line that were true
general purpose machines IMO. They could serve small business,  the home
professional (the kind of stuff I was doing ) and the kids/gamers.   The
flexibility was due to those slots and the open architecture.

You paid through the nose for Apples though, at least here in NZ.

One could argue that the BBC and Atari 800 line had similar general purpose
capability but their pricing and market positioning kept them out of the
small business market.


Terry (Tez)

Re: General public machines (Was: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Fred Cisin]

NO source is completely reliable.

On Fri, 23 Dec 2016, allison wrote:


Most number and data I see to day in the popular media is just plain wrong.


particularly on anything like this.

Surely, there must have been some [relatively] objective compilations of 
the sales data?

Re: General public machines (Was: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Eric Smith]

On Fri, Dec 23, 2016 at 12:30 PM, Fred Cisin  wrote:

> Of the original "Big three" (Radio Shack, Apple, Commodore), who came
> first, Apple was the only one with entertainment capabilities, but they
> priced it out of your market.
>

I'm not sure about that. My friends and I entertained ourselves quite a lot
with the Commodore PET 2001.  :-)

Re: BBC Micro - was Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Guy Dawson]

and Snapper *IS* Pac Man

On 23 December 2016 at 21:10, Adrian Graham 
wrote:

> On 23/12/2016 17:00, "Liam Proven"  wrote:
>
> >> The Acornsoft games were very high quality (hard to distinguish from
> their
> >> arcade inspirations).
> >>
> >> But I was mostly interested in programming, so I loved our BBC Micro
> Model B
> >> to bits. A far superior machine to the Apple and Commodores.
> >
> > I agree that it was a far superior machine. It had its limitations --
> > shortage of RAM, notably -- but it was a great design.
> >
> > I'll have to take your word for it on the arcade games. TBH I was just
> > repeating what I've heard -- which was wrong of me. :-( Sorry...
>
> Acornsoft Planetoid *IS* Defender, looks and plays the same as the Williams
> original.
>
> --
> Adrian/Witchy
> Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator
> Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer
> collection?
>
>
>


-- 
4.4 > 5.4

Re: BBC Micro - was Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Adrian Graham]

On 23/12/2016 17:00, "Liam Proven"  wrote:

>> The Acornsoft games were very high quality (hard to distinguish from their
>> arcade inspirations).
>> 
>> But I was mostly interested in programming, so I loved our BBC Micro Model B
>> to bits. A far superior machine to the Apple and Commodores.
> 
> I agree that it was a far superior machine. It had its limitations --
> shortage of RAM, notably -- but it was a great design.
> 
> I'll have to take your word for it on the arcade games. TBH I was just
> repeating what I've heard -- which was wrong of me. :-( Sorry...

Acornsoft Planetoid *IS* Defender, looks and plays the same as the Williams
original. 

-- 
Adrian/Witchy
Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator
Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer
collection?

Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Liam Proven]

On 23 December 2016 at 19:56, Liam Proven  wrote:
> The Apple ][E was
> £1390 in 1983


Sorry -- wrong currency sign. $1390.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Liam Proven]

On 23 December 2016 at 16:00, allison  wrote:
> When the timex/sinclair with membrane keys got her eit was around 99$
> and immensely unpopular the later chicklet keyboard version was  better
> accepted.
> BY then people wanted printer and mass storage and that machine was 2-4
> years
> behind the expectations curve.


I think that is the best example of what I'm talking about in your comment.

I've checked... The Apple ][ was $1298 in 1977. The Apple ][E was
£1390 in 1983. The price didn't drop much, but the spec improved
instead.

That was, from the prices in Mike's computer fair report, ITRO £650-£700.

The Sinclair ZX-80, ZX-81 and ZX Spectrum were all ITRO £100 or so
when new, all within the time period between those 2 US models.

And yet, in the occasional US computer magazine I'd see, the Apple
machines were praised as low-cost personal computers compared to
business machines, IIRC and AIUI.

OK, so my £100/$1000 comparison was a bit off, but rather than a delta
of 10× we are looking at one of 6-7×. So I wasn't far off!

These were machines for non-techies to play with, notably, soon, for
kids to play games on.

The pre-Apple-II machines, the era of DIY things with discrete boards,
no graphics, no sound, were both of little interest to non-specialists
(or those who didn't want to be specialists) or kids, AFAICT. I could
be wrong. They weren't of much interest to _me_ at 10YO or so, I can
attest that.


-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Liam Proven]

On 23 December 2016 at 19:34, Michael Holley  wrote:
> I was in London in 1981 and happened upon a computer faire. Here is a
> write-up published in Seattle's Northwest Computer Society newsletter. It is
> an American's view of the English computer scene.
> http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/LondonComputerFaire/Newsletter.htm
>
> Photos
> http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/LondonComputerFaire/Photos.htm


Very interesting -- thanks for that!

I'm intrigued that although you prefix notate dollars ($300), you
postfix-notate pounds (125£), when Brits prefix too. Any particular
reason?

I suspect that that was before the home computer gaming boom, and 2-3y
later things would look rather different.

As a student (1985-1988) I attended launches of the CBM Amiga and
Apple ][GS -- I don't recall exactly when -- but they were vastly out
of my price range. In '85 I was still using a ZX Spectrum with ZX
Microdrives; by '87 or '88 I'd managed to get a floppy interface and a
single 5¼" drive (as the media were much cheaper than the new 3½"
diskettes, which were 5×-10× the price).

So even after 16-bit machines started to appear, even fairly serious
hobbyists such as myself continued to use 8-bits & other old-fashioned
tech, as they were massively cheaper.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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RE: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Michael Holley]

-Original Message-
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Peter
Corlett
Sent: Friday, December 23, 2016 2:59 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

>The "at least in the US" caveat is important :)
>
>Sinclair's Z80-based ZX Spectrum was outrageously successful in the UK.
Every teenage bedroom seemed to have one by the late 1980s. The various
6502-based machines from Acorn and >Commodore were relatively uncommon, and
I've seen exactly one Apple II.
>
>People who know Uncle Clive's unwillingness to spend a penny more than he
has to on bulding computers may wonder why they selected the relatively
expensive
>Z80 over the 6502, but it was because they managed to trick the Z80's
address-fetcting and instruction decoding cycle into generating video on the
>ZX80 and ZX81, and thus saved more money elsewhere. It wasn't until the
Spectrum that they bothered with DMA like proper computers, and then didn't
>*need* to stick with the Z80, but chose to keep it anyway.

I was in London in 1981 and happened upon a computer faire. Here is a
write-up published in Seattle's Northwest Computer Society newsletter. It is
an American's view of the English computer scene.
http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/LondonComputerFaire/Newsletter.htm

Photos
http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/LondonComputerFaire/Photos.htm

Michael Holley

Re: General public machines (Was: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Fred Cisin]

I knew my last missive would provoke at least one or two interesting (if
not informative) responses. Yours was no exception, and I thank you for it.


not informative responses are inevitable


For one, I hadn't known that CP/M was written originally to the 8080.. I'd
always assumed it originated on the Z80. And I don't doubt that RS / TRS-80
held a large share (until 1982 or so..) of the home computer market.


CP/M was 8080, and was intended for 8080/8085/Z80.  But, as Allison 
pointed out, there was nothing stopping somebody from writing software 
that would run on CP/M that might require a Z80.  Or write the BIOS for 
the computer as Z80.  Therefore, a Z80 machine would be optimal, and if 
you wrote software to be sold into the CP/M world, it had to run on 8080, 
AND, if it made any BIOS calls,  survive a BIOS that could be 8080, 8085, 
or Z80.




At the time, I was in my (almost) young teens - and at least in the circles
I traveled, the TRS-80 / Osborne and Kaypro were viewed as boring, stodgy
machines without any redeeming entertainment qualities - no color graphics,
no sprites, poor or nearly non-existent audio, expensive joysticks and so
on.


Boring, certainly.
Not sure if it was sophisticated enough to be stodgy.


The ability of the machines to serve multiple roles - for both 'serious'
work and video gaming / music - was a huge selling point in the early days.
This is one of the reasons that the C64 was so massively successful - it
pretty much had something for everyone, as the saying goes. That, and the
price of the base machine was just amazingly low for the time. Ditto for
the VIC-20.


Ah! Therein lies the rub.
The TRS-80 wasn't any good for some things.  As a primarily entertainment 
machine, it was rubbish.  No color, no sound, no joysticks, grossly 
inadequate graphics.   (some of which could be worked around)
If you were looking for an games/entertainment machine, it would be 
outside of the consideration set.  Of the set of people looking for a 
games/entertainment machine, "NOBODY has one."
Best game on it was "Adventure". 
Best graphics was Lim's "Android Nim"



On the other side of the market, the TRS-80 did not have 80x24 text, and 
had a memory map that was incompatible with CP/M.   Parasitic Engineering 
(Howard Fullmer!) and Omikron, both made [somewhat expensive] sandwich 
boards for the TRS-80 to change that memory map, and to add 8" SSSD drive 
support.


Of the original "Big three" (Radio Shack, Apple, Commodore), who came 
first, Apple was the only one with entertainment capabilities, but they 
priced it out of your market.


Later, the Commodore Vic-20 and C64 were aimed at your segment of the 
market, and priced appropriately.
Radio Shack's later "Color Computer" (6809!) was far more appropriate, but 
it also suffered some crippling design decision errors.




the very early 1980s, when I was about 15, my father decided to buy a
home computer. (Before that, he had a TI Silent 700 that dialed up to a
Univac mainframe.) I remember him doing hours of research comparing the
Apple II, the TRS-80, the Commodore PET, and probably some of the S-100
machines. He eventually chose the Heathkit H89. I^@^Yll have to ask him
exactly why, but I know that he^@^Ys always liked good-quality tools, 
and the combination of the Heathkit design, the Z80 CPU, and CP/M seemed

like the best combination of tools at the time.


Apple II, TRS-80, and Commodore PET didn't have 80x24 screen text!
THAT was why my cousin rejected them and went with a Heathkit.
If you want to be able to use it as a terminal, . . .

Later, add-on cards for Apple2 came out for 80 column.
TRS-80 didn't get 80x24 text until the Model 4 (which is what the Model 3 
should have been)   (Model 2/12/16 was never intended to be a "Home" 
computer, and was marketed for small business)



--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[allison]

On 12/23/2016 10:16 AM, Liam Proven wrote:
> On 23 December 2016 at 10:59, Peter Corlett  wrote:
>> The "at least in the US" caveat is important :)
> Absolutely.
>
>> Sinclair's Z80-based ZX Spectrum was outrageously successful in the UK. Every
>> teenage bedroom seemed to have one by the late 1980s. The various 6502-based
>> machines from Acorn and Commodore were relatively uncommon, and I've seen
>> exactly one Apple II.
> Pretty much, yes. The VIC-20 did OK, and the C-64 later, as the price
> came down. However, back then, around '81-'82-'83, a working Spectrum
> setup cost about a quarter of what a C-64 cost. It was the premium
> games machine for the children of fairly rich folks.
>
> The BBC Micro, at another quarter or third over the price of a C-64
> but with a superb BASIC instead of CBM's abomination, was what the
> unfortunate children of very serious, very wealthy people bought. Not
> nearly so many games and not very good.
>
> Whereas the Apple ][ cost more than 2 BBC Micros -- as much as a small
> car. And it wasn't all that good anyway, because by then, it was a 5YO
> design. So only misguided millionaires owned them.
>
> Some unlucky kids got the Oric-1, a not-common but not-all-that-bad
> 6502 machine, around '83 or '84.
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/28/the_oric_1_is_30_years_old/?page=1
>
> The US world was profoundly different from, well, the rest of the
> planet. As usual. Americans got amazing-sounding fancy machines that
> cost from as much as a car to as much as a house, with stuff like
> *expansion slots* and *professional OSes* that could run business
> software that [a] cost as much for a single copy as a well-specified
> complete Sinclair setup with monitor and disk interface and drives,
> and [b] was utterly uninteresting to schoolkids.
>
> Cheap British computer: £100. 
Back then about 200$ US??
> Cheap American computer: $1000.
Depends on when.

The average Kim-1 here was 300$
Motorola 6800D1 was 289$ in 1977.
The RCA cosmac (Quest kit) was still over 100$ at introduction
(the board and by the parts your self would cost me 45$ quantity 2).

NS*Horizon S100 with Z80, MDS, 2 floppies and 32K ram and DOS was about
$2000 in 1978 and a year later about $1700 as the price of ram dropped.
BY 1979 a Horizon with 32K and 2 drives was about $1500.

The biggest thing was ram.  In the 1975 time frame 4K was about 300$, by
1978
that would be 16K at maybe $300 and by 1980 64K was under $300 and going
down fast.  

The other was mass storage where floppies at intro were 350-450 for the
bare drive
and a controller was a few hundred more.   The first break was $599 for
a complete
NS* (Thats Northstar Computers inc) had the MDS drive and controller
package with DOS
and Extended basic and that was mid 1977.  Two years later two drives in
a box with
power supply was about 199$.  There were others pushing prices down
too.  it was
the innovation, production volume curve at work.

When the timex/sinclair with membrane keys got her eit was around 99$
and immensely unpopular the later chicklet keyboard version was  better
accepted.
BY then people wanted printer and mass storage and that machine was 2-4
years
behind the expectations curve.

> Even though back then £1=$2 or something, still, the American kit was
> all ludicrously expensive and as rare as rocking-horse droppings
> outside North America.
I will not argue that, nothing was cheap but I also was buying raw chips
and
the prices for one or two were not always cheap.  Boards especially two
sided
were not cheap either.

The problem ooutside US for US products was import VAT.  I was told back
then
a 2000$ NS system was easily 3000$ over there.  Also getting systems here
from there was equally hard(and expensive transport).   Some of the beebs
were interesting.

Oddly it was similar in Canada for the same reason VAT/Import Duty. They
spawned
a few cool systems there too.  However much of the US hardware was known
and
found there or they did S100 with local designs.   Then again a few
Canadian companies
like Matrox made a good presence here in the USA.  As did Epson who I
consider
one of the first japanse.

I'm fortunate to have two views,  that of the hobby small systems
market, and that
of being inside DEC during the 80s.  The big vendor (DEC, DG, Prime,
IBM) machine
world was a bit different.  If I can associate a factor in that its DEC
internal had a
world wide computer network such that I could talk to Palo Alto via
Email just as
easy as Valbonne or Galway and as fast even in the early 80s.  That
didn't happen
till the 90s for those not inside a company network.   The internet was
a killer ap!

Allison

Re: General public machines (Was: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[allison]

On 12/23/2016 07:18 AM, Tor Arntsen wrote:
> On 23 December 2016 at 05:45, drlegendre .  wrote:
> urs was no exception, and I thank you for it.
>> For one, I hadn't known that CP/M was written originally to the 8080.. I'd
>> always assumed it originated on the Z80.
> There are only 8080 instructions in CP/M, not a single Z80-specific
> instruction. CP/M came about around 1974, the Z80 in 1976.
> All the CP/M computers I used had a Z80, but that's just shows what
> was popular at the time.
>
Yes, that was correct CP/M (DRI) was 8080 code that executed well on z80.
However the BIOS could be entirely z80. And it was not uncommon
to replace the CCP with CCPZ or ZCPR also using Z80 additional opcodes.

Actually the original CP/M V1.3 and 1.4 were written in PLM for 8080.
The V2 and 2.2 versions might have been in assembler but still 8080.
8080 compatability was important as there were 8080, 8085, NSC800,
Z80, Z180, and Z280(late) all could run CP/M.   And that also lead to a
up scaling for 8088/86 and off shoots (early PCdos).

The follow up P2DOS, Novados, ZRDOS, and Z-system, were  indeed Z80 only.
Those were coded by other to be compatible but improved.

It was common to have a Darth Vaders lunchbox (Kaypro) running one of the
CP/M hybrids or clones rather than pure CP/M.  The modularity of CP/M
allowed
for that.

Classic examples of that here are:

*NS Microdisk system (5.25" SD floppy) in the 8080 Altair 8800 running
CP/M 1.4 (lifeboat).
*Netronics Exploror running CP/M 2 with MDS disk (765 floppy DSDD
3.5inch) with
  enhanced CCP and the core cpu being 8085.
*NS* Horizon chassis (z80) running CP/M2 with MDS DD (stock NS version)
*NS* Horizon chassis (z80) with mods running CP/M2 with my own BIOS and
ZCPR,
 Teltek disk 32mb. also  8/5.25/3.5 floppies and smart DMA controllers
for each.
*CCS Z80 powered CP/M system with floppies (8/5.25, or 3.5)
*SB180 running Z-System on Z180 with miniscribe 20mb disk and QD (DSDD)
floppies.
*Compupro (Z80) running CP/M2 with full Compupro disks (disk 1A, disk
3(32mb), M-drive)
and a MPX-1 (8085) slave for IO.
* AmproLB+ running ZRdos (Improved CPM 2) z80 with SCSI disk 45MB and
DSDD 3.5" floppies.
*Kaypro 4/84 running CP/M2 (With Handyman, Ramdisk, Advent turbodisk and
Disk personality
 card running CP/M2 and ZCPR.
*Z280 S100 homebrew card in spare cage (maybe IDS) with 4MB ram,
Compupro MPX1 slave
and assorted Compupro DMA disks (1A and 3).  Runs CP/M core with my own
multitasker
and CCPZ and BIOS (in IAnd D space with user/system spaces).

This is a sample of system I have some going back to day one that all
ron some flavor of CP/M
on the wide range of CPUs around in that era.   They all can run all of
the base aps but some
products were Z80 (or 180 or 280 or NSC800) only.  However many of the
aps like MS Basic,
Multiplan, DBASE, Vedit, and BDS-C could run on 8080 but knew how to use
the z80.  This is part
of why it was not unusual to see some CPM systems still in commercial
use in the early 90s.


Allison

Re: BBC Micro - was Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Tony Duell]

>> But I was mostly interested in programming, so I loved our BBC Micro Model B
>> to bits. A far superior machine to the Apple and Commodores.
>
> I agree that it was a far superior machine. It had its limitations --
> shortage of RAM, notably -- but it was a great design.


My personal view is that the BBC micro was very well deisgned, both
hardware and software, and that it was probably the best of the
8 bit home micros.

As for the shortage of RAM, yes, particularly if you used
MODE 0 (80 column mode) which took up 20K of the
available 32K for video RAM. Later machines (B+, Master)
got round this by having at least 64K of physical RAM and
bankswitching part of it (the part used for video) with the ROMs.

I was told by a chap at Acorn that the original intention was that
application software would be run from sideways (bankswitched)
ROMs (and thus wouldn't use much RAM). And it was expected
that serious programmers would buy the 6502 second processor,
giving at least 32K RAM for the user (and none taken up by video).
Of course hindsight tells us this wasn't what most users did.

-tony

Re: BBC Micro - was Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Toby Thain]

On 2016-12-23 2:00 PM, Liam Proven wrote:

On 23 December 2016 at 15:50, Toby Thain  wrote:

On 2016-12-23 12:16 PM, Liam Proven wrote:


...
The BBC Micro, at another quarter or third over the price of a C-64
but with a superb BASIC instead of CBM's abomination, was what the
unfortunate children of very serious, very wealthy people bought. Not
nearly so many games and not very good.



The Acornsoft games were very high quality (hard to distinguish from their
arcade inspirations).

But I was mostly interested in programming, so I loved our BBC Micro Model B
to bits. A far superior machine to the Apple and Commodores.


I agree that it was a far superior machine. It had its limitations --
shortage of RAM, notably -- but it was a great design.

I'll have to take your word for it on the arcade games. TBH I was just
repeating what I've heard -- which was wrong of me. :-( Sorry...

The classics I've heard of, apart of course from Elite, were Repton
and Revs, but there were others.


The Acornsoft games included clones of Defender (Planetoid), Scramble, 
Pac-man, and many others. They were all written in assembler by apparent 
masters of the craft and were highly sought after.


It's probably true that there were fewer independent games than the 
American platforms, but Acorn invested hugely in their ROM, cassette and 
disk software library (including a number of language ROMs).


--Toby




I never owned or much used Acorn kit in the 6502 era. I only came to
Acorn via the Archimedes, a machine which I loved.

Re: BBC Micro - was Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Liam Proven]

On 23 December 2016 at 15:50, Toby Thain  wrote:
> On 2016-12-23 12:16 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
>>
>> ...
>> The BBC Micro, at another quarter or third over the price of a C-64
>> but with a superb BASIC instead of CBM's abomination, was what the
>> unfortunate children of very serious, very wealthy people bought. Not
>> nearly so many games and not very good.
>>
>
> The Acornsoft games were very high quality (hard to distinguish from their
> arcade inspirations).
>
> But I was mostly interested in programming, so I loved our BBC Micro Model B
> to bits. A far superior machine to the Apple and Commodores.

I agree that it was a far superior machine. It had its limitations --
shortage of RAM, notably -- but it was a great design.

I'll have to take your word for it on the arcade games. TBH I was just
repeating what I've heard -- which was wrong of me. :-( Sorry...

The classics I've heard of, apart of course from Elite, were Repton
and Revs, but there were others.

I never owned or much used Acorn kit in the 6502 era. I only came to
Acorn via the Archimedes, a machine which I loved.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven • Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053

BBC Micro - was Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Toby Thain]

On 2016-12-23 12:16 PM, Liam Proven wrote:

...
The BBC Micro, at another quarter or third over the price of a C-64
but with a superb BASIC instead of CBM's abomination, was what the
unfortunate children of very serious, very wealthy people bought. Not
nearly so many games and not very good.



The Acornsoft games were very high quality (hard to distinguish from 
their arcade inspirations).


But I was mostly interested in programming, so I loved our BBC Micro 
Model B to bits. A far superior machine to the Apple and Commodores.


--Toby



Whereas the Apple ][ cost more than 2 BBC Micros -- as much as a small
...

Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Liam Proven]

On 23 December 2016 at 10:59, Peter Corlett  wrote:
> The "at least in the US" caveat is important :)

Absolutely.

> Sinclair's Z80-based ZX Spectrum was outrageously successful in the UK. Every
> teenage bedroom seemed to have one by the late 1980s. The various 6502-based
> machines from Acorn and Commodore were relatively uncommon, and I've seen
> exactly one Apple II.

Pretty much, yes. The VIC-20 did OK, and the C-64 later, as the price
came down. However, back then, around '81-'82-'83, a working Spectrum
setup cost about a quarter of what a C-64 cost. It was the premium
games machine for the children of fairly rich folks.

The BBC Micro, at another quarter or third over the price of a C-64
but with a superb BASIC instead of CBM's abomination, was what the
unfortunate children of very serious, very wealthy people bought. Not
nearly so many games and not very good.

Whereas the Apple ][ cost more than 2 BBC Micros -- as much as a small
car. And it wasn't all that good anyway, because by then, it was a 5YO
design. So only misguided millionaires owned them.

Some unlucky kids got the Oric-1, a not-common but not-all-that-bad
6502 machine, around '83 or '84.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/28/the_oric_1_is_30_years_old/?page=1

The US world was profoundly different from, well, the rest of the
planet. As usual. Americans got amazing-sounding fancy machines that
cost from as much as a car to as much as a house, with stuff like
*expansion slots* and *professional OSes* that could run business
software that [a] cost as much for a single copy as a well-specified
complete Sinclair setup with monitor and disk interface and drives,
and [b] was utterly uninteresting to schoolkids.

Cheap British computer: £100.

Cheap American computer: $1000.

Even though back then £1=$2 or something, still, the American kit was
all ludicrously expensive and as rare as rocking-horse droppings
outside North America.


-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven • Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053

Re: General public machines (Was: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[allison]

On 12/22/2016 11:37 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
> NO source is completely reliable.
>
>
>> http://jeremyreimer.com/m-item.lsp?i=137
> http://jeremyreimer.com/uploads/notes-on-sources.txt
>
> He does provide some information on his sources.
>
> When we talk about sales, are we talking about UNITS, or about dollars?
> (an important distinction for such as the ZX80 V anything else!)
>
>
> His curve fitting is flawed.  For example, in his 1975 to 1981 graph,
> he has points for sales of TRS-80 of ZERO in 1976, and LOTS in 1977. 
> But, then he just drew a straight line, which erroneously implies a
> linear increase, with sales in 1976.  THAT derivative should be a
> vertical line, not a slope, unless/until you add more resolution for
> months, instead of years, representing an extremely steep slope in the
> end of 1977.
>
As someone that was on the front end of the TRS80 it went from Zero to
60 in '77 as the first deliveries were a batch of
1000 then 5000 to the stores.  they sold very fast far faster than
expected.  Indeed the first 12 months had a very steep
curve.

Most number and data I see to day in the popular media is just plain wrong.

Allison

Re: General public machines (Was: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[allison]

On 12/22/2016 11:04 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
> We all hang out with people who are smart enough to see things the
> same way that we do.  Accordingly, our choices in computers, cars,
> cellphone providers always look to us like the MAJORITY.   They are
> the BEST, and certainly the MOST POPULAR [among everybody that WE hang
> out with], but not necessarily the best selling.
>
> If the world were just, and the BEST outsold the worst, then we would
> all be using Amiga :-)
>
>
> On Thu, 22 Dec 2016, drlegendre . wrote:
>> "The Z80 had more players and more names than all the rest"
>> And yet it was essentially a bit-player in the days of the 'home
>> computer'
>> revolution - at least in the US. CBM, Apple, Atari - the three big
>> names in
>> home computers, all went with the 6502 family. And perhaps even more
>> importantly, so did Nintendo, in the NES.
>
> And yet, somehow, z80 was outselling 6502!
>

Both had a very long life in systems and embedded products. 
It wasn't cost, I truly believe it was the generations that had trash 80
, apple][, and others
containing them and were familiar.


> http://jeremyreimer.com/m-item.lsp?i=137
>
> Radio Shack, TRS-80, WAS one of the "three big names".  It had a
> not-insignificant share of the market, and until 1982 was the best
> selling.  Don't ignore the impact of having incompetents peddling in
> thousands of store, in every city and town!
> Atari took a while longer to get market share.
> http://www.trs-80.org/was-the-trs-80-once-the-top-selling-computer/
>
For a brief moment in the history of computers that was indeed true. 
Then other better developed systems
displaced it.

> At the same time.
> Depending on how you define "first" ("first" to show V "first" to ship
> V "first" to be available for shelf purchase) will define whether
> Apple, Commodore, or Radio Shack was "the first".  It is trivially
> esay to select a definition of "first" to make it your choice of
> those.   Apple was the first of those announced and shown.
> I bought a TRS-80 ($400 (or $600 if you wanted their composite monitor
> and cassette player)) because it was the first one [by multiple
> months] that I could walk in the door of a local store and buy one. 
> The more appealing Apple, which had been announced earlier that
> TRS-80, was hard to come by for several more months.
>
Marketing over actual design plus plain availability.

> That time differential of months seems inconsequential 40 years later,
> but it mattered to me right then.  And, for most rational measures,
> Apple, TRS-80 and Commodore initial releases were a tie.
> (Was the photo finish by a nose, a whisker, or a hoof?)
> When the 5150 came out in August 1981, it was months before I could
> actually get one.
>
> AFTER the 5150 came out, people relized that TRS-80 was doomed, and in
> 1982, Apple 2 finally started to outsell TRS-80.  It was LESS obvious
> that Apple 2 was doomed.  But, within Apple, they knew there were
> troubled times ahead, and came out with the disastrous Apple 3, and
> disastrous [from point of view of SALES] Lisa.
>
Not true in its entirety.  IF you look at the 1980 and 1981 issues on
Byte, interface age, Kilobaud, and Dr Dobbs
it was clear 16 bits was the next step.  There were systems delivering
that but it was all very new despite the 8088
being already old!  The 5150 was not so much the great 16bitter as it
was IBM.  Having those three letter made
it official.

What interesting was I had at work a multibus system with 8086 running
at 8mhz the summer of 1981 to do work
and IBM was running at 4.77mhz.  At that speed it was not that much
faster than Z80.

> 'Course IBM poisoned the market for everything else, and nothing else
> sold like IBM.   On August 12, 1981, I said "In 10 years, 3/4 of the
> market will be IBM PC and imitations of it."
> It is amazingly impressive that Apple (Mac) survived IBM!
> (If you think that Mac outsold PC, then you are looking at YOUR
> circle, and need to look at actual sales numbers)
> But, by the time that the Mac came out, TRS-80 was finally becoming
> that "bit player" that some assume that it was, or should have been.
>

The life of TRS80 was from introduction in '77 and was doing the
downhill slide by 1980.
In those days that was a long life for a point product.
>> The main use of Z80 in US home
>> computing was in the absurdly small Timex / Sinclair ZX80 series - with
>> their awful cramped membrane keyboards and seriously limited sound &
>> video.
> Which was years later, and WAS a bit player and absurdly small. It was
> NEVER the main use of Z80 in USA home computing.  TRS-80 outsold them
> more than 100 to 1.
> Was that really a membrane keyboard, or was it just a PICTURE of a
> keyboard as a recommendation, like the "part of this complete breakfast".
>
The T/ZX80 was mostly viewed as a toy.  It was late here for that level
of a machine.
Still it was small and cheap and a more than a few were embedded into
systems... ;)

>> The Z80 also showed up in the 

Re: General public machines (Was: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Tor Arntsen]

On 23 December 2016 at 05:45, drlegendre .  wrote:
urs was no exception, and I thank you for it.
>
> For one, I hadn't known that CP/M was written originally to the 8080.. I'd
> always assumed it originated on the Z80.

There are only 8080 instructions in CP/M, not a single Z80-specific
instruction. CP/M came about around 1974, the Z80 in 1976.
All the CP/M computers I used had a Z80, but that's just shows what
was popular at the time.

Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Eric Smith]

On Fri, Dec 23, 2016 at 3:59 AM, Peter Corlett  wrote:

> People who know Uncle Clive's unwillingness to spend a penny more than he
> has
> to on bulding computers may wonder why they selected the relatively
> expensive
> Z80 over the 6502, but it was because they managed to trick the Z80's
> address-fetcting and instruction decoding cycle into generating video on
> the
> ZX80 and ZX81, and thus saved more money elsewhere.


The same trick works perfectly well with a 6502, and in fact was invented
by Don Lancaster using a 6502 years before the ZX80 was designed. That
doesn't really explain the choice of the Z80.

Also, by the time the ZX80 was introduced, both the Z80 and 6502 were
basically dirt cheap. Any premium price the Z80 had once commanded had long
since evaporated.

Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Peter Corlett]

On Thu, Dec 22, 2016 at 08:01:46PM -0600, drlegendre . wrote:
> "The Z80 had more players and more names than all the rest"

> And yet it was essentially a bit-player in the days of the 'home computer'
> revolution - at least in the US. CBM, Apple, Atari - the three big names in
> home computers, all went with the 6502 family. And perhaps even more
> importantly, so did Nintendo, in the NES. The main use of Z80 in US home
> computing was in the absurdly small Timex / Sinclair ZX80 series - with their
> awful cramped membrane keyboards and seriously limited sound & video.

The "at least in the US" caveat is important :)

Sinclair's Z80-based ZX Spectrum was outrageously successful in the UK. Every
teenage bedroom seemed to have one by the late 1980s. The various 6502-based
machines from Acorn and Commodore were relatively uncommon, and I've seen
exactly one Apple II.

People who know Uncle Clive's unwillingness to spend a penny more than he has
to on bulding computers may wonder why they selected the relatively expensive
Z80 over the 6502, but it was because they managed to trick the Z80's
address-fetcting and instruction decoding cycle into generating video on the
ZX80 and ZX81, and thus saved more money elsewhere. It wasn't until the
Spectrum that they bothered with DMA like proper computers, and then didn't
*need* to stick with the Z80, but chose to keep it anyway.

Re: General public machines (Was: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[drlegendre .]

@Grumpy Old Fred

I knew my last missive would provoke at least one or two interesting (if
not informative) responses. Yours was no exception, and I thank you for it.

For one, I hadn't known that CP/M was written originally to the 8080.. I'd
always assumed it originated on the Z80. And I don't doubt that RS / TRS-80
held a large share (until 1982 or so..) of the home computer market.

At the time, I was in my (almost) young teens - and at least in the circles
I traveled, the TRS-80 / Osborne and Kaypro were viewed as boring, stodgy
machines without any redeeming entertainment qualities - no color graphics,
no sprites, poor or nearly non-existent audio, expensive joysticks and so
on.

The ability of the machines to serve multiple roles - for both 'serious'
work and video gaming / music - was a huge selling point in the early days.
This is one of the reasons that the C64 was so massively successful - it
pretty much had something for everyone, as the saying goes. That, and the
price of the base machine was just amazingly low for the time. Ditto for
the VIC-20.

On Thu, Dec 22, 2016 at 10:04 PM, Fred Cisin  wrote:

> We all hang out with people who are smart enough to see things the same
> way that we do.  Accordingly, our choices in computers, cars, cellphone
> providers always look to us like the MAJORITY.   They are the BEST, and
> certainly the MOST POPULAR [among everybody that WE hang out with], but not
> necessarily the best selling.
>
> If the world were just, and the BEST outsold the worst, then we would all
> be using Amiga :-)
>
>
> On Thu, 22 Dec 2016, drlegendre . wrote:
>
>> "The Z80 had more players and more names than all the rest"
>> And yet it was essentially a bit-player in the days of the 'home computer'
>> revolution - at least in the US. CBM, Apple, Atari - the three big names
>> in
>> home computers, all went with the 6502 family. And perhaps even more
>> importantly, so did Nintendo, in the NES.
>>
>
> And yet, somehow, z80 was outselling 6502!
>
> http://jeremyreimer.com/m-item.lsp?i=137
>
> Radio Shack, TRS-80, WAS one of the "three big names".  It had a
> not-insignificant share of the market, and until 1982 was the best
> selling.  Don't ignore the impact of having incompetents peddling in
> thousands of store, in every city and town!
> Atari took a while longer to get market share.
> http://www.trs-80.org/was-the-trs-80-once-the-top-selling-computer/
>
> At the same time.
> Depending on how you define "first" ("first" to show V "first" to ship V
> "first" to be available for shelf purchase) will define whether Apple,
> Commodore, or Radio Shack was "the first".  It is trivially esay to select
> a definition of "first" to make it your choice of those.   Apple was the
> first of those announced and shown.
> I bought a TRS-80 ($400 (or $600 if you wanted their composite monitor and
> cassette player)) because it was the first one [by multiple months] that I
> could walk in the door of a local store and buy one.  The more appealing
> Apple, which had been announced earlier that TRS-80, was hard to come by
> for several more months.
>
> That time differential of months seems inconsequential 40 years later, but
> it mattered to me right then.  And, for most rational measures, Apple,
> TRS-80 and Commodore initial releases were a tie.
> (Was the photo finish by a nose, a whisker, or a hoof?)
> When the 5150 came out in August 1981, it was months before I could
> actually get one.
>
> AFTER the 5150 came out, people relized that TRS-80 was doomed, and in
> 1982, Apple 2 finally started to outsell TRS-80.  It was LESS obvious that
> Apple 2 was doomed.  But, within Apple, they knew there were troubled times
> ahead, and came out with the disastrous Apple 3, and disastrous [from point
> of view of SALES] Lisa.
>
> 'Course IBM poisoned the market for everything else, and nothing else sold
> like IBM.   On August 12, 1981, I said "In 10 years, 3/4 of the market will
> be IBM PC and imitations of it."
> It is amazingly impressive that Apple (Mac) survived IBM!
> (If you think that Mac outsold PC, then you are looking at YOUR circle,
> and need to look at actual sales numbers)
> But, by the time that the Mac came out, TRS-80 was finally becoming that
> "bit player" that some assume that it was, or should have been.
>
> The main use of Z80 in US home
>> computing was in the absurdly small Timex / Sinclair ZX80 series - with
>> their awful cramped membrane keyboards and seriously limited sound &
>> video.
>>
> Which was years later, and WAS a bit player and absurdly small. It was
> NEVER the main use of Z80 in USA home computing.  TRS-80 outsold them more
> than 100 to 1.
> Was that really a membrane keyboard, or was it just a PICTURE of a
> keyboard as a recommendation, like the "part of this complete breakfast".
>
> The Z80 also showed up in the Osborne, Kaypro and TRS-80 models.. mostly
>> due to the fact that CP/M was written to it. Commodore also put one in the
>> C128, 

Re: General public machines (Was: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[John Labovitz]

I’ll chime in on the Z80 preference, since I was there at the time. In the very 
early 1980s, when I was about 15, my father decided to buy a home computer. 
(Before that, he had a TI Silent 700 that dialed up to a Univac mainframe.) I 
remember him doing hours of research comparing the Apple II, the TRS-80, the 
Commodore PET, and probably some of the S-100 machines. He eventually chose the 
Heathkit H89. I’ll have to ask him exactly why, but I know that he’s always 
liked good-quality tools, and the combination of the Heathkit design, the Z80 
CPU, and CP/M seemed like the best combination of tools at the time.

I think it was probably a bit like the current perception of Apple’s hardware: 
expensive, but well-built and well-designed (minus some of the latest 
missteps). The other ‘lesser’ machines seemed far clunkier (excepting the S-100 
stuff). I did some Z80 assembly when I was a kid, and even the notation of that 
language seemed clearer, more zen-like, than the 8080, and certainly than the 
6502. Sorry to say, but when I hung out with friends who had Apple IIs, I 
always found their 40-character display mighty lacking… TRS-80s were fun to 
play with (and I did frequently at the local Radio Shack), but seemed much more 
oriented towards either simple BASIC programming, or business use — pretty 
boring for a 15-year old. ;)

CP/M, too, at least *seemed* more connected to the minicomputer world. We had a 
variety of assemblers and compilers; I learned C, assembly, LISP (well, not 
really), BASIC, word processors — and via our 300-baud modem, dialed up to the 
ARPAnet. Not to say that one couldn’t do that with the other machines, but even 
at the time, the Heathkit with CP/M seemed more of what we’d now call ‘server 
class.’ In fact, I ran a BBS for a year or two on that machine, with 
hand-rolled messaging software in BASIC, and the BYE software to handle the 
magic of dial-up access to a microcomputer.

Finally, the Heathkit was — not surprisingly — a kit. As a teenager, I I 
soldered together two or three H89s, several H19 terminals, and at least one 
printer; that experience taught me *so much* about the physical workings of 
computers.

—John

Re: General public machines (Was: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Fred Cisin]

NO source is completely reliable.



http://jeremyreimer.com/m-item.lsp?i=137

http://jeremyreimer.com/uploads/notes-on-sources.txt

He does provide some information on his sources.

When we talk about sales, are we talking about UNITS, or about dollars?
(an important distinction for such as the ZX80 V anything else!)


His curve fitting is flawed.  For example, in his 1975 to 1981 graph, he 
has points for sales of TRS-80 of ZERO in 1976, and LOTS in 1977.  But, 
then he just drew a straight line, which erroneously implies a linear 
increase, with sales in 1976.  THAT derivative should be a vertical line, 
not a slope, unless/until you add more resolution for months, instead of 
years, representing an extremely steep slope in the end of 1977.


At least his last graph leaves off the "USA Today" fill in graphics, and 
shows the individual data points.  Which, I'm pleased to say, show C64 
outselling ANYTHING ELSE for a couple of years.
But, the vertical scale??  That's 100% of WHAT?  If it were percentage of 
market share, then it should TOTAL to 100% each year, albeit with a 
significant "Other" category.  ("Other" is approximately "PC Share" 
inverted from the 50% line?)



Does anybody know of a BETTER source for sales numbers?



Again, "everybody/MOST uses/used" doesn't work.
But, "everybody/MOST who knew what they were doing" does.

Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Eric Smith]

On Thu, Dec 22, 2016 at 7:01 PM, drlegendre .  wrote:

> The Z80 also showed up in the Osborne, Kaypro and TRS-80 models.. mostly
> due to the fact that CP/M was written to it.
>

Use of the Z80 in the mainstream TRS-80 models (1 and III) had little or
nothing to do with CP/M.  The special CP/M with a non-standard TPA needed
for the Model 1 and III was just about useless, since it would only run
special TRS-80 versions of CP/M software. There were third-party mods for
the Model 1 and III to run a normal CP/M, but only a tiny fraction of
TRS-80 users did that.

CP/M may have been more of a factor for the Model II/12/16/6000, which
could run a normal CP/M without any hardware mods, as could the later Model
4 and 4P.  Most Model II family machines I saw in the wild were used to run
Radio Shack's accounting and business software on TRS-DOS II; few used
CP/M, possibly because there were much lower cost CP/M systems available
elsewhere.  Most Model 4 owners I knew didn't do any serious CP/M use on
it, and mostly used the 4 as an improved-spec III running TRS-DOS/LDOS/etc.

Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[drlegendre .]

"The Z80 had more players and more names than all the rest"

And yet it was essentially a bit-player in the days of the 'home computer'
revolution - at least in the US. CBM, Apple, Atari - the three big names in
home computers, all went with the 6502 family. And perhaps even more
importantly, so did Nintendo, in the NES. The main use of Z80 in US home
computing was in the absurdly small Timex / Sinclair ZX80 series - with
their awful cramped membrane keyboards and seriously limited sound & video.

The Z80 also showed up in the Osborne, Kaypro and TRS-80 models.. mostly
due to the fact that CP/M was written to it. Commodore also put one in the
C128, but by then, it was almost a dead letter.

On Thu, Dec 22, 2016 at 9:49 AM, allison  wrote:

> On 12/21/2016 07:06 PM, Sam O'nella wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 5:54 PM, j...@cimmeri.com  wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> On 12/17/2016 1:23 PM, Stephen Pereira wrote:
> >>
> >>> I was (finally) lucky enough to acquire an Altair 680 back in
> November...
> >>>
> >> Is there any logic to the naming of these Altairs?   Wonder why it
> wasn't
> >> "Altair 8080" and "Altair 6800".   8800 and 680 don't follow the same
> >> pattern.
> >>
> >> --
> >>
> >> Had MITS made other Altairs...
> >>
> >> Altair 8800 = 8080
> >>8850 = 8085
> >>8860 = 8086
> >>8880 = 8088
> >>8286 = 80286
> >>8386 = 80386
> >>680  = 6800
> >>680  = 6809
> >>680  = 68000
> >>
> >> ;-),
> >>
> >> - JS
> >> 
> >>
> > lol, I would love to hear that too if anyone knows any stories behind the
> > naming. Used to hurt my head to remember that it was an 8800 not an 8080.
> > I know the fairly well published story about the name Altair but
> companies
> > and their model numbers are always odd.
> >
> My bets..
>
> I'd put $.09 on got the numbers wrong and went with it.
> then $0.01 on, it wasn't marketing.
> and $0.90 on, who cares.
>
> The 680 was from a market perspective a fail.  The successful 6800 was
> SWTP.
> The 6502 was dominated by Apple.
> The Z80 had more players and more names than all the rest.
>
> That of course is MY US centric view other countries had theirs too.
>
> Almost  all of the system naming of the day for the intel based systems
> and heirs
> (8080/8085/Z80/8088/8086) was irrational, illogical, and often just
> plain bad.
>
>
> Allison
>
>

General public machines (Was: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Fred Cisin]

We all hang out with people who are smart enough to see things the same 
way that we do.  Accordingly, our choices in computers, cars, cellphone 
providers always look to us like the MAJORITY.   They are the BEST, and 
certainly the MOST POPULAR [among everybody that WE hang out with], but 
not necessarily the best selling.


If the world were just, and the BEST outsold the worst, then we would all 
be using Amiga :-)



On Thu, 22 Dec 2016, drlegendre . wrote:

"The Z80 had more players and more names than all the rest"
And yet it was essentially a bit-player in the days of the 'home computer'
revolution - at least in the US. CBM, Apple, Atari - the three big names in
home computers, all went with the 6502 family. And perhaps even more
importantly, so did Nintendo, in the NES.


And yet, somehow, z80 was outselling 6502!

http://jeremyreimer.com/m-item.lsp?i=137

Radio Shack, TRS-80, WAS one of the "three big names".  It had a 
not-insignificant share of the market, and until 1982 was the best 
selling.  Don't ignore the impact of having incompetents peddling in 
thousands of store, in every city and town!

Atari took a while longer to get market share.
http://www.trs-80.org/was-the-trs-80-once-the-top-selling-computer/

At the same time.
Depending on how you define "first" ("first" to show V "first" to ship V 
"first" to be available for shelf purchase) will define whether Apple, 
Commodore, or Radio Shack was "the first".  It is trivially esay to select 
a definition of "first" to make it your choice of those.   Apple was 
the first of those announced and shown.
I bought a TRS-80 ($400 (or $600 if you wanted their composite monitor 
and cassette player)) because it was the first one [by multiple months] 
that I could walk in the door of a local store and buy one.  The more 
appealing Apple, which had been announced earlier that TRS-80, was hard to 
come by for several more months.


That time differential of months seems inconsequential 40 years later, but 
it mattered to me right then.  And, for most rational measures, Apple, 
TRS-80 and Commodore initial releases were a tie.

(Was the photo finish by a nose, a whisker, or a hoof?)
When the 5150 came out in August 1981, it was months before I could 
actually get one.


AFTER the 5150 came out, people relized that TRS-80 was doomed, and in 
1982, Apple 2 finally started to outsell TRS-80.  It was LESS obvious that 
Apple 2 was doomed.  But, within Apple, they knew there were troubled 
times ahead, and came out with the disastrous Apple 3, and disastrous 
[from point of view of SALES] Lisa.


'Course IBM poisoned the market for everything else, and nothing else sold 
like IBM.   On August 12, 1981, I said "In 10 years, 3/4 of the market 
will be IBM PC and imitations of it."

It is amazingly impressive that Apple (Mac) survived IBM!
(If you think that Mac outsold PC, then you are looking at YOUR circle, 
and need to look at actual sales numbers)
But, by the time that the Mac came out, TRS-80 was finally becoming that 
"bit player" that some assume that it was, or should have been.



The main use of Z80 in US home
computing was in the absurdly small Timex / Sinclair ZX80 series - with
their awful cramped membrane keyboards and seriously limited sound & video.
Which was years later, and WAS a bit player and absurdly small. It was 
NEVER the main use of Z80 in USA home computing.  TRS-80 outsold them 
more than 100 to 1.
Was that really a membrane keyboard, or was it just a PICTURE of a 
keyboard as a recommendation, like the "part of this complete breakfast".



The Z80 also showed up in the Osborne, Kaypro and TRS-80 models.. mostly
due to the fact that CP/M was written to it. Commodore also put one in the
C128, but by then, it was almost a dead letter.


CP/M was written to 8080.  Z80 was simply the "hottest" 8080 compatible 
processor available.
Osborne and Kaypro were literally years later, and they did, indeed simply 
build clever, innovative CP/M machines.


I've never been sure how much market share CP/M had, since that was a 
different circle than I was hanging out in.  I'm sure that WITHIN that 
circle, it would seem like it was MOST of the market.


Commodore's Z80 in the 128 was due to unnecessary fear that they might 
lose market share to CP/M, when IBM should have been their big worry.
I don't know all of the details of the ST/Amiga technology swap, but BOTH 
were too late, if the primary goal was competing with IBM.


What percentage of Apple 2's had Z80 cards added to them?
(once estimated at an unbelievable 20%, and reputed to be why IBM thought 
that CP/M was a Microsoft product!)



--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[allison]

On 12/21/2016 07:06 PM, Sam O'nella wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 5:54 PM, j...@cimmeri.com  wrote:
>
>>
>> On 12/17/2016 1:23 PM, Stephen Pereira wrote:
>>
>>> I was (finally) lucky enough to acquire an Altair 680 back in November...
>>>
>> Is there any logic to the naming of these Altairs?   Wonder why it wasn't
>> "Altair 8080" and "Altair 6800".   8800 and 680 don't follow the same
>> pattern.
>>
>> --
>>
>> Had MITS made other Altairs...
>>
>> Altair 8800 = 8080
>>8850 = 8085
>>8860 = 8086
>>8880 = 8088
>>8286 = 80286
>>8386 = 80386
>>680  = 6800
>>680  = 6809
>>680  = 68000
>>
>> ;-),
>>
>> - JS
>> 
>>
> lol, I would love to hear that too if anyone knows any stories behind the
> naming. Used to hurt my head to remember that it was an 8800 not an 8080.
> I know the fairly well published story about the name Altair but companies
> and their model numbers are always odd.
>
My bets..

I'd put $.09 on got the numbers wrong and went with it.
then $0.01 on, it wasn't marketing. 
and $0.90 on, who cares.

The 680 was from a market perspective a fail.  The successful 6800 was SWTP.
The 6502 was dominated by Apple.
The Z80 had more players and more names than all the rest.

That of course is MY US centric view other countries had theirs too.

Almost  all of the system naming of the day for the intel based systems
and heirs
(8080/8085/Z80/8088/8086) was irrational, illogical, and often just
plain bad.


Allison

Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[drlegendre .]

Dammat.

"were not limited" -> "were more limited"

On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 9:15 PM, drlegendre .  wrote:

> I have my own ridiculous ad-hoc hypothesis on this..
>
> Both names have a couple things in common - first, they do +not+ contain
> the actual CPU model. This may have been to avoid marketplace confusion and
> potential legal action from a outfit much bigger than Altair (Now who makes
> the 8080 again? Intel or Altair??).
>
> Secondly, the non-zero digits are in the same order in both model names -
> 680 (6800) and 8800 (8080). This most definitely does evoke the CPU model,
> and is easily recalled. The decision to go with 8800 (vs. 8008) may have
> been arbitrary, though "eighty-eighty" sounds a whole lot like
> "eighty-eight". The options for the 6800-based machine were not limited -
> other than 680, they had 6800 (sounds too much like 8800, though a case can
> be made for it..) and things like 6080 which would be just kind of weird
> (that's a well-known vacuum tube, btw).
>
> It's also worth noting that the 680 is physically smaller than the 8800,
> and the shorter three-digit model number seems to evoke a smaller product.
>
> On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 6:06 PM, Sam O'nella  wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 5:54 PM, j...@cimmeri.com  wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >
>> > On 12/17/2016 1:23 PM, Stephen Pereira wrote:
>> >
>> >> I was (finally) lucky enough to acquire an Altair 680 back in
>> November...
>> >>
>> >
>> > Is there any logic to the naming of these Altairs?   Wonder why it
>> wasn't
>> > "Altair 8080" and "Altair 6800".   8800 and 680 don't follow the same
>> > pattern.
>> >
>> > --
>> >
>> > Had MITS made other Altairs...
>> >
>> > Altair 8800 = 8080
>> >8850 = 8085
>> >8860 = 8086
>> >8880 = 8088
>> >8286 = 80286
>> >8386 = 80386
>> >680  = 6800
>> >680  = 6809
>> >680  = 68000
>> >
>> > ;-),
>> >
>> > - JS
>> > 
>> >
>> lol, I would love to hear that too if anyone knows any stories behind the
>> naming. Used to hurt my head to remember that it was an 8800 not an 8080.
>> I know the fairly well published story about the name Altair but companies
>> and their model numbers are always odd.
>>
>
>

Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[drlegendre .]

I have my own ridiculous ad-hoc hypothesis on this..

Both names have a couple things in common - first, they do +not+ contain
the actual CPU model. This may have been to avoid marketplace confusion and
potential legal action from a outfit much bigger than Altair (Now who makes
the 8080 again? Intel or Altair??).

Secondly, the non-zero digits are in the same order in both model names -
680 (6800) and 8800 (8080). This most definitely does evoke the CPU model,
and is easily recalled. The decision to go with 8800 (vs. 8008) may have
been arbitrary, though "eighty-eighty" sounds a whole lot like
"eighty-eight". The options for the 6800-based machine were not limited -
other than 680, they had 6800 (sounds too much like 8800, though a case can
be made for it..) and things like 6080 which would be just kind of weird
(that's a well-known vacuum tube, btw).

It's also worth noting that the 680 is physically smaller than the 8800,
and the shorter three-digit model number seems to evoke a smaller product.

On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 6:06 PM, Sam O'nella  wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 5:54 PM, j...@cimmeri.com  wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > On 12/17/2016 1:23 PM, Stephen Pereira wrote:
> >
> >> I was (finally) lucky enough to acquire an Altair 680 back in
> November...
> >>
> >
> > Is there any logic to the naming of these Altairs?   Wonder why it wasn't
> > "Altair 8080" and "Altair 6800".   8800 and 680 don't follow the same
> > pattern.
> >
> > --
> >
> > Had MITS made other Altairs...
> >
> > Altair 8800 = 8080
> >8850 = 8085
> >8860 = 8086
> >8880 = 8088
> >8286 = 80286
> >8386 = 80386
> >680  = 6800
> >680  = 6809
> >680  = 68000
> >
> > ;-),
> >
> > - JS
> > 
> >
> lol, I would love to hear that too if anyone knows any stories behind the
> naming. Used to hurt my head to remember that it was an 8800 not an 8080.
> I know the fairly well published story about the name Altair but companies
> and their model numbers are always odd.
>

Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Sam O'nella]

On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 5:54 PM, j...@cimmeri.com  wrote:

>
>
> On 12/17/2016 1:23 PM, Stephen Pereira wrote:
>
>> I was (finally) lucky enough to acquire an Altair 680 back in November...
>>
>
> Is there any logic to the naming of these Altairs?   Wonder why it wasn't
> "Altair 8080" and "Altair 6800".   8800 and 680 don't follow the same
> pattern.
>
> --
>
> Had MITS made other Altairs...
>
> Altair 8800 = 8080
>8850 = 8085
>8860 = 8086
>8880 = 8088
>8286 = 80286
>8386 = 80386
>680  = 6800
>680  = 6809
>680  = 68000
>
> ;-),
>
> - JS
> 
>
lol, I would love to hear that too if anyone knows any stories behind the
naming. Used to hurt my head to remember that it was an 8800 not an 8080.
I know the fairly well published story about the name Altair but companies
and their model numbers are always odd.

Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[j...@cimmeri.com]

On 12/17/2016 1:23 PM, Stephen Pereira 
wrote:

I was (finally) lucky enough to acquire an Altair 680 back in November...


Is there any logic to the naming of 
these Altairs?   Wonder why it wasn't 
"Altair 8080" and "Altair 6800".   8800 
and 680 don't follow the same pattern.


--

Had MITS made other Altairs...

Altair 8800 = 8080
   8850 = 8085
   8860 = 8086
   8880 = 8088
   8286 = 80286
   8386 = 80386
   680  = 6800
   680  = 6809
   680  = 68000

;-),

- JS

Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[j...@cimmeri.com]

On 12/17/2016 1:23 PM, Stephen Pereira 
wrote:

I was (finally) lucky enough to acquire an Altair 680 back in November, and I 
have been able to get it back up and running, too.


Is there any logic to the naming of 
these Altairs?   Wonder why it wasn't 
"Altair 8080" and "Altair 6800".   8800 
and 680 don't follow the same pattern.


- J.

Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Stephen Pereira]

Hello folks,

I was (finally) lucky enough to acquire an Altair 680 back in November, and I 
have been able to get it back up and running, too.

Now that I have a fully working stock Altair 680, I am interested in acquiring 
expansion boards for it.  If anyone has any Altair 680 expansion boards, 
especially a memory expansion board, that they are willing to part with, please 
let me know.

Thanks for listening.
smp
--
Stephen M. Pereira
Bedford, NH  03110
KB1SXE