CBM engineer Bil Herd to attend CommVEx 2015

[pwermonger]

Also Windows 3 (besides being released a full 4-5 years after Amiga OS 1.x) had very similar issues to Workbench still after all that time.

Issues such as only actual programs written for Windows being easy to use out of the box. Dos apps required the creation of PIF files manually by the user just like the Amiga user having to create a .icon file for a program that did not create one itself.

Though Workbench 2 which released about the same time as Windows 3 addressed that with a 'view all files' to allow viewing on Workbench files that did not have .info icon files.

Version 1.x workbench was a bit harder to use and not very stable until you got to 1.3, but a lot of that was addressed in 2.0

Guess folks trying to revise history don't recall Windows 3 computers coming to a halt when the simplest program locked up. People 'losing' programs when they accidentally pressed delete while reaching for the Enter key which to this day brings up the delete requester that defaults to 'yes' instead of 'no', deleting the icon (no trashcan) with no way to display it easily again. Got a lot of those calls back in Windows 3.1 days.

The advantage for business for Windows was the multiuser functions and networking which Commodore never managed to get into Workbench. But for home use, multiuser functions were rarely used even in Windows 95. First real use I would see for home users would be in XP and even that pretty rare. Usually just to give children locked down functions while the adults all used one user for their unrestricted use.

[ElPolloDiabl]

Other OSes were still popular until Windows 95 was released. Games would still be run from DOS until then.

I don't think much of the C128 in retrospect either. You could have had an upgraded C64, but it was just old technology.

[Fats]

First, multi-tasking on an Amiga appears to be cooperative rather than priority based.

Amiga is pure round-robin priority based multi-tasking; meaning that programs with priority 1 will starve programs with priority 0.

Second, stability seemed to be an issue.
That is a polite way of saying they were crash prone.

This because of the lack of memory protection. Making a cheap machine at that time with a m68k with MMU was not possible.

[Pentad]

The Commodore 64 was my first computer and it will always have a special place in my heart.  I loved that computer.  However, the Commodore 128 was everything that I wish the Commodore 64 had been.  It was an amazing computer for the time...

[Iggy]

Amiga is pure round-robin priority based multi-tasking; meaning that programs with priority 1 will starve programs with priority 0.



This because of the lack of memory protection. Making a cheap machine at that time with a m68k with MMU was not possible.

Thanks Staf,
I knew that, but suddenly I'm being attacked as trying to "rewrite history".
Funny, I was using OS' that had kernel level support for priority based preemptive multitasking during the period.
AND I'm pretty sure I had a copy of Win3.0 before most of the rest of you (as my copy was a pre-release version given to me by IBM engineers).

And please guys, don't mistake my statements as supporting Windows.
It was easy to learn to use, but it had major flaws.

[Plaz]

Do you still have those programs?  You could release them for CommVEx!

Not sure what may have survived, but I'll take a look. 2 games only got as far as basic screen art, font maps and engine designs, which I don't think I saved.

However there was a basic animated sprite designer I was fond of that may still exist. Primitive by today's standards, but I thought very keen for 1985. Combination of basic and machine routine calls. Even included an effect I called "sprite ghosting" which made sprites appear transparent.

Now can I find my 5-1/4 boxes ,and what did I do with the D128?... hmmmm

Plaz

[Plaz]

Are you chaps trying to rewrite history here?

Opps, no just getting old and confused. lol
I can only guess somehow in the wee hours memories of 1980's and 1990's were some how converging. yikes.


Plaz

[RobertB]

However there was a basic animated sprite designer I was fond of that may still exist.Primitive by today's standards, but I thought very keen for 1985. Combination of basic and machine routine calls. Even included an effect I called "sprite ghosting" which made sprites appear transparent.

Very interesting!  I never heard of sprite ghosting.

Now can I find my 5-1/4 boxes ,and what did I do with the D128?...

 And how did you get a D128?!

FCUG celebrating 33 years,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm
July 18-19 Commodore Vegas Expo v11 -
http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex

[Plaz]

Just a bit of a type-o there Robert. That should read 128D for the A1000 looking desktop version.

So the old good news, bad news, sorta good news routine.
Good, I found the 128 and it still works.... mostly. No color. Probably old caps.
Bad, most of my old floppies are no where to be found.
Good, I found a folder with a print out copy of the basic code to the program.
I never trusted media storage even way back then
Not so good, that's 500 lines to try and type back in. :razz:  

A quick pic of the menu. The bank of 8 sprites would be displayed under 0-7 below.
Helpful to see them all at once while working out animations. I'm not sure without studying closer, but I don't think this version included the "ghost". But that was an easy trick to add on. basically put sprite asm manipulation code in to zero page and call with the 1/60 interrupt routine. In the early stages of working on this program the 128 locked up one day turning all sprites transparent. Don't know how or why it happened, but lead me to working out a way to do it on purpose.



Plaz