The 20 greatest home computers according to the Guardian

[PeterJ]

[mention]1024MAK[/mention] ,

I've never understood the love of the CPC. I know there are some ways around it but standard resolution with 16 colours is just 160x200.

Higher resolutions again in standard modes drops it to 4 or 2 colours.

Having said that the excitement when I saw the machine in Your Computer with a screen included was amazing.

[1024MAK]

Yeah, but there is only so much data that a Z80 can move around.

So just like the BBC B and various other machines with bit mapped displays, you always get a compromise between resolutions and number of colours

I thought that the CPC 464 was good value (not that I bought one, because I already had a Speccy) at the time because you got a nice Z80 based machine with a 64k bytes of RAM, a proper keyboard, built in tape deck, reasonable monitor, a good BASIC and a possible 27 colours even if the number on screen was a bit limited (4), or the resolution was a chunky.

And just like many other machines, soon tricks were found to enable slightly better graphics compared to the standard modes.

Mark

[1024MAK]

...the resolution was a chunky.

Add “bit” between “was a” and “chunky”

I obviously was a bit tired when I wrote that

Mark

[1024MAK]

Some here will remember the name Memotech. The man behind various expansions for the ZX81 and the Memotech MTX500 / MTX512 computers, Geoff Boyd, has penned a critical response to the article linked in the first post: https://discussion.theguardian.com/comm ... /143585778

Mark

[PeterJ]

Thanks [mention]1024MAK[/mention],

That is a great read.

Peter

[akeley]

The man behind various expansions for the ZX81 and the Memotech MTX500 / MTX512 computers, Geoff Boyd, has penned a critical response to the article linked in the first post.

Interesting take, but he misses the point of the article by a huge margin. It was a general attempt to paint a broader picture, of machines which as it says "inspired a generation of gamers and programmers". And Boyd's ranking is totally UK centric and concentrates on early options. It's also totally biased since he worked on this stuff

[catmeows]

Recently I have discovered a yugoslavian computer Galaksija. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaksija_(computer)
Quite an underdog but with very interesting history.

[1024MAK]

But unless you set out some rules / criteria, any list will be biased, because it is so subjective...

Also note that although I agree with some of what he (Geoff Boyd) says, I don’t agree with everything he says.

If it’s supposed to be a world wide list, why is it mainly U.K., U.S.A. and Japanese computers that are in the Guardian article?

Sharps Z80 based computers aren’t mentioned. The various manufacturers of CP/M machines aren’t mentioned. Olivetti and Thompson (the French company) aren’t mentioned. The various ZX Spectrum ‘clones’ from the USSR aren’t mentioned.

Heck, the U.K. alone had more than twenty home computers that were available in the 1980s.

In my part of the world, in the 1980s, the only American computers that were easy to find for sale were from TI and Commodore. If you searched, maybe you would have been able to find a Tandy with some computers. But Apple computers were rare because they were so expensive.

Oh, and BTW the TRS80 is not the computer that they have a photo of...

Mark

[akeley]

If it’s supposed to be a world wide list, why is it mainly U.K., U.S.A. and Japanese computers that are in the Guardian article?

Sharps Z80 based computers aren’t mentioned. The various manufacturers of CP/M machines aren’t mentioned. Olivetti and Thompson (the French company) aren’t mentioned. The various ZX Spectrum ‘clones’ from the USSR aren’t mentioned.

Well, it's supposed to be a top twenty, so you can't mention every single machine. And his article had a set of rules - the most influential for games and programmers.
Mr Boyd's take read more like "Top 5 UK's micros from 1978-1983". Sure, you can do that, but it's much more limiting and Guardian is a world wide website.

Overall, I'm not saying that article is perfect or that I agree totally with his ranking, just that given the impossibility of creating a list which would please everybody* he did not do too badly. His top 5 is rather forward-thinking and quite good. And sorry, much as I love Sinclair stuff #1 does not belong to ZX81

*I'm pretty sure most other platform-specific forums have a "we wuz robbed" thread going on

[1024MAK]

And his article had a set of rules - the most influential for games and programmers.

It actually says:

Games
The 20 greatest home computers – ranked!
They seemed like the future … and here we are. We remember the key PC machines that inspired a generation of gamers and programmers

That’s not what I call a set of rules...

The point with the ZX81 is that it’s success was the reason that the ZX Spectrum was developed. So it was a key machine IMHO.

And I already said that I don’t agree with everything that Geoff Boyd said.

Mark

[p13z]

The zeddie was also a masterpiece of minimal design. It was a proof of concept for a super cheap, mass market home computer.

[Alessandro]

Recently I have discovered a yugoslavian computer Galaksija. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaksija_(computer)
Quite an underdog but with very interesting history.

Tomaz Kac et al. wrote a Galaksija emulator for the Spectrum, you might be interested in it.

[vanpeebles]

It's a poor list and newspapers are gash