First console and computer not progammed in assembly?

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PeterJ
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Re: First console and computer not progammed in assembly?

Post by PeterJ »

There was the Jupiter Ace which used Forth and although the machine could not be considered a success it did run much faster than BASIC.
Nomad
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Re: First console and computer not progammed in assembly?

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PeterJ wrote: Sat Feb 24, 2018 8:31 am There was the Jupiter Ace which used Forth and although the machine could not be considered a success it did run much faster than BASIC.
Yea I was being a potato - when I said Dragon 32 I should have said Jupiter Ace. :lol:

Hector HRX. Cannon Cat also 80s examples of Forth microcomputers. But in fairness I think a Jupiter Ace that had a price point of multi thousand dollars like the Cannon Cat would have been a killer development system.
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Re: First console and computer not progammed in assembly?

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Jupiter Ace was a commecial fail because it was released AFTER Zx Spectrum, yet it was a machine at the level of ZX81 with it's black and white graphics capabilities.

Speaking of Basic, actually Basic doesn't need to run as slow as it did. Let's be honest, the existing Basic implementations were far from perfection. Spectrum Basic was still good, compare let's say C64 Basic where you couldn't draw a line or circle.

But I believe it would be possible to make a Basic that you run let's say 4 times faster as existing one. And would have support for sprite drawing which would enable doing much more advanced games.
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Re: First console and computer not progammed in assembly?

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That is true, just look at what you can do with MSX Basic. With a well though out system design and not skimping on hardware you can have a pretty kick ass microcomputer.

I think what crippled a lot of the microcomputers released for the UK market was they were often rushed to market and created on a shoestring. If there were more time for the development then sure you could have had more time to develop better Basic or more creativity with the hardware. But when the price point was already so low I guess a lot of corners had to be cut to meet the budget specification. And they were rushing to market.

When you look at machines that had decent development budgets, realistic hardware specifications vs features. It is a different story. Again MSX is a great example.

You didn't need to spend a fortune either, Atari managed to create an outstanding system with the 800. But they had some of the best people in the business working for them at the time so it makes sense they could hit a home run. To be honest its a shame the Atari didn't take off more in the UK like it did in Poland. Perhaps they have better taste in your neck of the woods :lol:

But even if you had a very high price point to enable good hardware choices, you still had weird issues like the Apple II having such a weird display. With all the money they had it was still an idiosyncratic machine.
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PeterJ
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Re: First console and computer not progammed in assembly?

Post by PeterJ »

Ralf wrote: Sat Feb 24, 2018 10:34 am

But I believe it would be possible to make a Basic that you run let's say 4 times faster as existing one. And would have support for sprite drawing which would enable doing much more advanced games.
I keep meaning to have a play with the HiSoft Colt compiler. It has sprite support too:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=8254
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Re: First console and computer not progammed in assembly?

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Ralf wrote: Sat Feb 24, 2018 10:34 am Speaking of Basic, actually Basic doesn't need to run as slow as it did. Let's be honest, the existing Basic implementations were far from perfection. Spectrum Basic was still good, compare let's say C64 Basic where you couldn't draw a line or circle.

But I believe it would be possible to make a Basic that you run let's say 4 times faster as existing one. And would have support for sprite drawing which would enable doing much more advanced games.
Compared to Sinclair BASIC? Easily. Even machines like the Amstrad CPC run rings around Sinclair BASIC, despite there not actually being that huge a difference in CPU grunt (and certainly not enough to account for the much larger display file). The Spectrum's implementation was mostly crippled by being based on the ZX81 version (which was optimized to squeeze into just 8K) as well as space being reserved to put the Microdrive code into it, though that ultimately never happened due to delays.

SAM Basic was supposed to be pretty good, with support for using the full 512K memory as well as commands for doing things like palette changes on specific scan lines and some primitive sprite-like drawing capabilities. And, again, that was on a machine which wasn't all that much faster than a Speccy.
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