27 Jun
2012
27 Jun
'12
9:13 a.m.
On 27 June 2012 07:47, Joachim Thiemann <joachim.thiemann at gmail.com> wrote:
I think there is a little bit of history repeating - and in part, it's
a deliberate move by the creators. ?In particular, remember the
ZX80/81; technically not very exciting; but cheap enough for anyone to
get it. ?That made it influential. ?The same argument can be made for
the Vic 20.
Yes, although I think those are maybe poor examples. The ZX8[0|1] was
so *very* limited - no graphics, no sound, 1K of RAM. The VIC20 had
sound and graphics but a laughably low screen resolution - 22 columns
of text, I believe?
The better comparison would be the ZX Spectrum, I think.
Compare the R? with the BeagleBoard, PandaBoard, maybe the Hawkboard,
or the CottonCandy or ThinSlice or the other machines I wrote about
for the Register.
It has less RAM than most of them, a lot slower CPU, fewer ports,
fewer card slots - but it's a full 32-bit RISC computer with 256MB of
RAM, a few gig of nonvolatile local storage, basic I/O and an
expansion bus.
Compare the ZX Spectrum with its contemporaries - the Commodore 64,
BBC Micro, Oric-1, Dragon-32.
They all had better keyboards (even if only slightly for the Oric).
They all had better sound, probably some kind of graphics chip and
better/faster (or both) graphics, most had more ports, more
expandability - joysticks, ROM cartridges, disk drives, etc.
But the Spectrum was the cheapest and it had the essentials: colour
graphics, if poor; sound, if poor; and an expansion slot so you could
add a huge variety of peripherals. It only had 16K or 48K of RAM, but
48K plus the ROM filled the address space of the Z80, so it seemed
reasonable.
The ZX Spectrum and the R? have both been cut right down to bare
essentials, but they do have all the stuff you actually /need/.
The selection of games on the Spectrum was as good as on the
much-better-games-machine C64. OK, the Spectrum ones looked and
sounded rubbish compared to the CBM ones, but I can attest that they
were just as much fun to play. :?)
--
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