9 Feb
1999
9 Feb
'99
3:06 a.m.
Cameron Kaiser wrote:
The 128 is a really fabulous machine. Its 64
compatibility, though, was its
curse and its salvation: the 64 mode made it sell reasonably well (at least
5-6 million, as I hear it), but also discouraged people from making programs
that really took advantage of the hardware, particularly the VDC 8563
80-column chip which is considered the last frontier in the Commodore 8-bit
world (partially Commodore's fault for documenting it so poorly and providing
such a crappy interface for getting data to it).
The internals of one of the C-128 chips led to the stories at Commodore of
employees who would randomly pick up a phone to see if someone was there.
It seems that a chip designer left off an interrupt from some facet of the
video system, and when asked why said that the programmers didn't have to
wait for an interupt, they could just check the status bit on the chip. The
programmers responded by walking over to the phone repeately to "check the
status". It became such a joke that it even carried over to after-hours
sessions at the local bar.
This and more is detailed on Dave Haynie's Deathbed Vigil video tape. A
must-see.
-ethan