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   Mark Shane Hayden (msh@coales.co)'s status on Sunday, 14-Jan-2024 09:10:46 JST Mark Shane Hayden

   • Noel's Retro Lab

   @mos_8502 @NoelsRetroLab also TIL that Amstrad CPC was a truly hack design, which is totally in keeping with the Amstrad Way to be honest

   • Embed this notice
     gnutelephony (gnutelephony@floss.social)'s status on Sunday, 14-Jan-2024 09:10:42 JST gnutelephony

     in reply to

     • Bread80
     • Noel's Retro Lab

     @msh @bread80 @NoelsRetroLab @mos_8502 I was actually engineering director at Amstrad USA in 1985. It was a subsidiary of Indescomp (based in Spain) and was formed to modify and sell the Amstrad CPC into the US market, thru Sears. This rather bizarre arrangement was put together by a South American coal mogul, Jamie Pero who later that year fled the US to avoid unpaid taxes. As for cutting corners and being cheapskates, yes, this was very true especially given all that happened that year.

   • Embed this notice
     Mark Shane Hayden (msh@coales.co)'s status on Sunday, 14-Jan-2024 09:10:43 JST Mark Shane Hayden

     in reply to

     • Bread80
     • Noel's Retro Lab

     @bread80 oh absolutely, though I would say Amstrad's cost-driven hardware hackery skills are right up there with Commodore, the latter of whom had the advantage of owning MOS/CSG so could extend the hackery fully into the ICs themselves. Amstrad of course flexed these skills in HiFi.

     The whole industry was notorious for corner cutting, but at great detriment to usability (horrible keyboards, lack of power, poor graphics and sound etc). Commodore and Amstrad seemed to be leaders in finding ways to cut cost that preserved desirable features...and sometimes caused frustration for programmers!

     @NoelsRetroLab @mos_8502

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     Bread80 (bread80@mstdn.social)'s status on Sunday, 14-Jan-2024 09:10:44 JST Bread80

     in reply to

     • Noel's Retro Lab

     @NoelsRetroLab @msh @mos_8502 I think the IO decoding is one of the Amstrads biggest flaws (along with the RAM banking schema).

     But they were far from the only company at the time to hack things to keep the cost down.

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     Bread80 (bread80@mstdn.social)'s status on Friday, 26-Jan-2024 23:47:52 JST Bread80

     in reply to

     • Noel's Retro Lab

     @NoelsRetroLab @mos_8502 @msh The more I learn about the Enterprise the more disappointed I become that it is so poorly understood.

     Bitmap, character and attribute graphics. Multiple video modes on screen *at the same time*, (basic) video pass through capabilities. Just incredible.

   • Embed this notice
     Noel's Retro Lab (noelsretrolab@bitbang.social)'s status on Friday, 26-Jan-2024 23:47:54 JST Noel's Retro Lab

     in reply to

     • Bread80

     @bread80 @mos_8502 @msh Yeah, I would agree with all of the above! I actually didn't know the Enterprise was so flexible. Very cool.

   • Embed this notice
     Mark Shane Hayden (msh@coales.co)'s status on Friday, 26-Jan-2024 23:47:54 JST Mark Shane Hayden

     in reply to

     • Bread80
     • Noel's Retro Lab

     @NoelsRetroLab yeah the Enterprise micros were pretty amazing...they were 8-bit systems that were legit competitive with contemporary 16-bit machines in capability IIRC...flexible memory management and impressive graphics and sound

     @bread80 @mos_8502

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     Bread80 (bread80@mstdn.social)'s status on Friday, 26-Jan-2024 23:47:56 JST Bread80

     in reply to

     • Noel's Retro Lab

     @mos_8502 @NoelsRetroLab @msh I’m probably spoilt because I’ve been looking at the Enterprise design. It can put any 16k memory block into any bank. And video gets a dedicated 64k block.

     In contrast the Amstrads available options are very limited. Also, the restriction to having video in the base 64k. And the system (effectively) also has to go in the base 64k.

     Enterprise designed this in from the start. The Amstrad came later but didn’t even consider it.

   • Embed this notice
     Noel's Retro Lab (noelsretrolab@bitbang.social)'s status on Friday, 26-Jan-2024 23:47:57 JST Noel's Retro Lab

     in reply to

     • Bread80

     @bread80 @msh @mos_8502 What would you say was the main drawback of the RAM banking? Not flexible enough?