There's also a board that plugs in under the TED that can supply the RAM and handle the necessary decoding without desoldering and without making other connections.
It's funny how the C16 got the black breadbin case and the 64 went with the at the time standard beige. These days things would have been the exact opposite with beige being replaced by white or something. I actually had a Plus 4 as a kid that my father brought home with his 64 from a flea market. Had a simple mini DIN to DB9 cable that worked fine with Quickshot joysticks.
I grew up with the C16, when I was younger I didn't really know about the other systems and never actually cared, leaving me only with some fond memories. :) But, since I still own it, might as well look at some upgrades! Thanks
wished for the C16 to upgrade my Vic 20, but by the time my birthday came around, it had been discontinued, so my parents gave me the C128 instead. Wow, the BASIC on the C128 was just awesome. I think it was commodore user which published a two-page list of all available games for the C16 at the time.
You aren't alone in loving the look of the C16. I did a Sixty Clone build (because I was bored and wanted to) and went with a black case to match the look. I was sad at the time I couldn't get a black breadbin case due to the port changes between the C64 and C16, but now that is changing
I always thought that the Plus 4 was a really neat machine -- not from a technical perspective, really, but because it was sexy looking and had a neat-o form factor. I didn't really care about the productivity software that was built-in, but it felt solid and heavy and thought that it would be a decent machine if it had sprites and a SID. Boo on it that it had a different interface for floppy drives but I get it, it was an improved (but clunky looking) parallel interface that thankfully ran faster than the C64's broken IEC.
TED outputs two separate pulses for voice channels. Why can’t it add up the length upfront? Why only one volume? Why only 16 bit timer? I wonder if TED is over-integrated and gets hot. What about two chips? One slow chip runs alternating to the CPU at 0.9 MHz and buffers the bad lines A fast chip generated said slower clock, color clock, pixel clock, smooth x scrolling, palette. To keep the pin count, only the fast part reads the 8bit databus directly. Both parts are connected by directionally 8 data pins, 1 mode pin?, and the slow clock. I still feel like the pull up resistors limit the clock rate. So what if the slow part only has pull down transistors on the communication pins? Open drain. The fast chip could actively pull down or just have lower resistance. This does not work well within large logic circuits, but the fast chip could “power” inverters on the slow side. Two Powerlines and we get a multiplexer to save pins. And two sprites for the players or mouse pointer and cursor
I guess the Ted chip thing with the joystick adaptor has to do with fanout current. You really don't want to increase the current draw on the Ted, so buffering is a good idea.
Well, the shipping is a bit complicated to the EU. We have to pay the VAT upon arrival, if the webshop or the seller not charging it. We have to pay the customs too, if the price, the VAT and the shipping cost sum over $150,-/€150,-. This was a big change in 2021, because of Aliexpress, Banggood and other webshops. They sent the packages so(labelled as gift, smaple, or writing BS prices on the labels), that they can bypass the customs and the VAT.
9:53 Good, I was wondering about that. I am always hesitant to cut into motherboards, so knowing that bending a leg will work just fine is good to know. Great video. Been looking to add one or two 264s to my collection. And yes, I do like the C16 more aesthetically compared to the Plus/4 and C116 but the Plus/4 at least has a user port, so you can use the Super Nintendo controller when playing games like Attack of the PETSCII Robots. But afaik, that's the only games for this series that uses it so maybe a moot point in all other cases.
Yeah, you don't even need to remove the chip if you don't want to. Just snip the leg(s) and solder a wire to it. If you ever want to revert the mod, just remove the wire and reconnect the leg with a bit of solder
Not complaining, but if it were me, I might would have changed and socket the muxes for prevention if those were indeed MOS parts. Never mind. I watched further and you commented on that, but you didn't have a replacement.
the joystick converter is nice, just not going to pay 35 dollar + addittional shipping cost for that there are so many other things on retro computers I still want to buy
I bought a few years back a joystick with built-in c64 games, worked nice... Also "Another visitor, stay a while, stay forever!!!" impossible mission. Nice vid, nice work you do on those old ones... I got me a phat ps2 with a bit of an error in de cd drive, can't find replacement. Any suggestions?
Jack Tramiel wanted to sell these at a lower price than the Sinclair ZX Spectrum to compete with them. They are the final straw for him when the Commodore board wanted to price them the same as the C64 and include ROM software and so he left Commodore and bought Atari. He showed them at CES (there is a photo) two days later he was gone along with a few of Commodore's engineers.
@@Nukle0n While the C128 has a quirky design, it was a very successful computer that sold nearly 5 million units, more than anything else except the C64 and the Apple II series. If you remove the Apple IIgs from the Apple series, then the C128 also outsold the Apple II series. The C128 has twice as much RAM and almost all of it is available from BASIC 7. The CPU can be twice as fast. It can do 80 columns. It can run CP/M software although the speed isn't great. The two biggest problems with the C128 in my view is that it has a C64 mode and that it has two video chips instead of one with the capabilities of both. It really needed an 80 column, 2 MHz VIC-II+. As for the C64 mode, I think this is why there is so little software for the C128. Why release a C128 version of your game or app when the C128 owners can run it in C64 mode? The C128 should have been a C64 with the MMU added to support more banks of RAM, with a BASIC 7 that was backward compatible with BASIC 2, and capable of running at 1 or 2 MHz. By not having a C128 mode, games and software would be the same except they could also check whether they were running on a C128 and then make use of the extra RAM, speed and graphics modes. Of course, this would have meant the C128 wasn't 99.9% backward compatible, but I expect it could have still achieved 95% compatibility and some games and apps could have easily been tweaked to run on both. With these changes, the C128 might have nearly outsold the C64 itself. Unlike Apple, Atari, Acorn, etc, Commodore didn't try very hard to make its home 8-bit computers backward compatible. The PET series were and the Amiga series were, but otherwise, no. A second SID would also have been nice for stereo output.
@@Nukle0n The C128 was meant to be a modest improvement over the c64 that would last a year or two. Not become a major product. It was a shelf filler until the next major project came along.
You could also heat up the chip leg and push it out and fold it over, and then solder the address wire to it. I get that you don't want to go back but... Always feels a little dangerous when you start cutting traces
The Cpu is technically a fair amount faster than the C64. However because of the memory access time it ends up giving back a lot of that performance. Demosceners get a lot out of the Plus4.
Are the phases of unequal length? I don’t understand how memory can serve a 1.8 MHz 6502 . Or how can a 6502 be optimized to run at 1.8 MHz, but most of the time is slowed down to 0.9 ? NMOS is not as flexibel as CMOS.
Originally I wanted to comment about not being able to upvote the video as the counter was at exactly 264 - now it's gone further, so I upvote. (the TED machines were known internally to CBM as the 264 series) I came retro with the Commodore 16. All I knew before were IBM compatibles. My dad bought a C16 in '85 when they were in the bargain bin and never used it much. When I got over the amazingness of being able to write text on my friggin' TV and the ?SYNTAX ERROR.s, I wondered what you could do with it, why HELP does nothing, how can I change colors etc. and read the manual and... you gotta program it yourself! So I taught me how to code (beyond poorly) with this machine. Eventually I got better and found out that the by the time just slightly outdated 486 "family" PC also had QBasic on it and it came with games I could hack (Nibbles eventually ended up supporting 8 players simultaneously), that was when I knew what I wanted to do. Btw. my +4 has MT-RAMs. They still work. Guess miracles do exist.
I also just did a temporary 64K upgrade for the C16 (borrowing the RAMs from my C64). I wanted to run some more sophisticated Demos to test my upcomming TEDdigitizer.
Let's be fair toward the TED series of machines. The design engineer of the system (Bil Herd) never intended it to be competition or an improvement over the C64. In his own words "If you want a gaming machine, go buy a c64". He was trying to design a super cheap TExt Display (TED) computer for business. And it was only meant to be 49 dollars originally. In his own words, Mr. Herd described the system as "The raspberry pi of its day". Meaning a small cheap computer with versatility. But then Jack Tramiel left the company, and the new management had no clue was the system was meant to do. So a flood of middle management and marketing guys got their hands on it, modded it, bumped the price WAY up, tacked on a cheesy suit of business software, and then tried to sell it. And it failed horribly. So with this in mind, suddenly things like the changed joystick ports make sense. Mr Herd was trying to make it as cheap as possible, and also trying to make it fit a small case. That strange breadbin case was a marketing department decision.
The problem with the 64K upgrade this way is that there are a couple of (not great, admittedly) original games, that were written in a way, they can't work with 64K. At least that's what I'm told. There's also a solderless, switchable 64K SRAM mod, called the SaRuMan TED. I have that in my C16, works great. But installing that, makes less of an exciting video, for sure. :) The joystick adapter is great tho'. And I would be interested in the RF modulator replacement.
And a bit of a personal note. The 264 series was the first computer I ever got in touch with. The "Commodore just dumped the stock in the European market" has more twists to it. They were school computers in Hungary in the mid-to-late 80s (yes, before the fall of the Iron Curtain!), after Commodore made a deal with the government, which was looking to equip more schools - even elementary schools! - with computers at the time, to future proof our education. How the tides have turned... But anyway... This also means, the series became very popular in Hungary, much more so than in other countries, especially when it became available for "normal" people to buy. Parents of course bought for kids whatever they had in school. 40 years later, this makes Hungary very likely _the_ number one 264 series powerhouse in the world, so many of us grew up with these things. All the "I'm not going to try to pronounce these names" in various YT videos about the series are of course Hungarian names. On Plus/4 World, out of 1105 registered members, 412 are from Hungary. (With Germany being 2nd with 318.) So yeah. Welcome to our childhood. It doesn't sound as good as a SID, but it's more colorful than the VIC... Enjoy your stay!
We do know why they used mini DIN connectors for the joysticks. The internals were designed for the Commodore 116 which has a tiny case and there wasn't physically room for full sized ports.
We still have ours from the 80s. There were 3rd party joysticks with the din connector. But we bought adaptors to db9 in the end. We seem to have misplaced the adaptors, however a couple of months ago I was in a retro shop and found an original commodore one. First time I'd ever seen an official one. Works perfectly. Dad still has his C16 set up. Dozens of cassette games. Still works fine with no repairs yet other than a repalcement power supply. sooo many childhood hours spent on this machine before I got my Amiga!
To add insult to injury, even though Commodore made the joystick ports incompatible with the industry standard (at the time) DB9 port so that people had to buy THEIR joysticks (or so they thought), they still neglected to add buttons to the joystick so that two or three button controllers would be the new standard. Even when the Amiga was released Commodore STILL only had ONE button on their joysticks. Aggravating that they also changed the Datasette port so that no one could use the Datasette they already had! Commodore engineer Bil Herd has several videos on TH-cam where he talks a bit about many of these brain-dead decisions by upper management.
Atari also had a lot of colors. Just so sad that Commodore did not max out memory speed for nice pictures. Luminance is just a R2R DAC, but chromance is still a mystery to me. I take it that Commodore used an inverter chain with multiple taps for chroma. But then they also need a variable gain amplifier for saturation? I still think that it would be easier to phase lock then inverter chain in the color clock. Then you replay sine curves from RAM. 4 digital delays (sampling rate) and amplification: bit shift for 1/2 1/4. Add these for 3/4 .
The C16 (and Plus 4) was a total dud, I don't know what Tramiel was thinking, this was the point Commodore's fortunes started to go in the wrong direction.
I never gave these machines much respect. I always looked down on them as being inferior to the C64. If they had had a SID chip, and a better graphics chip, they could have been superior. I do kind of like the Plus-4's case though. I do find it amazing what talented programmers have been able to do with them despite their limitations.
The graphics chip should have been able to shown more colors. Supposedly the C64 needed to look better, but it would have been so cool if TED had a register to max out the speed of the RAM. Then it could try read multiple bitplanes at 1kB apart. Also please read the “bad Lines” in the border. And allow the CPU to set the start address top left for all directions scrolling.
If the C16/Plus4 TED family had a SID chip (or two) and equal (or better) graphics than the C64 they might have had a better acceptance. No sprites was the Achilles heel.
That's not what the system was meant to be. It was not a replacement for the C64. It was supposed to be a cheap business machine that cost 49 dollars. If you wanted a gaming computer, just go buy a C64. Marketing and middle management ruined the project because Jack Tramiel left the company.
The MOS TTL chip will be fine, the problematic ones are the MUX's. While MOS TTL chips have a higher failure rate than name brand TTL chips, the failure rate is fairly low.
They should have mass produced the 32kb model without the plus4 to have a proper stab at the £99 computer that only kids ended up with.....if it was 64kb.........developers would have taken it on straight away with their flagship software at the conventions
Hello I enjoyed that video until the end where you said it could be worse , very naughty you seriously need to reevaluate your opinion of the ZX Spectrum you'll be surprised for such a basic machine the range of games and the absolute massive fan club that is involved with it , yes it has a lack of Sid chip and it has coloured Clash on many games ,but it makes up with high resolution graphics and overall compared to the Commodore the range of games are more playable and superior pixel-wise , and run extremely well except for racing games where the Commodore has the edge , if you like I will suggest some brand new games that will blow your mind for the Zx spectrum and you will be surprised on the 128 k version the amount of amazing AY sound tunes that you get with some of these games , including games developed with the Nirvana engine .. Colin porch is a good friend of mine and as programmed for the Commodore, did the conversion Head Over Heels which was supposed to be not possible , it's almost a complete port from the spectrum version but runs a lot slower but amazing that he even works at all on The Commodore 64. And also the amazing work from Richard Hollings and many others on the beeper music you can get which will also blow your mind ,still good video
Sounds like they were looking for an excuse. I could never understand why the Plus 4 had those silly din connectors when I had mine but now hearing about the case design interfering with the ports it makes sense
Interesting little bit about that compatibility: the c16 has a different character map to the 64/128. I tried running the one line maze generator basic program you see here and there, and the 16 just dumped out a bunch of MMNNNMMNMNMNN characters.
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 88 | คู่เอก "ป้อมเพชร vs อัสลามจอน"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1ZqTVVbMgbo/mqdefault.jpg)
"could be a spectrum"! How very dare you sir! 😂
A quick mod to improve image quality: Just bridge FB13 (close to the video connector) and enjoy a much cleaner image.
Great video. Last years many great games were made fotlr and ported to the Plus/4. I show them on real hardware.
There's also a board that plugs in under the TED that can supply the RAM and handle the necessary decoding without desoldering and without making other connections.
It's funny how the C16 got the black breadbin case and the 64 went with the at the time standard beige. These days things would have been the exact opposite with beige being replaced by white or something.
I actually had a Plus 4 as a kid that my father brought home with his 64 from a flea market. Had a simple mini DIN to DB9 cable that worked fine with Quickshot joysticks.
I grew up with the C16, when I was younger I didn't really know about the other systems and never actually cared, leaving me only with some fond memories. :) But, since I still own it, might as well look at some upgrades! Thanks
wished for the C16 to upgrade my Vic 20, but by the time my birthday came around, it had been discontinued, so my parents gave me the C128 instead. Wow, the BASIC on the C128 was just awesome. I think it was commodore user which published a two-page list of all available games for the C16 at the time.
You aren't alone in loving the look of the C16. I did a Sixty Clone build (because I was bored and wanted to) and went with a black case to match the look. I was sad at the time I couldn't get a black breadbin case due to the port changes between the C64 and C16, but now that is changing
5:30 Run Stop Restore is in The Netherlands!
Thanks for the mention! (It's my shop :) )
@@mbosschaart I'm a customer! :)
Evie's cart has an adapter for the +4 series machines.
I always thought that the Plus 4 was a really neat machine -- not from a technical perspective, really, but because it was sexy looking and had a neat-o form factor. I didn't really care about the productivity software that was built-in, but it felt solid and heavy and thought that it would be a decent machine if it had sprites and a SID. Boo on it that it had a different interface for floppy drives but I get it, it was an improved (but clunky looking) parallel interface that thankfully ran faster than the C64's broken IEC.
TED outputs two separate pulses for voice channels. Why can’t it add up the length upfront? Why only one volume? Why only 16 bit timer?
I wonder if TED is over-integrated and gets hot. What about two chips? One slow chip runs alternating to the CPU at 0.9 MHz and buffers the bad lines A fast chip generated said slower clock, color clock, pixel clock, smooth x scrolling, palette. To keep the pin count, only the fast part reads the 8bit databus directly. Both parts are connected by directionally 8 data pins, 1 mode pin?, and the slow clock. I still feel like the pull up resistors limit the clock rate. So what if the slow part only has pull down transistors on the communication pins? Open drain. The fast chip could actively pull down or just have lower resistance. This does not work well within large logic circuits, but the fast chip could “power” inverters on the slow side. Two Powerlines and we get a multiplexer to save pins.
And two sprites for the players or mouse pointer and cursor
I guess the Ted chip thing with the joystick adaptor has to do with fanout current. You really don't want to increase the current draw on the Ted, so buffering is a good idea.
24 minutes of absolute relaxing bliss. Thanks for all your hard work.
Thank you for reviewing my game...
I got a C16 in my stash that i haven't looked at in years. Might be time to dust it off and do an upgrade.
The 600XL can also be upgraded to 64K with at pair of 4464 rams.
I never even knew the C16 even existed until right now😅😂 and i have a c64, vic20 and atari 600xl
Well, the shipping is a bit complicated to the EU. We have to pay the VAT upon arrival, if the webshop or the seller not charging it. We have to pay the customs too, if the price, the VAT and the shipping cost sum over $150,-/€150,-. This was a big change in 2021, because of Aliexpress, Banggood and other webshops. They sent the packages so(labelled as gift, smaple, or writing BS prices on the labels), that they can bypass the customs and the VAT.
Everyone loves breadbins!
Enjoyable video, as always. Maybe you could make one of you servicing the desoldering station!
9:53 Good, I was wondering about that. I am always hesitant to cut into motherboards, so knowing that bending a leg will work just fine is good to know. Great video. Been looking to add one or two 264s to my collection. And yes, I do like the C16 more aesthetically compared to the Plus/4 and C116 but the Plus/4 at least has a user port, so you can use the Super Nintendo controller when playing games like Attack of the PETSCII Robots. But afaik, that's the only games for this series that uses it so maybe a moot point in all other cases.
Yeah, you don't even need to remove the chip if you don't want to. Just snip the leg(s) and solder a wire to it. If you ever want to revert the mod, just remove the wire and reconnect the leg with a bit of solder
@@TheRetroChannel I was wondering about snipping it too. Thanks again, much appreciated.
22:54 had me in tears :D
Not complaining, but if it were me, I might would have changed and socket the muxes for prevention if those were indeed MOS parts.
Never mind. I watched further and you commented on that, but you didn't have a replacement.
the joystick converter is nice, just not going to pay 35 dollar + addittional shipping cost for that there are so many other things on retro computers I still want to buy
oooh what did you say at then end there? Them's fighting words :D
I bought a few years back a joystick with built-in c64 games, worked nice... Also "Another visitor, stay a while, stay forever!!!" impossible mission. Nice vid, nice work you do on those old ones... I got me a phat ps2 with a bit of an error in de cd drive, can't find replacement. Any suggestions?
Jack Tramiel wanted to sell these at a lower price than the Sinclair ZX Spectrum to compete with them. They are the final straw for him when the Commodore board wanted to price them the same as the C64 and include ROM software and so he left Commodore and bought Atari. He showed them at CES (there is a photo) two days later he was gone along with a few of Commodore's engineers.
Yep, if that plan had come trough i could see Sir Clive Sinclair trowing a tantrum for the ages. 😅
Commodore went insanely dumb after the C64, with these overpriced scam computers and the C128 that wasn't much better
@@Nukle0n While the C128 has a quirky design, it was a very successful computer that sold nearly 5 million units, more than anything else except the C64 and the Apple II series. If you remove the Apple IIgs from the Apple series, then the C128 also outsold the Apple II series.
The C128 has twice as much RAM and almost all of it is available from BASIC 7. The CPU can be twice as fast. It can do 80 columns. It can run CP/M software although the speed isn't great.
The two biggest problems with the C128 in my view is that it has a C64 mode and that it has two video chips instead of one with the capabilities of both. It really needed an 80 column, 2 MHz VIC-II+.
As for the C64 mode, I think this is why there is so little software for the C128. Why release a C128 version of your game or app when the C128 owners can run it in C64 mode? The C128 should have been a C64 with the MMU added to support more banks of RAM, with a BASIC 7 that was backward compatible with BASIC 2, and capable of running at 1 or 2 MHz.
By not having a C128 mode, games and software would be the same except they could also check whether they were running on a C128 and then make use of the extra RAM, speed and graphics modes.
Of course, this would have meant the C128 wasn't 99.9% backward compatible, but I expect it could have still achieved 95% compatibility and some games and apps could have easily been tweaked to run on both.
With these changes, the C128 might have nearly outsold the C64 itself.
Unlike Apple, Atari, Acorn, etc, Commodore didn't try very hard to make its home 8-bit computers backward compatible. The PET series were and the Amiga series were, but otherwise, no.
A second SID would also have been nice for stereo output.
@@Nukle0n The C128 was meant to be a modest improvement over the c64 that would last a year or two. Not become a major product. It was a shelf filler until the next major project came along.
@@vhfgamer Still a lot of R&D wasted on something that most people would boot up holding the Commodore key.
You could also heat up the chip leg and push it out and fold it over, and then solder the address wire to it. I get that you don't want to go back but... Always feels a little dangerous when you start cutting traces
Could do that, but then there's a risk of breaking the leg off. In that case I'd rather just snip it close to the board and solder a wire to it
The Cpu is technically a fair amount faster than the C64. However because of the memory access time it ends up giving back a lot of that performance. Demosceners get a lot out of the Plus4.
Are the phases of unequal length? I don’t understand how memory can serve a 1.8 MHz 6502 . Or how can a 6502 be optimized to run at 1.8 MHz, but most of the time is slowed down to 0.9 ? NMOS is not as flexibel as CMOS.
Originally I wanted to comment about not being able to upvote the video as the counter was at exactly 264 - now it's gone further, so I upvote. (the TED machines were known internally to CBM as the 264 series)
I came retro with the Commodore 16. All I knew before were IBM compatibles. My dad bought a C16 in '85 when they were in the bargain bin and never used it much.
When I got over the amazingness of being able to write text on my friggin' TV and the ?SYNTAX ERROR.s, I wondered what you could do with it, why HELP does nothing, how can I change colors etc. and read the manual and... you gotta program it yourself! So I taught me how to code (beyond poorly) with this machine. Eventually I got better and found out that the by the time just slightly outdated 486 "family" PC also had QBasic on it and it came with games I could hack (Nibbles eventually ended up supporting 8 players simultaneously), that was when I knew what I wanted to do.
Btw. my +4 has MT-RAMs. They still work. Guess miracles do exist.
I also just did a temporary 64K upgrade for the C16 (borrowing the RAMs from my C64). I wanted to run some more sophisticated Demos to test my upcomming TEDdigitizer.
Didn't think you were planning one for the TED series. Then again I thought that about another console 😉
@@TheRetroChannel It seems I do have too much spare time now with sales pausing. I also have a board for the Intellivision in the making was well. :-)
Let's be fair toward the TED series of machines. The design engineer of the system (Bil Herd) never intended it to be competition or an improvement over the C64. In his own words "If you want a gaming machine, go buy a c64". He was trying to design a super cheap TExt Display (TED) computer for business. And it was only meant to be 49 dollars originally.
In his own words, Mr. Herd described the system as "The raspberry pi of its day". Meaning a small cheap computer with versatility. But then Jack Tramiel left the company, and the new management had no clue was the system was meant to do. So a flood of middle management and marketing guys got their hands on it, modded it, bumped the price WAY up, tacked on a cheesy suit of business software, and then tried to sell it. And it failed horribly.
So with this in mind, suddenly things like the changed joystick ports make sense. Mr Herd was trying to make it as cheap as possible, and also trying to make it fit a small case. That strange breadbin case was a marketing department decision.
Erg another one of those large ceramic resistors just like in the CoCo 1.
The problem with the 64K upgrade this way is that there are a couple of (not great, admittedly) original games, that were written in a way, they can't work with 64K. At least that's what I'm told. There's also a solderless, switchable 64K SRAM mod, called the SaRuMan TED. I have that in my C16, works great. But installing that, makes less of an exciting video, for sure. :) The joystick adapter is great tho'. And I would be interested in the RF modulator replacement.
And a bit of a personal note. The 264 series was the first computer I ever got in touch with. The "Commodore just dumped the stock in the European market" has more twists to it. They were school computers in Hungary in the mid-to-late 80s (yes, before the fall of the Iron Curtain!), after Commodore made a deal with the government, which was looking to equip more schools - even elementary schools! - with computers at the time, to future proof our education. How the tides have turned... But anyway... This also means, the series became very popular in Hungary, much more so than in other countries, especially when it became available for "normal" people to buy. Parents of course bought for kids whatever they had in school. 40 years later, this makes Hungary very likely _the_ number one 264 series powerhouse in the world, so many of us grew up with these things. All the "I'm not going to try to pronounce these names" in various YT videos about the series are of course Hungarian names. On Plus/4 World, out of 1105 registered members, 412 are from Hungary. (With Germany being 2nd with 318.) So yeah. Welcome to our childhood. It doesn't sound as good as a SID, but it's more colorful than the VIC... Enjoy your stay!
We do know why they used mini DIN connectors for the joysticks. The internals were designed for the Commodore 116 which has a tiny case and there wasn't physically room for full sized ports.
And they're cheaper.
@@vhfgamer And people would have to buy new peripherals (assuming they didn't figure out they were electrically identical)
@@dennisp.2147 And in the 1980s, most people didn't already have piles of peripherals laying around like we do today.
@@vhfgamer I WAS one of those people in the 1980's. I still don't own a Commodore joystick for my C16.
We still have ours from the 80s. There were 3rd party joysticks with the din connector. But we bought adaptors to db9 in the end. We seem to have misplaced the adaptors, however a couple of months ago I was in a retro shop and found an original commodore one. First time I'd ever seen an official one. Works perfectly. Dad still has his C16 set up. Dozens of cassette games. Still works fine with no repairs yet other than a repalcement power supply. sooo many childhood hours spent on this machine before I got my Amiga!
To add insult to injury, even though Commodore made the joystick ports incompatible with the industry standard (at the time) DB9 port so that people had to buy THEIR joysticks (or so they thought), they still neglected to add buttons to the joystick so that two or three button controllers would be the new standard. Even when the Amiga was released Commodore STILL only had ONE button on their joysticks. Aggravating that they also changed the Datasette port so that no one could use the Datasette they already had! Commodore engineer Bil Herd has several videos on TH-cam where he talks a bit about many of these brain-dead decisions by upper management.
You’ll definitely have to check out Pets Rescue! ✌️
Keep in mind, the TED has 128 colors.
Atari also had a lot of colors. Just so sad that Commodore did not max out memory speed for nice pictures. Luminance is just a R2R DAC, but chromance is still a mystery to me. I take it that Commodore used an inverter chain with multiple taps for chroma. But then they also need a variable gain amplifier for saturation? I still think that it would be easier to phase lock then inverter chain in the color clock. Then you replay sine curves from RAM. 4 digital delays (sampling rate) and amplification: bit shift for 1/2 1/4. Add these for 3/4 .
The C16 (and Plus 4) was a total dud, I don't know what Tramiel was thinking, this was the point Commodore's fortunes started to go in the wrong direction.
I never gave these machines much respect. I always looked down on them as being inferior to the C64. If they had had a SID chip, and a better graphics chip, they could have been superior. I do kind of like the Plus-4's case though.
I do find it amazing what talented programmers have been able to do with them despite their limitations.
The graphics chip should have been able to shown more colors. Supposedly the C64 needed to look better, but it would have been so cool if TED had a register to max out the speed of the RAM. Then it could try read multiple bitplanes at 1kB apart. Also please read the “bad Lines” in the border. And allow the CPU to set the start address top left for all directions scrolling.
If the C16/Plus4 TED family had a SID chip (or two) and equal (or better) graphics than the C64 they might have had a better acceptance. No sprites was the Achilles heel.
That's not what the system was meant to be. It was not a replacement for the C64. It was supposed to be a cheap business machine that cost 49 dollars. If you wanted a gaming computer, just go buy a C64. Marketing and middle management ruined the project because Jack Tramiel left the company.
"Commodore dropped the ball...", yup in that regard Commodore was Grand-Admiral.
The MOS TTL chip will be fine, the problematic ones are the MUX's. While MOS TTL chips have a higher failure rate than name brand TTL chips, the failure rate is fairly low.
I've had quite a few MOS 74LS08 clones fail, but yeah the 257s fail quite often
They should have mass produced the 32kb model without the plus4 to have a proper stab at the £99 computer that only kids ended up with.....if it was 64kb.........developers would have taken it on straight away with their flagship software at the conventions
TED'S DED
Hello I enjoyed that video until the end where you said it could be worse , very naughty you seriously need to reevaluate your opinion of the ZX Spectrum you'll be surprised for such a basic machine the range of games and the absolute massive fan club that is involved with it , yes it has a lack of Sid chip and it has coloured Clash on many games ,but it makes up with high resolution graphics and overall compared to the Commodore the range of games are more playable and superior pixel-wise , and run extremely well except for racing games where the Commodore has the edge , if you like I will suggest some brand new games that will blow your mind for the Zx spectrum and you will be surprised on the 128 k version the amount of amazing AY sound tunes that you get with some of these games , including games developed with the Nirvana engine .. Colin porch is a good friend of mine and as programmed for the Commodore, did the conversion Head Over Heels which was supposed to be not possible , it's almost a complete port from the spectrum version but runs a lot slower but amazing that he even works at all on The Commodore 64. And also the amazing work from Richard Hollings and many others on the beeper music you can get which will also blow your mind ,still good video
Supposedly, the mini-DIN jacks were to lessen RF. I've never seen any studies to support that.
Sounds like they were looking for an excuse. I could never understand why the Plus 4 had those silly din connectors when I had mine but now hearing about the case design interfering with the ports it makes sense
Not having affair with Mr Lurch again are you mate , sure you wife might get pissed off ;)
🍪
😄 Thought I'd try and catch you off guard
@@TheRetroChannel funnily enough I had just opened the app and 30 seconds later here's a notification. I must be part of that gang 🤙
Commodore, drop the ball? Really?!?
/sigh
Pac Man clone
Interesting little bit about that compatibility: the c16 has a different character map to the 64/128. I tried running the one line maze generator basic program you see here and there, and the 16 just dumped out a bunch of MMNNNMMNMNMNN characters.
All these computers have two maps.