@d4qatoa Same my Guy- Virtual Twinsies! Atari 800XL started my PC obsession (Programmed in Basic, got "Online" with CompuServe, etc all the way through my Bach. in Comp Sci + Computer & Internet Business) But I still remember how freaked out I got the 1st time I got the Jump Scare in Behind Jagged Lines- Loved that Awesome Atari
It was my first computer too. While it had a slow janky basic, the speech synth made it feel like the future, a feature that wouldn't be matched until the Amiga
I only knew one kid who had one growing up, but I got to play a port of 'Defender' on it and I remember it impressing me, though I am not sure how much more/less powerful the TI-99/4A was vs. the Atari 800, I just remember thinking that particular game was better than the Atari 800 port of the game I had at home.
My first computer, with cables to go to the color tv. Manuals, books, cartridges(software). And, TI cassette recordeer and cable. Very satisfying 16 K, color! Easy to use. I also learned some BASIC programming! Beige model, 1983 Christmas gift.
The Spectrum is amazing because Sir Clive Sinclair had a determination to meet a very low price whilst providing exceptional capabilities. He achieved the impossible and the machine was hugely popular. For me though, I could not live with that rubber keyboard.
I'm 44 yo.ZX Spectrum,from my opinion,is like a relict now...I was happy user of Commodore C64 C with a games on tapes and monochrome monitor,only green and black colour.That was in 1990-1994.In my country in 90's only two home 8-bit computers was popular and possible to get from electronic shops...That was C64 and Atari 800XL,65XE(later)... Everything changed when I saw in TV some document about new,16-bit computer call Amiga 500...After that,A500 changed my live completely, for next 6-7years. Never forgot episode in my life with Amiga at home.... Sorry for my English 😧 Thanks for your work about fascinating history of very first home computers 👍👌
I’m glad to see the Atari 800 and Atari ST as “Top 5” finishers. These machines “raised the bar” for gaming as well as word processing. Part of the Atari 8-bit’s continuing legacy it that these machines ran much of their gaming software in cartridge format. The software is as durable as the machines that run it! And, while not as reliable due to the media as well as the mechanisms, many 810 and 1050 disk drives are still in good working order, further keeping 8-bit software alive. Another solid “plus” for the 8-bit Atari is that the general platform also served as the basis of two dedicated consoles - the Atari 5200 and XEGS. The former ran the same game software in an incompatible cartridge format. The latter ran older cartridges, newer XE cartridges (which further expanded the “solid-state” game library), and otherwise behaved exactly like an XL/XE 8-bit when a disk drive was connected. The end result is that the software (on cartridge) is preserved in a durable, usable format. And again, the Atari 8-bit machines that play those games are still running FOUR DECADES LATER. When I shelved my ST for a PC-compatible, I made sure that everything was boxed-up and stored carefully - especially the manuals and software. Once time and space permitted, the ST was restored to it’s rightful place. The Atari 8-bits, though, get most of my gaming time! Good to see some love for Atari Star Raiders and Star Raiders II (aka the unreleased “The Last Starfighter”). Those games were must-haves for an Atari 8-bit gamer. Laird, you mentioned some surprise that the SV-318 wasn’t represented in the polling from US-based gamers. I lived in NY back in then (still do!), and only saw the SV-318 for sale at a music store’s holiday display. There was almost no software available, and I never saw one again ANYWHERE. Gamers I spoke to while looking at the computer commented that it would be a doorstop once the joystick broke. I can’t comment on whether it sold better elsewhere in the USA. Great vid! Thanks.
Other Important characteristics of the Atari 8bit home machines were the implementation of a universal serial bus (SIO) for the first time, Chroma Luma output(svideo) and the Autoboot feature for all mediums available on the platform.
Great points. I recently learned about another feature of SIO (USB 1979 :) ) Devices can download driver software to the computer at boot time ( not just disk drives booting DOS.) And Atari was working on networking multiple computers on the same bus -- about a decade before most people would see networked PCs. Unfortunately, making technology work better for people takes engineering time and money and the C64 turned personal computing into a race to the bottom, so cool stuff like this had to be cut.
I would like to add another often omitted feature, the joystick ports on Atari where in/out, so you could use them as another port very good for tinkering projects like robot arms, or I had a "one dot" printer and gray shades scanner connected using the ports. A friend of my had a x/y plotter etc. And it was extremely easy to use and understand even for kids, I had already planed a simple matrix logic to control my model railway...exciting times.
The wierd thing about the "dead flesh" keyboard on the ZX spectrum was this. Coming from a ZX81 it was brilliant. As a programmer the keyboard was navigated easily and you got used to it. My mate had a C64, we had BBC and PET at school and my girlfriend had a CPC464, all had excelllent keyboards but it did not make me go "Euuuw" when i got home. I think if you were used to a proper keyboard and THEN used a Speccy you would definately say "EEUUUW dead flesh " and " how the hell do you type on this?". But it was just normal to us Speccy owners.
More than that, once you memorised the keyword layout, you could easily out type all but a professions typist on it too, as a kid, it didnt take long to know they layout even in your sleep.
This list is pretty legit. A friend had the C64, I and a few others had Atari 800/XL/XEs, one of those upgraded to a 520ST, another friend had the Amiga 2000 (with the Video Toaster), we used the Apple IIs, Atari 800s and TRS-80s in junior high and high school computer classes, and I picked up an Amiga 1200 as well. It was amazing to see the leaps a bounds these computers made in the span of time known as the 80s.
The thing most people don't appreciate about the Atari systems is just how amazingly well they were designed under the hood. Not just the hardware, but the software that drove it. The Operating Systems in both the 8-bit and ST lines were amazing for programmers, once you knew where everything was. I once saw the Kernel manuals for the Amiga and it was a much more complex beast to code, which is one of the reasons why, initially, the ST was receiving more games because programmers needed more time to get to grips with the Amiga. It's a shame that Atari didn't follow this philosophy with later models - the Jaguar was notoriously difficult to program.
The Atari ST was very important to musicians. Because it came with a MIDI port built in so early in the life of the protocol and was affordable, it single-handedly vitalized modern computer music by getting MIDI into the hands of the masses. And the software spawned by this feature, as we all know, survived the machine and even Atari itself.
Indeed, the ST absolutely revolutionised the European dance music scene in particular. In the late 80s/early 90s you couldn't watch an episode of Top of the Pops without seeing one on stage.
As much as I am a fan/expert of the 6809 & Tandy Color Computer 3, I have to begrudgingly admit that the C64 is the greatest, followed by the Atari 800. Why the C64? A few good reasons it was great: 1. Uses a great version of the 6502. The 65C10 had improved I/O. 2. Shipped with full 64kb at a time when other machines were often sold in multiple variations (16kb, 32kb, etc). This made the machine standardized in the community, speeding up development and adoption. 3. Fairly good 16 colors palette with colors that didn't bleed on a TV screen. Very readable text, without pesky artefact colors messing it up. 5. The SID music/sound chip allowed the CPU to delegate sound and music, leaving it almost 100% available for running the program & graphics. Also, great sound chip design with multi voices and ASMR sound envelopes. All hardware. 6. Great dedicated community that strived to push the machine to its limits. 7. Acceptable keyboard (other 8bit computers were not all comfortable to the user's hands). 8. PETSCII. 9. Amazingly good graphics resolution for the time (wide 320x200). 10. Hardware sprites. Although fairly limited, they made game development easier and further freed the poor CPU. 11. Overactive demo scene. 12. Lots of BBS. 13. Fairly good RGB monitor if you had the budget. Why the C64 is great but not perfect: 1. Pedestrian cassette player system (very slow loading). 2. Poorly designed floppy drive, with an overpowered controller chip but flawed bandwidth control. Slow! 3. Some of the computer's greatest features not directly accessible in basic, require tedious poke sequences. 4. Few productivity applications. (Hey, I had 3 word processors on my Coco3 and they were all superior to the ones available on the C64.) 5. Poor printers. 6. Fixed palette.
Commodore 64 had Word Writer, Geo write, Paperclip 64, Bank Street Writer and other word processors. For spreadsheets, it had Microsoft Multiplan, Geo Calc, Versa Calc, etc...
1. The extra I/O wasn't a major feature of the 6510. The C64 would still have been as great without it. 2. True 3. I agree with the comment from the video that the palette is muddy, at least half of it. It could have been better. 4. Missing? 5. I think you meant ADSR. 6. True but I think all systems had such communities. 7. True 8. The PETSCII graphics were nice but it would have been better with standard ASCII and the PETSCII graphics being in the upper 128. 9. The C64 wasn't the first to do 320x200 10. How do you think they were limited? There were 8, were larger (24x21) than any other system and they were multi-colour. The TI-99/4 had 32 16x16 monochrome sprites so it had to use 4 sprites to equal one monochrome C64 sprite, or 12 to equal one multi-colour C64 sprite. The Atari ones were even more limited. 2/3rds of the VIC-II chip die handles the sprites. 11. Overactive makes it sound like you think there should have been less. 12. True. 13. Yes, even computerists without a Commodore computer bought Commodore monitors for their non-Commodore computers and game consoles. Without Commodore monitors, the graphics of the 80's would have been a lot more fuzzy and expensive. 1. The cassette system was designed for the KIM-1 and PET by Chuck Peddle. It was not documented and the timing was very fiddly so no one dated touch it after it was working, not even Chuck himself. It remained the same to the Commodore 128. 2. There was nothing wrong with the floppy drive. The lack of speed was first due to a bug in the VIA on the VIC-20, and secondly due to a trace being chopped off the C64 motherboard. What was wrong is that Jack wouldn't hold production to let the engineers fix it. 3. Yes, the BASIC was a big failure without graphics and sound commands. It did encourage a lot of C64 owners to learn assembly though. 4. There were lots of productivity apps for the C64 and I used some really nice word processors. 5. I agree the MPS-801 was poor but Commodore had better printers and there were some really nice third party ones. I'd argue Commodore shouldn't have been making printers, like Steve Jobs argued when he came back to Apple. 6. I agree the fixed palette is ugly. Surely they could have taken a bit of room to allow the 16 colour palette to be chosen from a larger palette. They could have taken out one sprite or something. This is why games look better on the Atari in most cases.
I got to use a BBC micro in junior school when growing up but even before that the Amstrad CPC 464 was my first home computer, when I was 8, and I loved it - I remember creeping downstairs on Christmas day to playing Animal Vegetable and Mineral and Harrier Attack and fondly remember the Dizzy games. Sometime later a friend of mine had a C64 and the games blew my mind compared to my Amstrad (compare OutRun on the two machines!) but it was the Amiga A500 then A1200 that I really fell in love with as a teenager with my head dizzy booting *Shadow of the Beast* up for the first time on my A500 Screen Gems pack but the A1200 was equally my number one as it could do so so much, and the Amiga range was way ahead of its time.
The primary reasons the C64 had great games were the sprites and hardware scrolling, which the Amstrad CPC didn't have until the Plus models which added both of those features. As I am more into programming and general computing than games, I prefer the Amstrad CPC but I live in Canada and didn't know it existed when I bought my C64. I like the higher resolution screen and the larger palette and the BASIC is amazing compared to Commodore BASIC V2 on the C64.
Atari 800 was very well built and well ahead of its time, and no question the impact the C64 had. The original Spectrum just had a certain something about its industrial design, and the ZX81 was affordable getting me into computers and an IT career, so it has to be the Zeddy for me. The pinnacle of that line was the Speccy looking TS1500 with 16k which is my favorite home computer being the best variant of the computer that gave me the livelihood I have today. (the 16bit machines became real tools rather than just dreams, so despite be having a 512ST, 1040ST and TT, those and what came after are just computers not dream makers)
I like the ZX81 / TS1000 / TS1500 a lot. They're minimalist but have what you need. The only system I would choose over them would be the Tandy MC-10 (aka. Matra Alice). It was $120 USD but only sold for one year and few sold, but it has a Motorola 6803 with 4KB of RAM, expandable to 20KB, ASCII, 8KB Microsoft BASIC, 9 colours, a chicklet keyboard, bitmap graphics (with RAM expander). I think it was a good deal for the price but it didn't come out until 1983 which was too late.
In the early 80s I had two computers. An IBM 5150 and an Apple III (expanded to 512 KB). Both were given to me by my dad. Of the two systems the IBM had most of the games, although I had one game for the Apple III (Star Trek). With the high speed C.Itoh printer and a 3rd (external double-density) drive the Apple III was nearly a $10,000 outfit (early 80s remember). My youngest brother had an Apple II, I had one uncle with an Apple IIGS, and another with a VIC-20 and two C64s. I wound up with the two C64s, one of which I still have. Great video.
I got my start with a VIC 20. It will always hold a special place in my heart. But, it was the C64 that really cemented my interest in computers. It was an amazing machine, and I have nothing but love for the old bread bin system. A friend of mine had the 128, but he used it almost entirely to play C64 games. I would be lying if I said I didn't miss the old days.
Thank you for including the best of all, the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. It's the machine I grew up with and it's still going 40 years later. It's the most expandable machine of the lot, better than the BBC, because I was lucky enough to get the Peripheral Expansion Box.
I was an Atari 800 kid (the only one I was aware of in my area), but I always wanted a C64 as I had a couple friends who had one, so I was aware of what it could do, especially that sweet SID sound chip. Believe it or not, most of the kids I knew who had home computers had either some sort of IBM PC clone, some variation or other of the Apple II, or a Mac (I'm American). I did know one kid who had a TI-99/4A, and I only got to play a game on it once, it was a port of 'Defender', and I remember being impressed with it's graphics. I was like 6 or 7 years old (it was the mid-eighties) at the time. I first discovered 'Turrican' and 'Sim City' at a buddies' house in 1990-ish on his C64, and those two games were a couple of the main reasons I wanted a C64 back then. I got a 'TheC64' recently and I love it. It's interesting to play games that were on both C64 and Atari 8-Bit because I only played the Atari versions back in the day. Fascinating to see and play games that other kids grew up with and being able to contrast and compare them to my own childhood experiences with Atari machines. Btw, just got my A500 Mini a week ago. I had an Atari ST in the early 90's. LOL Here we go again............
I was lucky to have a VIC-20 and a C64 back in the day. I spent a LOT of time typing machine code into those two. Back then, magazines would come with games for free but you had to put them into the machine line by line. They also came with checksum routines to verify you didn't screw it up typing it in.
If money was no object back in 1979 then I would certainly have bought the Atari 800, I mean just look at it. It's gorgeous. But reality meant I started on a ZX81 and then a commodore 64. I just wished commodore basic was more user friendly like Atari 800 basic. I still have my C64. The nostalgia is strong with that great machine.
I waited days to watch this because I knew it would be good and I didn't want any interruptions :-) It did not disappoint...very well reasoned and presented!
Really enjoyed watching this. I'm really surprised at the Atari Falcon 030. It was manufactured in low numbers and probably sold fewer than the others on this list. However it was a very capable machine and i can't help thinking if only it had a higher clocked 68030, it would have sold bucket loads. If Atari had survived longer and managed to make more of them, we might of seen high spec versions. Commodore expanded on the A500's ability to replace the native CPU, on the A1200 with a much cheaper trapdoor expansion bus. I never understood why Atari never made the ST expandable in the same way. Tramiel's business model, built in obsolescence? Was the Mega ST range an attempt to put that right, don't know much about them. I moved from ST to Amiga 500 then 1200. I still eyed the magazine adverts showing the Falcon, working out how i could buy one. I actually wanted a QL before all that but the cost got in the way and by the time i saved the pennies, the ST was the best option. Seriously I've lived through some of techs most interesting and eccentric days, I'm sad is gone and as history i hope it is remembered well. It's been a great ride and with emulation we have not left it behind. 😀
I've only just found your channel. Otherwise the Speccy and ZX81 would have had an extra vote each, and the poor old Panasonic JR-100 would have had a single, solitary vote. No-ones ever heard of it, apparently. I got mine in the 80's, second hand without software or instructions, and it's the only one I've ever seen. LOL. Great countdown.
The original Atari 800 was pretty expensive at launch. Had it been equivalent in price to the competition it would have dominated. The conversions of Pac Man and Joust were perfect. Best I could do was pop into Laskys when it was quiet.
OMG - so good to say a UK based 8bit computer countdown… Loved this, took me back to 1984. My first computer after my Atari VCS. Got me into computing and I’m still doing that to this day, 40 odd years later, History:- Atari VCS Zx Spectrum 48k Atari 800xl Amstrad CPC-464 Then into pc’s Then saw the light in 2008 and switched to Apple Mac’s Thank you for an amazing trip down memory lane
I personally had a PC XT (and later 386) as a kid. They were not the greatest for games, but can't ignore what it became. Not a bad list tho. Happy to see the C64 and atari up there. I would have happily have taken either one of those computers as a kid.
Well this was just a popularity vote. Most users ignore the information needed to make an educated assessment. MSX was the realization of the earliest effort to have different brand machines sharing the same library. That fact alone puts the platform among the greatest computer ever produced. After all PCs dominated the market based on that characteristic.
Very good! Here in Germany the ST‘s never had a vast community. When you had one you were likely to be bullied about it at school. I remember a grfx and sound demo with a sample: „ST - das tut weh!“ („ST - that hurts!“). Due to marketing („Amiga fever will get you!“) and cheap software (Fish-disks) the Amiga was the way to go. The older brother of a good friend had an Atari ST Desktop (?). The design was horrible. It looked like a plank with a shoe box and a milk carton on top. The only thing I liked about it was the hi-res b&w display and the keyboard. As far i remember it had a little speaker inside, and whenever you hit a key, the whole case gave a subtle „humming“ response…
Simple truth is, Amiga computers were the highest quality you can get in the 80's and early 90's. So advanced by the standards of their time. It was 93, 94 when PC's came with better soundcards and graphics but before that, Amiga was the best. Commodore marketing was very bad and some people still think Amiga is just a "play console" (with that game console you were able to run BBS and made almost CD quality music, scanning photos, with 1mb of memory, multitasking) , with that operation system and extra chips, it could have been something really wonderful. But Commodore...
What an excellent video was even better than the one with the 20 greatest video game consoles. Was a really nice touch and tribute for the Sinclair QL. I was also really glad you used my Atari Falcon 030, and Sinclair ZX Spectrum comments in the video. That made my day when I saw that so thank you very much. Of the computers in the video I either owned or used Atari Falcon 030, BBC micro (Used them in college), Apple Mac classic ( I had a cousin who at the time worked for a company that only used Apple Macs, he brought one to my home so got to use it), Sinclair ZX Spectrum, IBM PC compatible, Commodore 64 (My now brother in-law lent me his for a week and a version of Spitfire 40), Atari ST.
@@TheLairdsLair I think that added a lot to the video because people will recognize the games they most likely played on each system they had access to.
You mention the ZX Spectrum as a British phenomenon, but it was indeed the clear "number 2" computer in Norway as well at that time. Remember the stores that sold games had sections for Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC, but barely bothered with the rest.
@@timlocke3159 In Norway the schools used IBM compatibles, and old ones as that. So computers as school really sucked :( Computer education in Norway in the eighties were very poor indeed. Computers were only an optional one hour a week course in most schools.
Yep, I had a Coco 2, then a C128(D), and an Amiga 500 before falling into the x86 world... Of them all, the Coco 2 is probably still the most fun I ever had with programming (but the lack of the games my friends had became too much...)
Glad that the 4A made the final cut for the top 20. I feared that square-pegging a 16 bit processor onto an 8 bit bus might have slowed it down sufficiently to keep it off the list, but am happy to see that there were enough of us that recognized that, despite its design and corporate marketing flaws, it was still worthy for recognition, even if it just missed the top 10. (Apple II didn't even get honourable mention!!) I would have flipped the C64 and Atari 8-bit... but I come from the "Atari rulez, Commies Drool" generation.
I'm glad to see at least a mention of the T/S 2068 and a pic of it's lovely case design! I'm actually quite pleased to see the the TI-99/4A rank as high as it did. It's race-to-the-bottom pricing, uniquely period-perfect pastel color palette, what would become ubiquitous sound and graphics chips, and that awesome-for-the-time speech synth module really still make it a very nostalgic choice for me. I do think 13 is the perfect spot too: unlucky, that pretty well describes the TI-99's place in history. haha. Sure, you had the TI-99/4A's TMS9918A that was either directly in other computer/console products, cloned, or was the predecessor other VDP chips; the SN76489/SN94624 being the PSG chip in a stack of products; and then later T.I. stuff like the TMS320 and TMS34010/34020 that were used in vast array of arcade system and graphics solutions. However, Texas Instruments just never could make it back into the home computer space with another full-scale product, which is sad because a TMS320 + TMS34010 home system could have been something great in the mid-late-80s. I think I'm most pleasantly surprised by the Atari Falcon making the list. Though never owning one, I've always liked reading about it, and seeing the bit of games that took good advantage of it. Since the Atari 8-bit line made it so high up the list, I'll also throw out that I also love the case design of the XEGS: it's right up there with the 2068, the PC-Engine Shuttle, JVC X'Eye, and the Jaguar for my favorite computer and console designs. I think the C-64 is deserving of the win here. Though I didn't get to use one daily, I did enjoy it when I did. I've never been the biggest SID fan though, since I prefer the timbre of most other cleaner?-sounding PSG chips like SN76489/2A03/Pokey/AY-3-8910. I do respect and enjoy SID compositions from Rob Hubbard (his Commando rendition is one of my favorite tunes on the 8-bits), Matt Furniss (one of my favorite video game composers, though I prefer his FM work), and especially Jeroen Tel's stuff (and his great NES compositions); however, there's something about SID music that also grates on my ears more than other PSG sound. That said, I do still think the C-64 is deserving of its spot! Also, though I'm familiar enough with all of the rest of the top-20, even the stuff we didn't see in the states, the QL is one that I've only heard of and really know nothing about. Since, it got a lot of love in the votes, I'll have to dig deeper into it.
25:08 Yes Chi Man Liu. A friend of mine had an Atari ST he also had a Master System an NES and soon a genesis on two separate tvs. So often I could sit and play Dungeon Master on his ST while other friends played console games. Dungeon Master was awesome!
Great video as always. I was rather surprised to see myself mentioned twice here. If I had more than three choices available, the TI-99/4a would be in my top 5 from personal experience as it was the second computer platform that I used in school. I own a working example as part of my collection today.
It must have varied from place to place. I don't remember ever seeing any MSX computers here in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA. But that doesn't mean they weren't around.
Here in the UK, I remember seeing Sony, Panasonic, Yamaha, Philips, Goldstar, Sanyo, and Toshiba MSX1 computers for sale in 1984/85 in many different shops. I think the best seller was the Toshiba HX10, after it was greatly discounted and sold with a cassette recorder bundle for £100 by the retailer Dixons. When they first launched they were nearer £250. Nice kit, but pricey in an already Sinclair, Commodore, Amstrad, and Acorn saturated UK marketplace. I don't remember seeing any software for MSX, other than a few dozen titles listed by mail-order companies.
It depends on your definition of best. Best hardware? Graphics? Sound? Most games? Best games? What kind of games are best? Some ZX Spectrum games may be the best even if they don't have the best graphics and sound. There is more to games than graphics and sound.
I'm not surprised the Commodore PET didn't get much mention from us in the States, out of that 1977 group of competing computers, the Apple II made the biggest impression on the general public. Plus they pretty much cornered the American educational market for the following 15ish years, if you were a kid in school even as late as the early-90s, you more than likely laid hands on an Apple II and played Oregon Trail.
The video is about home computers. I took that to mean affordable computers that were purchased by non-technical users for use at home. The list is correct because the Apple ][s were expensive and rarely used in anybody's home. Since the ][ used the cheapest CPU available, the $25 6502, most people thought the machine was an overpriced item that they had only seen in magazines. Apple sold less than 8000 ][s, mostly to schools, in the first two years it was available.
The Tandy TRS-80 vastly outsold the Apple II and Commodore PET until 1984 after the Apple IIe came out in 1983. The Commodore PET was in second place until Apple surpassed it around 1981. So starting out: 1) TRS-80, 2) Commodore PET, 3) Apple II In the end: 1) Apple II, 2) TRS-80, 3) Commodore PET Yes, the Apple II was the most popular in US schools although some schools did have Atari, Commodore or Tandy Color Computers. In Canada, most schools had Commodores. In the UK, all schools had the BBC Micro.
The Commodore 64 ruled as it had the unbeatable combination of superior technology at a low price. When I got mine back in 1983 the Atari 800 was significantly more expensive. And whilst the Atari St and Amiga which were to follow were more powerful machines, they were also significantly more expensive. If the C64 had been more expensive, it would not have enjoyed the success it did. Likewise, if it had been a step back technologically it would have been a different story. Fortunately, this wasn't the case.
You are correct. That combination gave it an edge because it did really bring anything new on the table. It did manage to do things a bit better and friendlier for the programmers but the low price did add huge value to the system.
Too bad their quality control was so crap in the first 2 years. We returned at least 3 C64s - one even tried to catch fire - until they sorted out the manufacturing. And that disk drive - oh God ... without a fastloading cart - utterly crap.
@@mortimore4030 Have you seen the C64 marketing? It was worse than the Atari marketing. It wasn't marketing that sold the C64. It was the price. People walked into the store and decided based which to buy based on price. They didn't know or care which had better sound or more colours. Once a lot of people owned one, then people bought it because lots of other people had it, but it still had the lowest price. Jack didn't know much about computers, he could have been just as successful selling bicycles, but he was a shrew businessman.
As an American, I have the luxury of appreciating the ZX Spectrum in theory. The symmetrical and compact layout looks nice, especially next to the ugly Timex Sinclair 2068. I don't have to bother myself with such practicalities as physically typing on the keyboard which everyone says was bad or something, or struggling with temperamental tape loading.
I owned a 16K (then 48K) rubber-keyed Spectrum. I very rarely had problems with loading software from my Philips cassette recorder. Software piracy was rife, and I suggest that people struggling to load software, may have been doing so from a poorly duplicated C90 tape they traded at school. Criticism of the keyboard is fair enough. There were several better keyboards available from 3rd parties.
I am surprised by the absense of the Tandy 1000 line of computers. Some might view them as just an IBM PC clone, but the Tandy 1000 was the first time that high quality audio, graphics, and storage (HDD) came together in one machine, with a huge software library to boot. "Tandy graphics and sound" dominated computing for five years (1984-89 and beyond). It existed because Tandy was trying to copy the PC Jr. That machine was a massive failure, so Tandy changed directions, aiming for PC compatibility, and succeeded.
Amazed, but happy, to see the QL made it to number 18. It had likely the shortest lifespan of any of the others on the list. I wouldn't ever claim the Atari OS was better than the Amiga OS...both kernel or GUI. The Mac is a tough one because by the early 90's they completely separated themselves from all of the other computers on the list and were mainstream with so many models. Can't really find any major issues with your top 20 list, nice job!
actually you are wrong, Atari ST had a spot on OS and GUI, while Amiga DOS was a piece of art, it came too early and was made for future, and when the future came (with A3000) it was already obsolete and competition had much better solutions. The Amiga 1.x Workbench is a bloatware (for its time), is cluttered and very slow to use, remember that 80s was a floppy time. Even with HDD the ST GUI is faster on floppy then m68k Amiga with HDD. Amiga also needed more floppy drives to work at some pace, otherwise it was a real disk swap orgy. Remember that Amiga was also held back by its resources and obsolete architecture, so the Amiga DOS was misplaced on that hardware. The Workbench 1.x GUI was just a pseudo GUI and for a lot of tasks you need to go into shell. Majority of Amiga users wasnt bothered by this since they didnt use workbench much, no need for it if you load games. ST was much better as a computer... so much better.
@@madigorfkgoogle9349 You're completely blinded by your bias for the ST over the Amiga. The fact the Amiga (11m units) outsold the Atari ST (5m units) by more than a factor of two, in spite of the ST being less expensive than the vastly more powerful Amiga proves people knew it was better than the ST and were willing to pay for it. It's pretty obvious you didn't spend much time using an Amiga as your statements show you don't understand how it works. You call the Amiga architecture obsolete yet today's systems follow the Amiga architecture. The ST didn't even support sprites or hardware scrolling until the STe. What a joke. I get a kick out of the bragging about the MIDI feature, which is something even an 8-bit computer of the time could handle. Go back to your reality distortion bubble.
The Tandy 1000 series had more integrated features than the original IBM and clones. Extended CGA-compatible graphics controller, multiple built-in I/O ports, including a game port which was frequently a separate add-on card on non-Tandy machines, and a special sound chip. You could also output to a CGA monitor, or to a TV using composite.
IF this is a point of sales then I guess this is a pretty true list, but IF It's from a personal view then for me the Amiga A500 is the greatest games computer of all time followed by the ZX Spectrum 128k+1 Toastrack,then the C64c and the Atari 800xl, that's just my personal view and nothing will sway me from changing that view 😁🙂
Well, when people say "all-time", they should be considered modern computers, but nothing after the early 90's is on this list. I agree the Amiga was the best up to the early 90's. Then the IBM PC graphics and sound caught up. Of the Amigas, the 500 sold more units than the other Amiga models combined, making it the best home computer before the early 90's. The C64 sold more units (13m) and had more games, but the hardware wasn't as good as the Amiga.
I watched a video about NES games that have been modes with a new graphics layer, enhanced music, etc. I think it would be amazing to see classic games upgraded with modern looking graphics; Deungeon Master would be great if updated and sped up as transitions like doirs opening could be slow.
Im surprised the X68000 didnt make the list. To be fair, I didnt expect it to be near the top. It had very few sales, was only released in Japan and its sales were mostly to video game developers. For those who arent aware of this computer, it was designed by Sharp Corporation. In an effort to differentiate itself from other computers at the time, Sharp designed a computer that could create a full arcade experience (in 1987). Many Japanese game developers looked at the hardware Specs of this computer when designing their arcade machines, and even the Sega Genesis itself is a severely watered down X68000. The computer itself had its influence on game (hardware) design, but the average consumer couldnt afford it.
It was ranked 24th on the list. I have covered the computer in great detail on this channel, if you haven't seen the videos: th-cam.com/video/q6pOa3V9Yw0/w-d-xo.html
for us old enough to remember the first home PC such as the spectrum the vic 20 the acorn and BBC B they were considered purchases "easy credit" wasn't available and at "100 to £200 they were not cheap and research had to eb done over a period of time before we got our mum down to rumbalows to sign up for it
No.1 for Commodore 64 is no surprise, but also well deserved. It had more games made for it than any other 8 bit, and many game genres began with C64 games
The Sinclair QL was very important to today's computing . Because of the lack of software it forced Linus Torvalds to program software for it. And we all know where that ended up leading
I'm honestly not really surprised the Sharp MZ-700, which was the first computer my dad bought, didn't make it to the top 20. However, being the computer on which I wrote my first BASIC program and of which I have plenty of joyful memories, it will always remain a very special computer to me.
Fun that the ARM is not even just in mobile devices anymore. I was amused by all the glowing reviews of Apple's M1 chip. And have to say it /is/ a pretty great chip.
Really it depends on whether you used a computer for games playing or programming... it would be interesting to see this list from a programmers point of view
I'm still voting Atari 800 here. 😁 OSS bank-switching language carts packing 16K of hacking goodness into 8K of address space. MAC/65 and BASIC XL/XE are super.
Sorry your brother passed; I know auch pain along with losing my sister and parents, kind of hard at times being only amediatenfamily.memeber still alive, thank goodness for extended family.
To me other than the x86 PC I really can't pick another for the other two places. Since the computer market was always changing and all the ones I played with (but never owned kinda) had a special place in my heart so for me it's just too hard to choose really. The "kinda" bit was before my first computer that I owned, and played with (a generic 386SX 25) I was given a broken C-64. I worked on it, and had it working right before a tornado (F3/EF4 grade) came, and destroyed it before I could load my first program. The systems I played around as a kid were the Apple II, Atari 8-bit , Tandy CoCo (models 2&3), Ti-99 4A, C-64, PET, and x86 PC (including the original IBM 5150.) Today I would love to grab any of these machines on the list if I can find one cheap enough that is, but until then I can just use emulation.
@@TheLairdsLair I guess it's a location and generation thing. If you're in your 50s, the Atari 800 or Spectrum is your thing. 40-year-old? The Amiga. 30 or under? I dunno, whatever plays tiktok.
@@FatNorthernBigot Not really, Its all about the question asked. I have pointed out before on this channel that the word "greatness" on its own doesn't help the question . We should define the aspect of greatness(great as an idea, as a commercial, as game machine etc) . I am 45s and I had both machines ( Amiga and Atari 8bit) but if you ask me which machine was the greatest I would point to the Atari 8bit...hands down. Miner's architecture was ahead of its time and influenced every successful machine of the following decade. C 64 , Amiga, MSX and Atari ST adopted the principles of that platform.
It did ok in the UK, but was never really a contender. It sold very well in Germany (no.2 after C64), Poland & Czech Republic (no.1 computer) and was one of the best selling computers in North America in its earlier years. But remember that popularity is not what this list is based on, if it was then the Atari Falcon and Sinclair QL would never have made it in and instead we would have seen the likes of the Commodore 16 and Amstrad PCW.
I am not surprised, but for me it was Enterprise 128. Dad had it and that was awsome hardware, but not so big software library that used its capabilities... like 256 colors on that 8 bit machine...
@@TheLairdsLair Not surprised for that because of it being big flop financially because of delay of a year totally ruined it basically. It was very easy to port Amstrad games to it though also even easier to port speccy games, but sadly most games are just ports from less good machines. Demoscene is limited to Hungary and Spain and some random fans around the globe so hardware is and was never fully utilized - this latter is the only sad things. At least the colorful keyboard made its way to the popular amstrad. I loved the colorful keys of the EP a lot as a kid :-)
This list isn't based on best hardware. It's based on popularity, what the most people owned that they thought had the best games. The Amiga definitely had the best hardware. It cost more than the Atari ST but people still bought 11m of them versus 5 million Atari STs because they knew it was better and worth the extra cost. The Amiga had a larger palette, more colours on screen at the same time, and better sound. The Atari ST used an 8-bit sound chip.
For me as a kid that didn't know what I was getting into with computers, I mostly had the C64 and the Amiga 500, got a A1200 later on. Most of the other computers on this list, I had at some point as my dad own a shop that sold a lot of stuff, including computers, anyway, none of them really clicked with me apart from the Amiga and the C64 and the Amiga was basically a revolution for me because it felt like the only computer that was powerful enough where you could do almost anything on it, from desktop publishing, art work, music creation and a million other things, it was also multitasking and it felt like it was the only one that could keep up with the consoles going into the 90's, it was an all-rounder that give me the real taste of computing that isn't that different to the PC now and what's shocking is that it took for me at least, till the mid 90's for the PC to fill that itch and even then it felt worse in some areas, that all changed around 2000 with Windows XP when there was no contest, the PC was better and the Amiga showed its age. What's really sad about the Amiga is that it was ahead of it's time when released but Commodore didn't realize what they had and didn't push it hard enough, they didn't release meaningful upgrades and it was only thanks to how advanced it was in the first place that it stay competitive until around 1995.
You had all the best gaming computers starting from 1982. Before that the Atari 800 in 1979 was the best gaming computer. Before that was the Apple II in 1977. I think Commodore realized what it had but Irving Gould wanted to extract as much money as possible from Commodore and kill it. I'm not sure but perhaps it was because he wanted to retire. It's too bad he just didn't sell off his shares. I guess he wanted the value of everyone else's shares too. He must have thought he could take it with him when he died.
My first console was the Atari, as it was then called, and later became known as the Atari 2600. But the first computer I had was a Vic 20, with expanded memory to the full fabulous 8k. (It was thought then.) Then a Vic 64 (Yes, the Commodore 64 was sold under that name in Sweden.) Then a used Amiga 500, and later an Amiga 1200. Had the Amiga alongside a PC for a long time. A 486. Many computers one dreamed of owning, but could only try at the most in a store. In Sweden there was a toy store that invested in a specific computer store where there were lots of computers that you could try. It could be up to 10 Atari 400/800 at the same time. Some smaller brands could have 2 to 4 on display. The shop was called Framtiden. (The Future) and belonged to a chain called Stor & Liten. (Big & Small, as in Adult and Child. It won't be quite the same in translation.) Lots of nostalgia in videos like this one.
A friend got the ZX Spectrum 48k around the same time I got the Vic 64. Both computers had Swedish characters, Å. Ä and Ö. But, on the ZX Spectrum it took up extra memory, so there was one game (As I remember, maybe more.) that could not be run on the Swedish version of the ZX Spectrum. (Vic 20 only came with the English characters, but you could buy extra chips for the Swedish characters.)
glad the Atari 8 bits got second place, they deserve it... before the Atari 400/800 there was only Apples , Pets , TRS-80s, and TI-99/A's out of those, only the TI-99A could give the Atari 8 bits a run for its money, the Atari's were basically the high end game machines of their time, turned into computers. you have 5 sprites, all of which could be reused with display list interrupts down the screen, you have true scrolling on the Atari's , not scroll 8 bits then physically moving the whole screen, but use the Atari' display lists to scroll thru ram not move the ram to you, as far as I understand, the C64 scrolls 8 bits, then you have to grab and move 1024 characters with machine code, thats not fast on a CPU clocked at 1 mhz big savings in CPU time when all you have to do it aim your screen at the ram. then you also have a palette of 128/256 colors to pick from, later models had 256 and had GTIA graphics modes added, big 4 width pixels, but 16 colors or shades at one time. you can also used DLI's to show all 256 colors at once on the screen. the Atari also had a great sound chip, the pokey, which could be used to create some great sound effects and music and can even do 16 bits sound when combined. and then you have the SIO ports( early USB) which could daisy chain its peripherals off of just one port. you also have Atari DOS, one of the easiest to use DOS's of the time. Oh and one last thing to say , "STAR RAIDERS" , made me buy my Atari, and I still play it today. along with millipede , asteroids, pacman , ms pacman, mr do,rescue on fractalus , ect...
I think that the list prior to the top 5 contains a lot of computers that mostly got votes due to being first owned or first used, instead of being objectively great computers. The top five are a bit skewed by an 8-bit preference. If we only count pre-VGA, then the PC is clearly 5th place, but would rocket into first if we count it in its current form. The Amiga will always beat out the ST due to having better sound and more colors. The 64 will always beat the Atari 8-bit due to what programmers could do with that extra 16K of memory. While I'd place the 16-bit systems ahead of the 8-bit ones, I have quite the collection of each due to my love of them.
Yes, this list is not based on the best hardware nor the most games, but more on what people owned and had the best games. Although the title says "all-time", I don't think anyone considered anything after the early 90's.
Sorry, Spectrum should be second if not first. I'll admit it was nowhere near as technically proficient as the other machines, however it was way more important in terms of introducing so many people to computing. Don't forget, at the time the UK had the greatest ownership of computers in the world, a lot of this was down to the Spectrum.
I was one of those Spectrum owners, and I probably would have ranked it higher had it been my own personal view. But you have to remember that over in America the Spectrum didn't even register - Apple, Atari and Commodore led the way.
@@TheLairdsLair I agree with that, however even though some may never have owned or even seen one, the Spectrum changed the way all home computers were viewed, manufactured, marketed and used all over the world. However it's your video (which was very interesting by the way) and I understand your point of view.
It's my video, but it's not my point of view in it, as it was all voted for by the retro gaming community, as I explained at the beginning. You are 100% correct about the Spectrum however!
How popular was the Spectrum outside of the UK? The C64 was sold globally and ultimately sold 13m units compared to 5m for the Spectrum. Very few, if any, sold in North America. The ZX81 probably sold more North America than the Spectrum under the Timex Sinclair 1000 name.
I easily agree with the list. Only thing I have an opinion on, is where they said the C64 was dethroned by the Raspberry pi. Should we even consider the pi as a usurper to the throne? Because if that's the case you could say the C64 was dethroned by every iphone or android phone.
It seems no one considered anything after the early 90's. If modern IBM PC compatibles were considered, they'd be #1. The C64's claim is that it is the best selling model. The Apple II and II+ and IIe are different models. The Atari 400 and 800 are different models. The C64 and C64c are the same model, just a different case and redesigned motherboard but the functionality is identical. Based on that, for the iPhone to win, a single iPhone model would have to sell more than 13 million units. I suspect more than one model achieved that. Same for the Raspberry Pi.
@26:16 How did the Atari ST have a better OS? It had preemptive multitasking and it was extremely modular and configurable while TOS was rather static and single-purpose (though fast) If the ST had this OS it would've been such a production powerhouse with it's hi-res monitor!
@@TheLairdsLair The OS (kickstart) is as well loaded from ROM since the A2000, they just chose to show an 'insert disk' screen instead of the workbench.
I agree. The Atari had a single tasking OS and the appearance of GEM looked disproportional with things squashed and very one-dimensional. Even with its weird color scheme, the appearance of Workbench 1 looked much more advance...and of course preemptive multitasking is the standard in 2022 so pretty forward thinking on Amiga's part.
Hmmm.... The list is somewhat what I expected. But at the end you mentioned something that made me think. Is the RaspberryPI fact, every model of them combined? Or is it one specific RPI model that you are talking about?
Not entirely sure, probably all revisions, I could only find this: According to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, more than 5 million Raspberry Pis were sold by February 2015, making it the best-selling British computer. By November 2016 they had sold 11 million units, and 12.5 million by March 2017, making it the third best-selling "general purpose computer". In July 2017, sales reached nearly 15 million, climbing to 19 million in March 2018. By December 2019, a total of 30 million devices had been sold.
@@TheLairdsLair Ahhh.... But I would say that each RPI is a different machine. Basically a bit like the difference between an IBM XT and an IBM AT system. As compared to the C64 that had the same CPU, expansion ports, same GFX, same sound and so on. Sure if we dive down to the gritty and dirty spec's, then no C64 revision is the same as each other.
Yeah it's definitely a contentious point, I actually didn't say it for that reason and then a guy included it in his comment anyway! It took the blame off me so I included it, lol.
@@TheLairdsLair When they were saying the C64 was the best selling computer of all time, they meant the best selling model. This way the Apple II, II+ and IIe are not considered the same computers but the C64 and C64c are because they are functionally identical. Either way, the C64 outsold all the Apple II, Atari and Amiga models, but if you combine all the IBM PC models, then they would beat out the C64, but no one model of the IBM PC beat the 13m units of the C64 so that's how it retained its title. As of today, there was probably one or more Apple iPhone models that sold over 13m units and possibly an iPad too. Raspberry Pi? I'm not sure.
The Commodore 64 deserves to be the entire top 10 in this list for how much it changed home computer gaming. It was at the top for about a decade which is incredible considering how the industry was advancing. Here in the UK, it's often stated that the Commodore 64 didn't fare as well compared to the US. That's actually true, with the Sinclair Spectrum outselling it due to the Spectrum being British and a decent wedge cheaper for the then far poorer in general UK economy, after many years of a frankly criminally inept Labour Government that would take a decade of Tory rule to fix. But I was around for those years. And even having said all that, the Spectrum didn't outsell the Commodore by that much in my memory. I was running 3 of the things at one point. And most of my friends who were in any way into gaming had a Commodore 64 for years after it's peak.
Nearly all my friends had Spectrums, just one had a C64, and I lived in a really affluent area. From my understanding the Spectrum outsold the C64 by about 2:1 in the UK. It was stronger in Italy and Germany as far as European sales go.
Actually it changed the industry's marketing and methods of production (to the worse in this case). It didn't offer anything new that wasn't offered by i.e. the Atari 8bit line not to mention the backward steps in disk loading performance, sound solution (a synth sound when PCM was introduced in home computing 3 years earlier) , 3d performance and display options (lack of Svideo). It did had improvements in color and memory management, increased resolution but overall it didn't really managed to beat Miner's 8bit system, or to be more interesting compared to the ZX spectrum's unique aesthetics in graphics and sound and the colorful CPC.
How was the Sinclair QL the answer to the BBC Micro, when the ZX Spectrum was released around the same time as the Beeb (~6 months later) when the QL was released four years after that. The QL was released the same year as the Apple Mac 128k (1984).
Because the BBC Micro had become the serious/educational computer and the Spectrum was viewed as a games machine, especially as it lacked a proper keyboard. Sir Clive wanted to make a powerful business/educational computer to compete at that higher end of the market. The QL was also massively delayed, it was supposed to come out in 1983.
Definitely the best gaming computers. Also the Amiga 1200. Before the C64, the Atari 800 was best and before that the Apple II was best. A list of the best computers for productivity would be different.
The results are not that surprising as youtube is international and machines like the C64 and MSX sold well internationally. Machines like the Atari 800 and Apple 2 were dear in the UK but a lot more affordable in other regions. I’m really surprised by the position of the Amstrad CPC because I knew no one who owned one and was never impressed when I used one. I was very much (and still am) a BBC and Acorn person. Learning to program the hard ware of a BBC micro and the ARM on the A3000 was the ground work for my entire career. I still program ARMs albeit indirectly most of the time now. PS. the ARM isn’t just your phones, by your tables, Macs, set top boxes, and so on.
Yes this is based more on what people owned and that they thought had the best games. It's not based on the best hardware or what had the most games. It also seems no one considered anything that came out after 1995.
It is the second time I watched this video. Surprised that the Raspberry Pi was not included; perhaps it was on the 20 to 40 list. The PC is the one I would pick; not for games but utility software. I was more of a console gamer than computer one. Don’t play now, but still watch channels like yours.
I don't think voters selected anything after the early 90's on this list. If modern IBM PC compatibles were considered, it would have to be #1 as the Windows, Mac and Linux machines are all the same architecture, although the Mac is now moving to ARM, and it sounds like Microsoft wants to move Windows to it's own hardware too.
Interesting compilation. However i have to wholeheartedly disagree with the assertion that Atari ST OS was better than Amiga OS. Amiga OS is one of the best operating systems ever put together.
@@TheLairdsLair Hehehe - not surprising..... i was thoroughly impressed with what the Amiga OS could do -- TOS (with its single tasking) and contemporaries aside, it was a highly capable and preemptive system.
Atari 8 bit systems were groundbreaking and the hardware held up against competitors for years. It deserves the #2 place.
@d4qatoa Same my Guy- Virtual Twinsies! Atari 800XL started my PC obsession (Programmed in Basic, got "Online" with CompuServe, etc all the way through my Bach. in Comp Sci + Computer & Internet Business)
But I still remember how freaked out I got the 1st time I got the Jump Scare in Behind Jagged Lines- Loved that Awesome Atari
I'm quite glad the TI-99 4/A made the list, I've always thought it was underrated
It was my first computer too. While it had a slow janky basic, the speech synth made it feel like the future, a feature that wouldn't be matched until the Amiga
I only knew one kid who had one growing up, but I got to play a port of 'Defender' on it and I remember it impressing me, though I am not sure how much more/less powerful the TI-99/4A was vs. the Atari 800, I just remember thinking that particular game was better than the Atari 800 port of the game I had at home.
I had a TI-994A and the extended basic cartridge which made programming it much easier.
To me, Tunnels of Doom WAS the 99 4/a. That game and the system it ran on still amaze me today.
My first computer, with cables to go to the color tv. Manuals, books, cartridges(software). And, TI cassette recordeer and cable. Very satisfying 16 K, color! Easy to use. I also learned some BASIC programming! Beige model, 1983 Christmas gift.
As an American, the ZX Spectrum is really fascinating. I like messing around with Speccy games on emulators and such.
The Spectrum is amazing because Sir Clive Sinclair had a determination to meet a very low price whilst providing exceptional capabilities. He achieved the impossible and the machine was hugely popular. For me though, I could not live with that rubber keyboard.
Well I agree the keyboard was horrible, the way you typed basic programs using the various shifts was wonderful for a dyslexic like me.
I'm 44 yo.ZX Spectrum,from my opinion,is like a relict now...I was happy user of Commodore C64 C with a games on tapes and monochrome monitor,only green and black colour.That was in 1990-1994.In my country in 90's only two home 8-bit computers was popular and possible to get from electronic shops...That was C64 and Atari 800XL,65XE(later)... Everything changed when I saw in TV some document about new,16-bit computer call Amiga 500...After that,A500 changed my live completely, for next 6-7years.
Never forgot episode in my life with Amiga at home....
Sorry for my English 😧
Thanks for your work about fascinating history of very first home computers 👍👌
The colour clash drives me bonkers. I would have saved up for something better.
I’m glad to see the Atari 800 and Atari ST as “Top 5” finishers. These machines “raised the bar” for gaming as well as word processing.
Part of the Atari 8-bit’s continuing legacy it that these machines ran much of their gaming software in cartridge format. The software is as durable as the machines that run it! And, while not as reliable due to the media as well as the mechanisms, many 810 and 1050 disk drives are still in good working order, further keeping 8-bit software alive. Another solid “plus” for the 8-bit Atari is that the general platform also served as the basis of two dedicated consoles - the Atari 5200 and XEGS. The former ran the same game software in an incompatible cartridge format. The latter ran older cartridges, newer XE cartridges (which further expanded the “solid-state” game library), and otherwise behaved exactly like an XL/XE 8-bit when a disk drive was connected. The end result is that the software (on cartridge) is preserved in a durable, usable format. And again, the Atari 8-bit machines that play those games are still running FOUR DECADES LATER.
When I shelved my ST for a PC-compatible, I made sure that everything was boxed-up and stored carefully - especially the manuals and software. Once time and space permitted, the ST was restored to it’s rightful place. The Atari 8-bits, though, get most of my gaming time!
Good to see some love for Atari Star Raiders and Star Raiders II (aka the unreleased “The Last Starfighter”). Those games were must-haves for an Atari 8-bit gamer.
Laird, you mentioned some surprise that the SV-318 wasn’t represented in the polling from US-based gamers. I lived in NY back in then (still do!), and only saw the SV-318 for sale at a music store’s holiday display. There was almost no software available, and I never saw one again ANYWHERE. Gamers I spoke to while looking at the computer commented that it would be a doorstop once the joystick broke. I can’t comment on whether it sold better elsewhere in the USA.
Great vid! Thanks.
Yeah it was nice to see them get the recognition they deserved.
Other Important characteristics of the Atari 8bit home machines were the implementation of a universal serial bus (SIO) for the first time, Chroma Luma output(svideo) and the Autoboot feature for all mediums available on the platform.
Great points. I recently learned about another feature of SIO (USB 1979 :) ) Devices can download driver software to the computer at boot time ( not just disk drives booting DOS.)
And Atari was working on networking multiple computers on the same bus -- about a decade before most people would see networked PCs.
Unfortunately, making technology work better for people takes engineering time and money and the C64 turned personal computing into a race to the bottom, so cool stuff like this had to be cut.
I would like to add another often omitted feature, the joystick ports on Atari where in/out, so you could use them as another port very good for tinkering projects like robot arms, or I had a "one dot" printer and gray shades scanner connected using the ports. A friend of my had a x/y plotter etc. And it was extremely easy to use and understand even for kids, I had already planed a simple matrix logic to control my model railway...exciting times.
I am surprised and happy that the Atari made it to the 2nd place.
Watching all the UK retro gaming videos it feels like the computer never existed.
Probably why the Amiga are invented to work the way it does.
@@crtxl Does not surprise me. Personally I am happy that so many 8bit machines are in the top-10.
The wierd thing about the "dead flesh" keyboard on the ZX spectrum was this. Coming from a ZX81 it was brilliant. As a programmer the keyboard was navigated easily and you got used to it. My mate had a C64, we had BBC and PET at school and my girlfriend had a CPC464, all had excelllent keyboards but it did not make me go "Euuuw" when i got home. I think if you were used to a proper keyboard and THEN used a Speccy you would definately say "EEUUUW dead flesh " and " how the hell do you type on this?". But it was just normal to us Speccy owners.
More than that, once you memorised the keyword layout, you could easily out type all but a professions typist on it too, as a kid, it didnt take long to know they layout even in your sleep.
come on ....you didn't have a girl friend you had a computer you boffin !!! 😁
This list is pretty legit. A friend had the C64, I and a few others had Atari 800/XL/XEs, one of those upgraded to a 520ST, another friend had the Amiga 2000 (with the Video Toaster), we used the Apple IIs, Atari 800s and TRS-80s in junior high and high school computer classes, and I picked up an Amiga 1200 as well.
It was amazing to see the leaps a bounds these computers made in the span of time known as the 80s.
The thing most people don't appreciate about the Atari systems is just how amazingly well they were designed under the hood. Not just the hardware, but the software that drove it. The Operating Systems in both the 8-bit and ST lines were amazing for programmers, once you knew where everything was. I once saw the Kernel manuals for the Amiga and it was a much more complex beast to code, which is one of the reasons why, initially, the ST was receiving more games because programmers needed more time to get to grips with the Amiga. It's a shame that Atari didn't follow this philosophy with later models - the Jaguar was notoriously difficult to program.
The Atari ST was very important to musicians. Because it came with a MIDI port built in so early in the life of the protocol and was affordable, it single-handedly vitalized modern computer music by getting MIDI into the hands of the masses. And the software spawned by this feature, as we all know, survived the machine and even Atari itself.
Indeed, the ST absolutely revolutionised the European dance music scene in particular. In the late 80s/early 90s you couldn't watch an episode of Top of the Pops without seeing one on stage.
As much as I am a fan/expert of the 6809 & Tandy Color Computer 3, I have to begrudgingly admit that the C64 is the greatest, followed by the Atari 800.
Why the C64? A few good reasons it was great:
1. Uses a great version of the 6502. The 65C10 had improved I/O.
2. Shipped with full 64kb at a time when other machines were often sold in multiple variations (16kb, 32kb, etc). This made the machine standardized in the community, speeding up development and adoption.
3. Fairly good 16 colors palette with colors that didn't bleed on a TV screen. Very readable text, without pesky artefact colors messing it up.
5. The SID music/sound chip allowed the CPU to delegate sound and music, leaving it almost 100% available for running the program & graphics. Also, great sound chip design with multi voices and ASMR sound envelopes. All hardware.
6. Great dedicated community that strived to push the machine to its limits.
7. Acceptable keyboard (other 8bit computers were not all comfortable to the user's hands).
8. PETSCII.
9. Amazingly good graphics resolution for the time (wide 320x200).
10. Hardware sprites. Although fairly limited, they made game development easier and further freed the poor CPU.
11. Overactive demo scene.
12. Lots of BBS.
13. Fairly good RGB monitor if you had the budget.
Why the C64 is great but not perfect:
1. Pedestrian cassette player system (very slow loading).
2. Poorly designed floppy drive, with an overpowered controller chip but flawed bandwidth control. Slow!
3. Some of the computer's greatest features not directly accessible in basic, require tedious poke sequences.
4. Few productivity applications. (Hey, I had 3 word processors on my Coco3 and they were all superior to the ones available on the C64.)
5. Poor printers.
6. Fixed palette.
Commodore 64 had Word Writer, Geo write, Paperclip 64, Bank Street Writer and other word processors. For spreadsheets, it had Microsoft Multiplan, Geo Calc, Versa Calc, etc...
1. The extra I/O wasn't a major feature of the 6510. The C64 would still have been as great without it.
2. True
3. I agree with the comment from the video that the palette is muddy, at least half of it. It could have been better.
4. Missing?
5. I think you meant ADSR.
6. True but I think all systems had such communities.
7. True
8. The PETSCII graphics were nice but it would have been better with standard ASCII and the PETSCII graphics being in the upper 128.
9. The C64 wasn't the first to do 320x200
10. How do you think they were limited? There were 8, were larger (24x21) than any other system and they were multi-colour. The TI-99/4 had 32 16x16 monochrome sprites so it had to use 4 sprites to equal one monochrome C64 sprite, or 12 to equal one multi-colour C64 sprite. The Atari ones were even more limited. 2/3rds of the VIC-II chip die handles the sprites.
11. Overactive makes it sound like you think there should have been less.
12. True.
13. Yes, even computerists without a Commodore computer bought Commodore monitors for their non-Commodore computers and game consoles. Without Commodore monitors, the graphics of the 80's would have been a lot more fuzzy and expensive.
1. The cassette system was designed for the KIM-1 and PET by Chuck Peddle. It was not documented and the timing was very fiddly so no one dated touch it after it was working, not even Chuck himself. It remained the same to the Commodore 128.
2. There was nothing wrong with the floppy drive. The lack of speed was first due to a bug in the VIA on the VIC-20, and secondly due to a trace being chopped off the C64 motherboard. What was wrong is that Jack wouldn't hold production to let the engineers fix it.
3. Yes, the BASIC was a big failure without graphics and sound commands. It did encourage a lot of C64 owners to learn assembly though.
4. There were lots of productivity apps for the C64 and I used some really nice word processors.
5. I agree the MPS-801 was poor but Commodore had better printers and there were some really nice third party ones. I'd argue Commodore shouldn't have been making printers, like Steve Jobs argued when he came back to Apple.
6. I agree the fixed palette is ugly. Surely they could have taken a bit of room to allow the 16 colour palette to be chosen from a larger palette. They could have taken out one sprite or something. This is why games look better on the Atari in most cases.
Atari 800 developed in 1977, released in 1979 and was king of the 8-bits.
I got to use a BBC micro in junior school when growing up but even before that the Amstrad CPC 464 was my first home computer, when I was 8, and I loved it - I remember creeping downstairs on Christmas day to playing Animal Vegetable and Mineral and Harrier Attack and fondly remember the Dizzy games. Sometime later a friend of mine had a C64 and the games blew my mind compared to my Amstrad (compare OutRun on the two machines!) but it was the Amiga A500 then A1200 that I really fell in love with as a teenager with my head dizzy booting *Shadow of the Beast* up for the first time on my A500 Screen Gems pack but the A1200 was equally my number one as it could do so so much, and the Amiga range was way ahead of its time.
The primary reasons the C64 had great games were the sprites and hardware scrolling, which the Amstrad CPC didn't have until the Plus models which added both of those features. As I am more into programming and general computing than games, I prefer the Amstrad CPC but I live in Canada and didn't know it existed when I bought my C64. I like the higher resolution screen and the larger palette and the BASIC is amazing compared to Commodore BASIC V2 on the C64.
In 1979, there was simply nothing that could compare to the sound and colours of the 8 bit Atari computer.
Atari 800 was very well built and well ahead of its time, and no question the impact the C64 had. The original Spectrum just had a certain something about its industrial design, and the ZX81 was affordable getting me into computers and an IT career, so it has to be the Zeddy for me. The pinnacle of that line was the Speccy looking TS1500 with 16k which is my favorite home computer being the best variant of the computer that gave me the livelihood I have today. (the 16bit machines became real tools rather than just dreams, so despite be having a 512ST, 1040ST and TT, those and what came after are just computers not dream makers)
I like the ZX81 / TS1000 / TS1500 a lot. They're minimalist but have what you need. The only system I would choose over them would be the Tandy MC-10 (aka. Matra Alice). It was $120 USD but only sold for one year and few sold, but it has a Motorola 6803 with 4KB of RAM, expandable to 20KB, ASCII, 8KB Microsoft BASIC, 9 colours, a chicklet keyboard, bitmap graphics (with RAM expander). I think it was a good deal for the price but it didn't come out until 1983 which was too late.
In the early 80s I had two computers. An IBM 5150 and an Apple III (expanded to 512 KB). Both were given to me by my dad. Of the two systems the IBM had most of the games, although I had one game for the Apple III (Star Trek). With the high speed C.Itoh printer and a 3rd (external double-density) drive the Apple III was nearly a $10,000 outfit (early 80s remember). My youngest brother had an Apple II, I had one uncle with an Apple IIGS, and another with a VIC-20 and two C64s. I wound up with the two C64s, one of which I still have. Great video.
I got my start with a VIC 20. It will always hold a special place in my heart. But, it was the C64 that really cemented my interest in computers. It was an amazing machine, and I have nothing but love for the old bread bin system. A friend of mine had the 128, but he used it almost entirely to play C64 games. I would be lying if I said I didn't miss the old days.
Thank you for including the best of all, the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. It's the machine I grew up with and it's still going 40 years later. It's the most expandable machine of the lot, better than the BBC, because I was lucky enough to get the Peripheral Expansion Box.
A lot of people agreed with you it seems!
Ahhhh! The classic (and very nostalgic) sound of "Three Blind Mice" on the VIC!!! Thanks for the great countdown!
I never had more fun with a computer than I did with my C64
I was an Atari 800 kid (the only one I was aware of in my area), but I always wanted a C64 as I had a couple friends who had one, so I was aware of what it could do, especially that sweet SID sound chip. Believe it or not, most of the kids I knew who had home computers had either some sort of IBM PC clone, some variation or other of the Apple II, or a Mac (I'm American).
I did know one kid who had a TI-99/4A, and I only got to play a game on it once, it was a port of 'Defender', and I remember being impressed with it's graphics. I was like 6 or 7 years old (it was the mid-eighties) at the time. I first discovered 'Turrican' and 'Sim City' at a buddies' house in 1990-ish on his C64, and those two games were a couple of the main reasons I wanted a C64 back then.
I got a 'TheC64' recently and I love it. It's interesting to play games that were on both C64 and Atari 8-Bit because I only played the Atari versions back in the day. Fascinating to see and play games that other kids grew up with and being able to contrast and compare them to my own childhood experiences with Atari machines.
Btw, just got my A500 Mini a week ago. I had an Atari ST in the early 90's. LOL Here we go again............
I was lucky to have a VIC-20 and a C64 back in the day. I spent a LOT of time typing machine code into those two. Back then, magazines would come with games for free but you had to put them into the machine line by line. They also came with checksum routines to verify you didn't screw it up typing it in.
Oh wow, didn't realize I made such an impact. Am honored, thanks for the mention! 😊
Glad you mentioned/showed the game "Dark Castle" on Apple Macintosh. I had a MacPlus back in 1987. Lots of fun.
If money was no object back in 1979 then I would certainly have bought the Atari 800, I mean just look at it. It's gorgeous. But reality meant I started on a ZX81 and then a commodore 64. I just wished commodore basic was more user friendly like Atari 800 basic. I still have my C64. The nostalgia is strong with that great machine.
I waited days to watch this because I knew it would be good and I didn't want any interruptions :-) It did not disappoint...very well reasoned and presented!
Glad it was worth the wait!
Dad had 3 TI99/4A's, 2 of them still sealed...and he had the Expansion Box, with floppy drives and a "hard card" for storage, and the Speech module.
Really enjoyed watching this. I'm really surprised at the Atari Falcon 030. It was manufactured in low numbers and probably sold fewer than the others on this list. However it was a very capable machine and i can't help thinking if only it had a higher clocked 68030, it would have sold bucket loads. If Atari had survived longer and managed to make more of them, we might of seen high spec versions. Commodore expanded on the A500's ability to replace the native CPU, on the A1200 with a much cheaper trapdoor expansion bus. I never understood why Atari never made the ST expandable in the same way. Tramiel's business model, built in obsolescence? Was the Mega ST range an attempt to put that right, don't know much about them. I moved from ST to Amiga 500 then 1200. I still eyed the magazine adverts showing the Falcon, working out how i could buy one.
I actually wanted a QL before all that but the cost got in the way and by the time i saved the pennies, the ST was the best option.
Seriously I've lived through some of techs most interesting and eccentric days, I'm sad is gone and as history i hope it is remembered well. It's been a great ride and with emulation we have not left it behind. 😀
Fanboys voting for their beloved brand....that's what brought the Falcon in the list.
I've only just found your channel. Otherwise the Speccy and ZX81 would have had an extra vote each, and the poor old Panasonic JR-100 would have had a single, solitary vote. No-ones ever heard of it, apparently. I got mine in the 80's, second hand without software or instructions, and it's the only one I've ever seen. LOL.
Great countdown.
The original Atari 800 was pretty expensive at launch. Had it been equivalent in price to the competition it would have dominated. The conversions of Pac Man and Joust were perfect. Best I could do was pop into Laskys when it was quiet.
OMG - so good to say a UK based 8bit computer countdown…
Loved this, took me back to 1984.
My first computer after my Atari VCS. Got me into computing and I’m still doing that to this day, 40 odd years later,
History:-
Atari VCS
Zx Spectrum 48k
Atari 800xl
Amstrad CPC-464
Then into pc’s
Then saw the light in 2008 and switched to Apple Mac’s
Thank you for an amazing trip down memory lane
The only surprise for me was the MSX being so low. I think it got some really good games, and did some impressive things at times.
I personally had a PC XT (and later 386) as a kid. They were not the greatest for games, but can't ignore what it became. Not a bad list tho. Happy to see the C64 and atari up there. I would have happily have taken either one of those computers as a kid.
Well this was just a popularity vote. Most users ignore the information needed to make an educated assessment. MSX was the realization of the earliest effort to have different brand machines sharing the same library. That fact alone puts the platform among the greatest computer ever produced. After all PCs dominated the market based on that characteristic.
Very good! Here in Germany the ST‘s never had a vast community. When you had one you were likely to be bullied about it at school. I remember a grfx and sound demo with a sample: „ST - das tut weh!“ („ST - that hurts!“). Due to marketing („Amiga fever will get you!“) and cheap software (Fish-disks) the Amiga was the way to go. The older brother of a good friend had an Atari ST Desktop (?). The design was horrible. It looked like a plank with a shoe box and a milk carton on top. The only thing I liked about it was the hi-res b&w display and the keyboard. As far i remember it had a little speaker inside, and whenever you hit a key, the whole case gave a subtle „humming“ response…
Simple truth is, Amiga computers were the highest quality you can get in the 80's and early 90's. So advanced by the standards of their time. It was 93, 94 when PC's came with better soundcards and graphics but before that, Amiga was the best. Commodore marketing was very bad and some people still think Amiga is just a "play console" (with that game console you were able to run BBS and made almost CD quality music, scanning photos, with 1mb of memory, multitasking) , with that operation system and extra chips, it could have been something really wonderful. But Commodore...
@@prowlingfrost5588 More precisely, but Irving Gould and his henchman Mehdi Ali...
Wow! The Electron Frak has no flickering!!
Love the channel and I think this was one of your best yet
What an excellent video was even better than the one with the 20 greatest video game consoles. Was a really nice touch and tribute for the Sinclair QL. I was also really glad you used my Atari Falcon 030, and Sinclair ZX Spectrum comments in the video. That made my day when I saw that so thank you very much. Of the computers in the video I either owned or used Atari Falcon 030, BBC micro (Used them in college), Apple Mac classic ( I had a cousin who at the time worked for a company that only used Apple Macs, he brought one to my home so got to use it), Sinclair ZX Spectrum, IBM PC compatible, Commodore 64 (My now brother in-law lent me his for a week and a version of Spitfire 40), Atari ST.
Thanks for your intelligent input, it was a real pleasure to have them in my video!
Not surprised to see 8bit Atari so high on the list. It was a groundbreaking machine in the time of its release 1979 with 400 and 800 models.
I love that you showed Leisure Suit Larry with the IBM PC, one of my earliest computer memories was playing that game on a Tandy 1000
I tried to match the game clips to represent the systems, so pleased I succeeded!
@@TheLairdsLair I think that added a lot to the video because people will recognize the games they most likely played on each system they had access to.
I'm very happy the Atari 8-bit play so high because my first computer ever was an 800xl
You mention the ZX Spectrum as a British phenomenon, but it was indeed the clear "number 2" computer in Norway as well at that time. Remember the stores that sold games had sections for Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC, but barely bothered with the rest.
I never knew that, thanks for the info!
In Poland, the ZX Spectrum was the most popular and widespread computer in the years 84-87.
What computers were most used in Norway schools? One of those you mentioned or something else?
@@timlocke3159 In Norway the schools used IBM compatibles, and old ones as that. So computers as school really sucked :( Computer education in Norway in the eighties were very poor indeed. Computers were only an optional one hour a week course in most schools.
26:00 **sees a Kempston joystick appear on screen... Immediately starts doing an involuntary 'we're not worthy' bow at the screen.**
Alas, my poor forgotten CoCo 2.
A few people did vote for the CoCo, it was ranked 31.
Yep, I had a Coco 2, then a C128(D), and an Amiga 500 before falling into the x86 world...
Of them all, the Coco 2 is probably still the most fun I ever had with programming (but the lack of the games my friends had became too much...)
Glad that the 4A made the final cut for the top 20. I feared that square-pegging a 16 bit processor onto an 8 bit bus might have slowed it down sufficiently to keep it off the list, but am happy to see that there were enough of us that recognized that, despite its design and corporate marketing flaws, it was still worthy for recognition, even if it just missed the top 10. (Apple II didn't even get honourable mention!!)
I would have flipped the C64 and Atari 8-bit... but I come from the "Atari rulez, Commies Drool" generation.
Apple II was in the top 10!
@@TheLairdsLair Damn, I must have zoned out during that segment. Old age! (or drugs) (or both)
I'm looking for a list like this, but then 100% ranked on aesthetics.
I'm glad to see at least a mention of the T/S 2068 and a pic of it's lovely case design! I'm actually quite pleased to see the the TI-99/4A rank as high as it did. It's race-to-the-bottom pricing, uniquely period-perfect pastel color palette, what would become ubiquitous sound and graphics chips, and that awesome-for-the-time speech synth module really still make it a very nostalgic choice for me. I do think 13 is the perfect spot too: unlucky, that pretty well describes the TI-99's place in history. haha. Sure, you had the TI-99/4A's TMS9918A that was either directly in other computer/console products, cloned, or was the predecessor other VDP chips; the SN76489/SN94624 being the PSG chip in a stack of products; and then later T.I. stuff like the TMS320 and TMS34010/34020 that were used in vast array of arcade system and graphics solutions. However, Texas Instruments just never could make it back into the home computer space with another full-scale product, which is sad because a TMS320 + TMS34010 home system could have been something great in the mid-late-80s.
I think I'm most pleasantly surprised by the Atari Falcon making the list. Though never owning one, I've always liked reading about it, and seeing the bit of games that took good advantage of it. Since the Atari 8-bit line made it so high up the list, I'll also throw out that I also love the case design of the XEGS: it's right up there with the 2068, the PC-Engine Shuttle, JVC X'Eye, and the Jaguar for my favorite computer and console designs. I think the C-64 is deserving of the win here. Though I didn't get to use one daily, I did enjoy it when I did. I've never been the biggest SID fan though, since I prefer the timbre of most other cleaner?-sounding PSG chips like SN76489/2A03/Pokey/AY-3-8910. I do respect and enjoy SID compositions from Rob Hubbard (his Commando rendition is one of my favorite tunes on the 8-bits), Matt Furniss (one of my favorite video game composers, though I prefer his FM work), and especially Jeroen Tel's stuff (and his great NES compositions); however, there's something about SID music that also grates on my ears more than other PSG sound. That said, I do still think the C-64 is deserving of its spot! Also, though I'm familiar enough with all of the rest of the top-20, even the stuff we didn't see in the states, the QL is one that I've only heard of and really know nothing about. Since, it got a lot of love in the votes, I'll have to dig deeper into it.
I couldn't agree with you more about the SID, I feel exactly the same!
25:08 Yes Chi Man Liu. A friend of mine had an Atari ST he also had a Master System an NES and soon a genesis on two separate tvs. So often I could sit and play Dungeon Master on his ST while other friends played console games. Dungeon Master was awesome!
Great video as always. I was rather surprised to see myself mentioned twice here. If I had more than three choices available, the TI-99/4a would be in my top 5 from personal experience as it was the second computer platform that I used in school. I own a working example as part of my collection today.
Thanks again, I loved your stories!
I have no memory of seeing a single msx computer or game on sale anywhere in my childhood
Weirdly I remember the games being sold in Boots, but that's it. I never knew anybody who had one.
It must have varied from place to place. I don't remember ever seeing any MSX computers here in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA. But that doesn't mean they weren't around.
Here in the UK, I remember seeing Sony, Panasonic, Yamaha, Philips, Goldstar, Sanyo, and Toshiba MSX1 computers for sale in 1984/85 in many different shops. I think the best seller was the Toshiba HX10, after it was greatly discounted and sold with a cassette recorder bundle for £100 by the retailer Dixons. When they first launched they were nearer £250. Nice kit, but pricey in an already Sinclair, Commodore, Amstrad, and Acorn saturated UK marketplace. I don't remember seeing any software for MSX, other than a few dozen titles listed by mail-order companies.
The Dragon 32 was pretty awesome and way ahead of anything apple had come up with :-)
Very good to learn programming on. Very good CPU. I still have mine.
@@wayland7150 And beautiful keyboard (especially when handed to a 10 year old who had previously used a zx81!)
The top 4 rank about how I'd rank them, but I never would have thought the Atari's would be that high. It's awesome though.
Those four definitely deserve to be at the top.
I only own the ZX Spectrum, so that's my favourite. My uncle had an Amstrad.
Great video apart from the Spectrum travesty, which I’m choosing to remember in first place and no one can stop me!
It depends on your definition of best. Best hardware? Graphics? Sound? Most games? Best games? What kind of games are best? Some ZX Spectrum games may be the best even if they don't have the best graphics and sound. There is more to games than graphics and sound.
I'm not surprised the Commodore PET didn't get much mention from us in the States, out of that 1977 group of competing computers, the Apple II made the biggest impression on the general public.
Plus they pretty much cornered the American educational market for the following 15ish years, if you were a kid in school even as late as the early-90s, you more than likely laid hands on an Apple II and played Oregon Trail.
The video is about home computers. I took that to mean affordable computers that were purchased by non-technical users for use at home. The list is correct because the Apple ][s were expensive and rarely used in anybody's home. Since the ][ used the cheapest CPU available, the $25 6502, most people thought the machine was an overpriced item that they had only seen in magazines. Apple sold less than 8000 ][s, mostly to schools, in the first two years it was available.
The Tandy TRS-80 vastly outsold the Apple II and Commodore PET until 1984 after the Apple IIe came out in 1983. The Commodore PET was in second place until Apple surpassed it around 1981.
So starting out: 1) TRS-80, 2) Commodore PET, 3) Apple II
In the end: 1) Apple II, 2) TRS-80, 3) Commodore PET
Yes, the Apple II was the most popular in US schools although some schools did have Atari, Commodore or Tandy Color Computers. In Canada, most schools had Commodores. In the UK, all schools had the BBC Micro.
Hey. I'm referenced in this video. I've finally made it! :) great list
Yes you are - congrats! Glad you liked it!
Plus 4 woop woop , had one for Christmas still have fond memories of fire ant icicle works and treasure island
Glad to see your videos have been getting more views. Well deserved.
Much appreciated!
The Commodore 64 ruled as it had the unbeatable combination of superior technology at a low price. When I got mine back in 1983 the Atari 800 was significantly more expensive. And whilst the Atari St and Amiga which were to follow were more powerful machines, they were also significantly more expensive. If the C64 had been more expensive, it would not have enjoyed the success it did. Likewise, if it had been a step back technologically it would have been a different story. Fortunately, this wasn't the case.
You are correct. That combination gave it an edge because it did really bring anything new on the table. It did manage to do things a bit better and friendlier for the programmers but the low price did add huge value to the system.
Too bad their quality control was so crap in the first 2 years. We returned at least 3 C64s - one even tried to catch fire - until they sorted out the manufacturing. And that disk drive - oh God ... without a fastloading cart - utterly crap.
@@mortimore4030 Have you seen the C64 marketing? It was worse than the Atari marketing. It wasn't marketing that sold the C64. It was the price. People walked into the store and decided based which to buy based on price. They didn't know or care which had better sound or more colours. Once a lot of people owned one, then people bought it because lots of other people had it, but it still had the lowest price. Jack didn't know much about computers, he could have been just as successful selling bicycles, but he was a shrew businessman.
As an American, I have the luxury of appreciating the ZX Spectrum in theory. The symmetrical and compact layout looks nice, especially next to the ugly Timex Sinclair 2068. I don't have to bother myself with such practicalities as physically typing on the keyboard which everyone says was bad or something, or struggling with temperamental tape loading.
I owned a 16K (then 48K) rubber-keyed Spectrum. I very rarely had problems with loading software from my Philips cassette recorder. Software piracy was rife, and I suggest that people struggling to load software, may have been doing so from a poorly duplicated C90 tape they traded at school. Criticism of the keyboard is fair enough. There were several better keyboards available from 3rd parties.
The Timex Sinclair 1500 looks really nice. It's essentially a TS1000 with 16KB RAM in a silver/grey ZX Spectrum case.
Really interesting top 20 some surprises and a lot of great memories for ome of these machines.
I am surprised by the absense of the Tandy 1000 line of computers. Some might view them as just an IBM PC clone, but the Tandy 1000 was the first time that high quality audio, graphics, and storage (HDD) came together in one machine, with a huge software library to boot.
"Tandy graphics and sound" dominated computing for five years (1984-89 and beyond). It existed because Tandy was trying to copy the PC Jr. That machine was a massive failure, so Tandy changed directions, aiming for PC compatibility, and succeeded.
Amazed, but happy, to see the QL made it to number 18. It had likely the shortest lifespan of any of the others on the list. I wouldn't ever claim the Atari OS was better than the Amiga OS...both kernel or GUI. The Mac is a tough one because by the early 90's they completely separated themselves from all of the other computers on the list and were mainstream with so many models. Can't really find any major issues with your top 20 list, nice job!
actually you are wrong, Atari ST had a spot on OS and GUI, while Amiga DOS was a piece of art, it came too early and was made for future, and when the future came (with A3000) it was already obsolete and competition had much better solutions. The Amiga 1.x Workbench is a bloatware (for its time), is cluttered and very slow to use, remember that 80s was a floppy time. Even with HDD the ST GUI is faster on floppy then m68k Amiga with HDD. Amiga also needed more floppy drives to work at some pace, otherwise it was a real disk swap orgy. Remember that Amiga was also held back by its resources and obsolete architecture, so the Amiga DOS was misplaced on that hardware. The Workbench 1.x GUI was just a pseudo GUI and for a lot of tasks you need to go into shell. Majority of Amiga users wasnt bothered by this since they didnt use workbench much, no need for it if you load games. ST was much better as a computer... so much better.
@@madigorfkgoogle9349 You're completely blinded by your bias for the ST over the Amiga. The fact the Amiga (11m units) outsold the Atari ST (5m units) by more than a factor of two, in spite of the ST being less expensive than the vastly more powerful Amiga proves people knew it was better than the ST and were willing to pay for it. It's pretty obvious you didn't spend much time using an Amiga as your statements show you don't understand how it works. You call the Amiga architecture obsolete yet today's systems follow the Amiga architecture. The ST didn't even support sprites or hardware scrolling until the STe. What a joke. I get a kick out of the bragging about the MIDI feature, which is something even an 8-bit computer of the time could handle. Go back to your reality distortion bubble.
The Tandy 1000 series had more integrated features than the original IBM and clones. Extended CGA-compatible graphics controller, multiple built-in I/O ports, including a game port which was frequently a separate add-on card on non-Tandy machines, and a special sound chip. You could also output to a CGA monitor, or to a TV using composite.
Yes, it was based on the IBM PC Jr.
IF this is a point of sales then I guess this is a pretty true list, but IF It's from a personal view then for me the Amiga A500 is the greatest games computer of all time followed by the ZX Spectrum 128k+1 Toastrack,then the C64c and the Atari 800xl, that's just my personal view and nothing will sway me from changing that view 😁🙂
Well, when people say "all-time", they should be considered modern computers, but nothing after the early 90's is on this list.
I agree the Amiga was the best up to the early 90's. Then the IBM PC graphics and sound caught up. Of the Amigas, the 500 sold more units than the other Amiga models combined, making it the best home computer before the early 90's.
The C64 sold more units (13m) and had more games, but the hardware wasn't as good as the Amiga.
I watched a video about NES games that have been modes with a new graphics layer, enhanced music, etc. I think it would be amazing to see classic games upgraded with modern looking graphics; Deungeon Master would be great if updated and sped up as transitions like doirs opening could be slow.
Im surprised the X68000 didnt make the list.
To be fair, I didnt expect it to be near the top. It had very few sales, was only released in Japan and its sales were mostly to video game developers.
For those who arent aware of this computer, it was designed by Sharp Corporation. In an effort to differentiate itself from other computers at the time, Sharp designed a computer that could create a full arcade experience (in 1987). Many Japanese game developers looked at the hardware Specs of this computer when designing their arcade machines, and even the Sega Genesis itself is a severely watered down X68000. The computer itself had its influence on game (hardware) design, but the average consumer couldnt afford it.
It was ranked 24th on the list. I have covered the computer in great detail on this channel, if you haven't seen the videos: th-cam.com/video/q6pOa3V9Yw0/w-d-xo.html
For me, the Speccy will always hold the #1 spot, and games like Lords of Midnight and Doomdarks Revenge just make it legendary.
for us old enough to remember the first home PC such as the spectrum the vic 20 the acorn and BBC B they were considered purchases "easy credit" wasn't available and at "100 to £200 they were not cheap and research had to eb done over a period of time before we got our mum down to rumbalows to sign up for it
Great list albeit a bit US centric. Keep up the awesome work and we all know the winner should have been the VIC20 ;-)
Yeah, it's funny, I was expecting the opposite actually, but of the 300+ votes cast the majority were from Americans.
No.1 for Commodore 64 is no surprise, but also well deserved. It had more games made for it than any other 8 bit, and many game genres began with C64 games
that was not why the C64 made it to the top...it was fans voting for their favorite systems and avoiding giving points to the competition.
Apple//e, and //gs, + Commodore 64 are great machines...Thank you very much indeed for posting the video.
You are welcome!
The Sinclair QL was very important to today's computing . Because of the lack of software it forced Linus Torvalds to program software for it. And we all know where that ended up leading
Yep, I was very pleased to see it make the list for that reason alone!
@@TheLairdsLair Shame my 1st computer (Dragon32) didn't make it..
It only just missed out, it was placed 22nd!
I'm honestly not really surprised the Sharp MZ-700, which was the first computer my dad bought, didn't make it to the top 20. However, being the computer on which I wrote my first BASIC program and of which I have plenty of joyful memories, it will always remain a very special computer to me.
I wonder how many of those were sold. Maybe more than the Atari Falcon but probably less than most if not all of the other computers on this list.
back then for us young nerds it was the availability of games which unit had the most choice and good looking games
for
One of your best videos for sure!
Fun that the ARM is not even just in mobile devices anymore. I was amused by all the glowing reviews of Apple's M1 chip. And have to say it /is/ a pretty great chip.
Really it depends on whether you used a computer for games playing or programming... it would be interesting to see this list from a programmers point of view
I'm still voting Atari 800 here. 😁 OSS bank-switching language carts packing 16K of hacking goodness into 8K of address space. MAC/65 and BASIC XL/XE are super.
Sorry your brother passed; I know auch pain along with losing my sister and parents, kind of hard at times being only amediatenfamily.memeber still alive, thank goodness for extended family.
I can't wrap my head around the Basic on the TI. I just can't. It's like trying to solve the gordian knot
The Extended BASIC is much better.
I'm a little shocked the TRS-80 Color Computer isn't on the list.
It was in the top 40 somewhere, but you have to remember it was only a success in North America, and even then only a marginal one.
To me other than the x86 PC I really can't pick another for the other two places. Since the computer market was always changing and all the ones I played with (but never owned kinda) had a special place in my heart so for me it's just too hard to choose really. The "kinda" bit was before my first computer that I owned, and played with (a generic 386SX 25) I was given a broken C-64. I worked on it, and had it working right before a tornado (F3/EF4 grade) came, and destroyed it before I could load my first program. The systems I played around as a kid were the Apple II, Atari 8-bit , Tandy CoCo (models 2&3), Ti-99 4A, C-64, PET, and x86 PC (including the original IBM 5150.) Today I would love to grab any of these machines on the list if I can find one cheap enough that is, but until then I can just use emulation.
The Atari 800? At that place on the list? I'm shocked.
Indeed, I was extremely shocked, but also very pleased to see it get so much love.
@@TheLairdsLair I guess it's a location and generation thing. If you're in your 50s, the Atari 800 or Spectrum is your thing. 40-year-old? The Amiga. 30 or under? I dunno, whatever plays tiktok.
@@FatNorthernBigot Not really, Its all about the question asked. I have pointed out before on this channel that the word "greatness" on its own doesn't help the question . We should define the aspect of greatness(great as an idea, as a commercial, as game machine etc) . I am 45s and I had both machines ( Amiga and Atari 8bit) but if you ask me which machine was the greatest I would point to the Atari 8bit...hands down. Miner's architecture was ahead of its time and influenced every successful machine of the following decade. C 64 , Amiga, MSX and Atari ST adopted the principles of that platform.
Two words : STAR RAIDERS . You couldn't make it as good on the C64 or Apple II
It did ok in the UK, but was never really a contender. It sold very well in Germany (no.2 after C64), Poland & Czech Republic (no.1 computer) and was one of the best selling computers in North America in its earlier years. But remember that popularity is not what this list is based on, if it was then the Atari Falcon and Sinclair QL would never have made it in and instead we would have seen the likes of the Commodore 16 and Amstrad PCW.
I am not surprised, but for me it was Enterprise 128. Dad had it and that was awsome hardware, but not so big software library that used its capabilities... like 256 colors on that 8 bit machine...
Not one person voted for the poor old Enterprise, so nice to see it get some love!
@@TheLairdsLair Not surprised for that because of it being big flop financially because of delay of a year totally ruined it basically.
It was very easy to port Amstrad games to it though also even easier to port speccy games, but sadly most games are just ports from less good machines.
Demoscene is limited to Hungary and Spain and some random fans around the globe so hardware is and was never fully utilized - this latter is the only sad things.
At least the colorful keyboard made its way to the popular amstrad. I loved the colorful keys of the EP a lot as a kid :-)
@@u9vata Great hardware and potential but this list is essentially the most popular computers that had people's most favourite games.
Great to see the beeb make the top 10, didnt expect that, but I do think the miggy shud have been top.
This list isn't based on best hardware. It's based on popularity, what the most people owned that they thought had the best games. The Amiga definitely had the best hardware. It cost more than the Atari ST but people still bought 11m of them versus 5 million Atari STs because they knew it was better and worth the extra cost. The Amiga had a larger palette, more colours on screen at the same time, and better sound. The Atari ST used an 8-bit sound chip.
For me as a kid that didn't know what I was getting into with computers, I mostly had the C64 and the Amiga 500, got a A1200 later on.
Most of the other computers on this list, I had at some point as my dad own a shop that sold a lot of stuff, including computers, anyway, none of them really clicked with me apart from the Amiga and the C64 and the Amiga was basically a revolution for me because it felt like the only computer that was powerful enough where you could do almost anything on it, from desktop publishing, art work, music creation and a million other things, it was also multitasking and it felt like it was the only one that could keep up with the consoles going into the 90's, it was an all-rounder that give me the real taste of computing that isn't that different to the PC now and what's shocking is that it took for me at least, till the mid 90's for the PC to fill that itch and even then it felt worse in some areas, that all changed around 2000 with Windows XP when there was no contest, the PC was better and the Amiga showed its age.
What's really sad about the Amiga is that it was ahead of it's time when released but Commodore didn't realize what they had and didn't push it hard enough, they didn't release meaningful upgrades and it was only thanks to how advanced it was in the first place that it stay competitive until around 1995.
You had all the best gaming computers starting from 1982. Before that the Atari 800 in 1979 was the best gaming computer. Before that was the Apple II in 1977.
I think Commodore realized what it had but Irving Gould wanted to extract as much money as possible from Commodore and kill it. I'm not sure but perhaps it was because he wanted to retire. It's too bad he just didn't sell off his shares. I guess he wanted the value of everyone else's shares too. He must have thought he could take it with him when he died.
I agree !!! 3 IBM PC Compatible CGA 2 Commodore Amiga and 1 C64 best computer ever !!!!
My first console was the Atari, as it was then called, and later became known as the Atari 2600.
But the first computer I had was a Vic 20, with expanded memory to the full fabulous 8k. (It was thought then.)
Then a Vic 64 (Yes, the Commodore 64 was sold under that name in Sweden.)
Then a used Amiga 500, and later an Amiga 1200.
Had the Amiga alongside a PC for a long time. A 486.
Many computers one dreamed of owning, but could only try at the most in a store.
In Sweden there was a toy store that invested in a specific computer store where there were lots of computers that you could try. It could be up to 10 Atari 400/800 at the same time. Some smaller brands could have 2 to 4 on display.
The shop was called Framtiden. (The Future) and belonged to a chain called Stor & Liten. (Big & Small, as in Adult and Child. It won't be quite the same in translation.)
Lots of nostalgia in videos like this one.
A friend got the ZX Spectrum 48k around the same time I got the Vic 64.
Both computers had Swedish characters, Å. Ä and Ö.
But, on the ZX Spectrum it took up extra memory, so there was one game (As I remember, maybe more.) that could not be run on the Swedish version of the ZX Spectrum.
(Vic 20 only came with the English characters, but you could buy extra chips for the Swedish characters.)
The VIC-20 came with 5K of RAM, (3.5K free for BASIC) but was expandable to 32K (28K free for BASIC).
glad the Atari 8 bits got second place, they deserve it...
before the Atari 400/800 there was only Apples , Pets , TRS-80s, and TI-99/A's
out of those, only the TI-99A could give the Atari 8 bits a run for its money,
the Atari's were basically the high end game machines of their time, turned into computers.
you have 5 sprites, all of which could be reused with display list interrupts down the screen,
you have true scrolling on the Atari's , not scroll 8 bits then physically moving the whole screen, but use the Atari' display lists to scroll thru ram not move the ram to you,
as far as I understand, the C64 scrolls 8 bits, then you have to grab and move 1024 characters with machine code, thats not fast on a CPU clocked at 1 mhz
big savings in CPU time when all you have to do it aim your screen at the ram.
then you also have a palette of 128/256 colors to pick from, later models had 256 and had GTIA graphics modes added, big 4 width pixels, but 16 colors or shades at one time.
you can also used DLI's to show all 256 colors at once on the screen.
the Atari also had a great sound chip, the pokey, which could be used to create some great sound effects and music and can even do 16 bits sound when combined.
and then you have the SIO ports( early USB) which could daisy chain its peripherals off of just one port.
you also have Atari DOS, one of the easiest to use DOS's of the time.
Oh and one last thing to say , "STAR RAIDERS" , made me buy my Atari, and I still play it today.
along with millipede , asteroids, pacman , ms pacman, mr do,rescue on fractalus , ect...
I think that the list prior to the top 5 contains a lot of computers that mostly got votes due to being first owned or first used, instead of being objectively great computers. The top five are a bit skewed by an 8-bit preference. If we only count pre-VGA, then the PC is clearly 5th place, but would rocket into first if we count it in its current form. The Amiga will always beat out the ST due to having better sound and more colors. The 64 will always beat the Atari 8-bit due to what programmers could do with that extra 16K of memory. While I'd place the 16-bit systems ahead of the 8-bit ones, I have quite the collection of each due to my love of them.
Yes, this list is not based on the best hardware nor the most games, but more on what people owned and had the best games. Although the title says "all-time", I don't think anyone considered anything after the early 90's.
Sorry, Spectrum should be second if not first. I'll admit it was nowhere near as technically proficient as the other machines, however it was way more important in terms of introducing so many people to computing.
Don't forget, at the time the UK had the greatest ownership of computers in the world, a lot of this was down to the Spectrum.
I was one of those Spectrum owners, and I probably would have ranked it higher had it been my own personal view. But you have to remember that over in America the Spectrum didn't even register - Apple, Atari and Commodore led the way.
@@TheLairdsLair I agree with that, however even though some may never have owned or even seen one, the Spectrum changed the way all home computers were viewed, manufactured, marketed and used all over the world.
However it's your video (which was very interesting by the way) and I understand your point of view.
It's my video, but it's not my point of view in it, as it was all voted for by the retro gaming community, as I explained at the beginning. You are 100% correct about the Spectrum however!
@@TheLairdsLair Fair enough. Keep up the good content.
How popular was the Spectrum outside of the UK? The C64 was sold globally and ultimately sold 13m units compared to 5m for the Spectrum. Very few, if any, sold in North America. The ZX81 probably sold more North America than the Spectrum under the Timex Sinclair 1000 name.
I easily agree with the list. Only thing I have an opinion on, is where they said the C64 was dethroned by the Raspberry pi. Should we even consider the pi as a usurper to the throne? Because if that's the case you could say the C64 was dethroned by every iphone or android phone.
Yeah, it's certainly a contentious point.
It seems no one considered anything after the early 90's. If modern IBM PC compatibles were considered, they'd be #1.
The C64's claim is that it is the best selling model. The Apple II and II+ and IIe are different models. The Atari 400 and 800 are different models. The C64 and C64c are the same model, just a different case and redesigned motherboard but the functionality is identical.
Based on that, for the iPhone to win, a single iPhone model would have to sell more than 13 million units. I suspect more than one model achieved that. Same for the Raspberry Pi.
@26:16 How did the Atari ST have a better OS?
It had preemptive multitasking and it was extremely modular and configurable while TOS was rather static and single-purpose (though fast)
If the ST had this OS it would've been such a production powerhouse with it's hi-res monitor!
Not having to load the OS from disk was definitely an advantage.
It was often pointed out that the ST was faster at doing computations compared to the Wintel PCs and Apple computers
@@TheLairdsLair The OS (kickstart) is as well loaded from ROM since the A2000, they just chose to show an 'insert disk' screen instead of the workbench.
I agree. The Atari had a single tasking OS and the appearance of GEM looked disproportional with things squashed and very one-dimensional. Even with its weird color scheme, the appearance of Workbench 1 looked much more advance...and of course preemptive multitasking is the standard in 2022 so pretty forward thinking on Amiga's part.
@@TheLairdsLair Limiting the OS to the size of a ROM chip is an advantage?
Hmmm.... The list is somewhat what I expected. But at the end you mentioned something that made me think. Is the RaspberryPI fact, every model of them combined? Or is it one specific RPI model that you are talking about?
Not entirely sure, probably all revisions, I could only find this:
According to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, more than 5 million Raspberry Pis were sold by February 2015, making it the best-selling British computer. By November 2016 they had sold 11 million units, and 12.5 million by March 2017, making it the third best-selling "general purpose computer". In July 2017, sales reached nearly 15 million, climbing to 19 million in March 2018. By December 2019, a total of 30 million devices had been sold.
@@TheLairdsLair Ahhh.... But I would say that each RPI is a different machine. Basically a bit like the difference between an IBM XT and an IBM AT system. As compared to the C64 that had the same CPU, expansion ports, same GFX, same sound and so on. Sure if we dive down to the gritty and dirty spec's, then no C64 revision is the same as each other.
Yeah it's definitely a contentious point, I actually didn't say it for that reason and then a guy included it in his comment anyway! It took the blame off me so I included it, lol.
@@TheLairdsLair Hehe... Well. I tried to look numbers up, but the closest I could get on actual models, are info from 2017 in an interview by Upton.
@@TheLairdsLair When they were saying the C64 was the best selling computer of all time, they meant the best selling model. This way the Apple II, II+ and IIe are not considered the same computers but the C64 and C64c are because they are functionally identical. Either way, the C64 outsold all the Apple II, Atari and Amiga models, but if you combine all the IBM PC models, then they would beat out the C64, but no one model of the IBM PC beat the 13m units of the C64 so that's how it retained its title.
As of today, there was probably one or more Apple iPhone models that sold over 13m units and possibly an iPad too. Raspberry Pi? I'm not sure.
I'll be honest, I'm a little disappointed and rather baffled to see the Spectrum way down in 6th but there you go. Great video, thank you!
Most of the respondents were from North America so the ZX Spectrum didn't do as well. In a UK poll, it would be #1.
The Commodore 64 deserves to be the entire top 10 in this list for how much it changed home computer gaming. It was at the top for about a decade which is incredible considering how the industry was advancing.
Here in the UK, it's often stated that the Commodore 64 didn't fare as well compared to the US. That's actually true, with the Sinclair Spectrum outselling it due to the Spectrum being British and a decent wedge cheaper for the then far poorer in general UK economy, after many years of a frankly criminally inept Labour Government that would take a decade of Tory rule to fix.
But I was around for those years. And even having said all that, the Spectrum didn't outsell the Commodore by that much in my memory. I was running 3 of the things at one point. And most of my friends who were in any way into gaming had a Commodore 64 for years after it's peak.
Nearly all my friends had Spectrums, just one had a C64, and I lived in a really affluent area. From my understanding the Spectrum outsold the C64 by about 2:1 in the UK. It was stronger in Italy and Germany as far as European sales go.
Actually it changed the industry's marketing and methods of production (to the worse in this case). It didn't offer anything new that wasn't offered by i.e. the Atari 8bit line not to mention the backward steps in disk loading performance, sound solution (a synth sound when PCM was introduced in home computing 3 years earlier) , 3d performance and display options (lack of Svideo). It did had improvements in color and memory management, increased resolution but overall it didn't really managed to beat Miner's 8bit system, or to be more interesting compared to the ZX spectrum's unique aesthetics in graphics and sound and the colorful CPC.
I'm famous!! 😀
How was the Sinclair QL the answer to the BBC Micro, when the ZX Spectrum was released around the same time as the Beeb (~6 months later) when the QL was released four years after that. The QL was released the same year as the Apple Mac 128k (1984).
Because the BBC Micro had become the serious/educational computer and the Spectrum was viewed as a games machine, especially as it lacked a proper keyboard. Sir Clive wanted to make a powerful business/educational computer to compete at that higher end of the market.
The QL was also massively delayed, it was supposed to come out in 1983.
@@TheLairdsLair The Amstrad CPC 464 came out 3 months after the Sinclair QL and it could run CP/M so I think Clive got beat pretty quickly.
Aww! No PC88? I still have my PC 8801 mkII SR with box and everything.
Commodore 64 and Amiga 500 were the best computers in 80's and early 90's.
Definitely the best gaming computers. Also the Amiga 1200. Before the C64, the Atari 800 was best and before that the Apple II was best. A list of the best computers for productivity would be different.
The results are not that surprising as youtube is international and machines like the C64 and MSX sold well internationally. Machines like the Atari 800 and Apple 2 were dear in the UK but a lot more affordable in other regions. I’m really surprised by the position of the Amstrad CPC because I knew no one who owned one and was never impressed when I used one. I was very much (and still am) a BBC and Acorn person. Learning to program the hard ware of a BBC micro and the ARM on the A3000 was the ground work for my entire career. I still program ARMs albeit indirectly most of the time now.
PS. the ARM isn’t just your phones, by your tables, Macs, set top boxes, and so on.
Yes this is based more on what people owned and that they thought had the best games. It's not based on the best hardware or what had the most games. It also seems no one considered anything that came out after 1995.
It is the second time I watched this video. Surprised that the Raspberry Pi was not included; perhaps it was on the 20 to 40 list. The PC is the one I would pick; not for games but utility software. I was more of a console gamer than computer one. Don’t play now, but still watch channels like yours.
I don't think voters selected anything after the early 90's on this list. If modern IBM PC compatibles were considered, it would have to be #1 as the Windows, Mac and Linux machines are all the same architecture, although the Mac is now moving to ARM, and it sounds like Microsoft wants to move Windows to it's own hardware too.
Interesting compilation. However i have to wholeheartedly disagree with the assertion that Atari ST OS was better than Amiga OS. Amiga OS is one of the best operating systems ever put together.
I think there is more arguments in the comments about this than anything else!
@@TheLairdsLair Hehehe - not surprising..... i was thoroughly impressed with what the Amiga OS could do -- TOS (with its single tasking) and contemporaries aside, it was a highly capable and preemptive system.