Episode 123 - The Jupiter Ace
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ย. 2024
- Released in 1982, the Jupiter Ace is a fascinating little computer. It's hardware isn't much to write home about. It's just an 8-bit microcomputer very much in line with other systems of the era. Where it shines is it's software. In a period when most home computer ran some version of BASIC the Ace was using Forth. On the surface that might sound like a trivial difference, but that one deviation from the norm made all the difference in the world. Selected Sources: www.theregiste... - The Register article on the Ace jupiter-ace.co... - Every other Ace resource you could ever want
Another interesting microcomputer of that era was NEC PC-8001 released in 1979, and his little brother PC-6001, hope you would make an episode about history of NEC computers.
i remember some old computer magazine in the day describing it as barely even useful as a doorstop, because it was so light that a gust of wind would blow it across the floor
It's ZX80-like ethereal nothingness is the only thing I remember from the only one I ever saw.
I had a friend who bought one of these when they came out so I have some first hand experience. I already had some knowledge of Forth through the Byte magazine issue about the language and a few hours of actual hands on use convinced me to write a version of the language for the Vax 11 we used at university. I picked up a copy of "Threaded Interpretive Languages" by Loeliger and had something up and running in a few weeks. I've always been a bit puzzled why Forth didn't make more of an impact amongst hobbyists at the time; it seemed much more expressive and more efficient in both cpu cycles and memory than Basic when those things really counted. I think implementing Forth is still a great first step into writing compilers in general.
I had a Jupiter Ace back in the day. Hardware wise, it was pretty crappy to be fair. But I still felt like I was king of the nerds for having one. Forth is like a nice old Unix system in that you can do so much with so little.
Sinclair Research might have produced ridiculously cheap( and occasionally shoddy) computers, but they did kickstart the British game industry and IT sector. Thousands of non-university educated kids learned to program in Basic and Z80 machine code. By the time i was 15, i could program increasingly complex machine code like smooth scrolling sprites, platform game screen drawing routines, full screen refresh using the scanline timing and the stack register, and even some simple interupt driven software sound generation. Because there was no hardware sound or graphics support, you had to learn to do everything manually
The Jupiter ace went on sale on September 22, 1982 and the IBM PC ANNOUNCED, On August 12, 1981. IBM, who were worried about the Apple][, sold a 'base' machine 16Kb RAM with BASIC in ROM, and a cassette but it was rarely sold in that config as it was useless. Eventually the single floppy 64kb machine was the entry level, until, that too, was replaced.
I think you need to do some more reading on Sir Clive. When it came to pay and conditions Sinclair Research was a good place to work.
BASIC on ALL home computers were either TINY BASIC, some kind of integer basic and a few, later on, had a floating point basic. This was because ROM and RAM were really expensive both for manufacturers and hobbyists alike.
The 48k ZX Spectrum used rejected 64kb DRAM where only half worked. The result was that a 48kb RAM machine had one bank of 32kb DRAM and one bank of 4116 DRAM. This was typical of Clive Sinclair's' penny-pinching methodology. This attitude meant that just about every Sinclair product was rife with quality control problems, and, along with hopeless electric car, sank the company.
I was at the launch of the Sinclair C5, with my boss.
Happy New Year, Sean!
I worked at computer store from 1979-1992 and we tried selling the Jupiter Ace.
We sold Commodore, IBM , ACT Sirus-1, and many 'home computers'. You description of the Forth language is wrong. Stack based is correct but the other stuff is just wrong. The Commodore 64 KERNAL, scanned the keyboard and ran the display, like making the cursor flash and made the onscreen editor etc etc.
The forth language is an operating system with a built in programming language, but is NOT a compiler, it's a kind of interpreter.
The ZX80 and the ZX81 are very very similar. Difference between them is that all the glue logic chips in the zx80 were replaced with one chip, the FERRANTI ULA (Uncommitted Logic Array). Otherwise the hardware is pretty much identical. The zx80 had an INTEGER ONLY BASIC. The ZX81 has a larger FLOATING POINT BASIC (a 8Kb rom instead of a 4Kb ROM.)
A lot of basics didn't store as text, most are stored encoded where basic keywords are represented by bytecodes. For example the Sinclair computers mapped those bytecodes directly to the keyboard and they weren't even stored as text in the computer's memory. This actually can result in much smaller program size in comparison to compiled code. The reason the Ace's Forth "niche" didn't exist was because most people who became "advanced" just used assembly or machine code because things were simple enough to easily go from basic to basic + machine code to assembler.
S🏓🐦
I remember the blurb at the time saying 1k of RAM on an ACE was like 3k in BASIC.
ACE's were more poorly built than the Sinclair machines.
I do wonder if Sinclair would have survived if they had real keyboards and used 3.5in floppies. I do think the weird hardware was the fundamental reason why the venture collapsed.
No chance at all. Keyboards were the expensive components, and 3.5" floppies had not been invented yet. Back to the history books!
@@G7VFY Some of us where there we don't need history books. The QL holed Sinclair and the biggest problem was storage. Sony already has 3.5in floppies in 1982. As I said I wonder if Sinclair might have been better off with a better keyoboard even if it cost more; better for the image of the company's product. So you saying keyboards cost is you telling me what I had already acknowledged.
Why don't you take your history books and shove them sideways up your rectal opening. Do it repeatedly. You pr*ck.
The Jupiter Ace does NOT produce compiled code.
The Ace failed as its competitors had larger libraries of software and no colour. The keyboard was better than the ZX80 and ZX81 and on par with the early rubber-key spectrums.
The makers should have given out machines to software developers and encouraged them to produce software.
Also if the Jupiter Ace had the same bus connections as the zx80/81 then there might have been more compatible hardware, another fail.