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In Portugal and Spain the Spectrum family ruled, and I only got to know the C64 thanks to the Amiga.

IIRC it also was very popular in the UK. It's also a great and fun computer.

I have a ZX Spectrum 128K. It's easy to detach its keys, clean them and put them back!

In Sweden, the Spectrum never made it. C64 was the first major home machine over here. Even regular food retailers had c64 casettes on the shelf. That was awesome, games for everyone! hehe.

Spectrum clones ruled the day also in the former Soviet Union: many ~Russian clones among http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZX_Spectrum_clones#Unofficial_... - also quite a few from other Warsaw Pact countries, but from what I know those didn't catch on to the extent they did in former Soviet republics.

I guess the simple architecture played a role, some of them apparently even made in cottage-like fashion - in a report from a trip made 2 decades ago to Russia, to secure some of their treasures for the National Museum of Science and Industry, in London ( http://www.inc.com/magazine/19960615/1967.html ):

In the late 90s I got a CD collection of ~Russian Spectrum demos, with matching emulator - they did some insane things on those machines. Now http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum_demos#External_links could be a good starting point, I suppose (and RU version of that article appears to have a list of presumably most notable productions).
edit: w8, Youtube must be the most straightforward way to check them out now, lots of demoscene stuff uploaded there (yeah, it feels kinda "bad", but...)

Edited 2012-08-02 17:49 UTC

If the slow disk access hadn’t been there, then fastloaders would not have caught on and been improved as quickly as they did. If anything, the slow disk access helped improve load times in the long run as well as pushing compression algorithms forward, allowing for more content than before.

But if disk access had been on a par with other systems, one wouldn't have required fast loaders. Chicken, meet egg. Disk access has a finite speed that is capped by a number of factors, physical disk hardware being the one hardest to work around. But with limited RAM, the fast loaders were a trade off between clever programming and cramming in bits where ever you could fit them.

Well, those issues were largely rectified with cartridges later on - which at least in some places were essentially included in the package, you getting a cart without requesting it, or even without really knowing then what it was. And the whole package still remained definitely the least expensive computer available at retail.
(the few ~regions sort of standardising on particular series, it seems; here it was http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blackbox3.jpg - largely about tape fast loader)


Hm, the few "non-mixtape" (and no fast loader - so using the default routines) official releases of games that I had, essentially filled their tape with multiple copies of the game... which did come handy once, when the first track of one game got corrupted.
(w8, I still have them somewhere - too bad my C64 is most likely kaput)


Hey, it's not like they could choose to use that shape from the start (versus just giving a bit more time to correct faults, such as with floppy controller chip), it came half a decade later for Commodore designs - but OTOH maybe the "soap dish" (that's what it was called at my place) shape gave it distinctive visual identity, in the period critical for adoption? ;p


Hm, that never bothered me. Just how it was, the standard way - not like typography was particularly crucial (not many people had printers - plus they would likely type & print in some software, I think). OTOH, capital letters probably greatly helped the legibility on the standard-issue small CRT TVs, so it's good they were the default. Oh, and not used that much beyond loading software.

Cartridges, in large part, fixed my suggestions to make the C64 better. I.e. they provided what the C64 lacked and the users missed.

If the C64 already had these things it made room for other stuff in the cart or the user may not need a cart at all. You could only insert one. If I inserted my Simon's BASIC cart I didn't have the fast loader and the reset button, if I inserted my Final Cartridge III I couldn't run my Simon's BASIC programs.

The shape could have been better if they did some testing, but instead they used the VIC-20 design (the breadbox). Commodore made typewriters and the PET computers before the VIC-20/C64, so they should have had some experience with professional typists and keyboards. The C128 keyboard was great.

The CAPS never bothered me either, but looking back now it did seem a bit weird.

Of course you're right, that it would be better to have it "out of the box" - but, on the other hand, it made a place for variety of extensions: not everyone preferred BASIC (remember Logo, Comal, variety of BASIC extensions, etc.?).

It wasn't possible. Commodore engineers too late realized, that VIA6522 (used in 1541 floppy disk station) has "hardware bug". Only the later models (1571) had VIA6522 replaced with CIA6526, having the transfer 5x faster since the very beginning (burst mode).

And once more "of course": as we all saw, it could be "fixed in software" anyway (variety of free "fastloaders") - but most probably they had no time.

Indeed it was. But almost every commercial program/game used its own "fast-load" routine.

Yes, actually it was strange, that one had to build it in by himself.

...but maybe more expensive as well. Remember: Tramiel always was going to cut the costs.

...but also standard behaviour for 8-bitters at these days.

There is another thing, that attracted my attention: fixed colour pallette. It seems to me, that it would be quite easy to make it selectable, e.g. by reserving a few memory cells for intensity of red, green, blue (for every of 16 colours available at the same time), and such solution doesn't seem to raise the costs. Maybe they thought "16 colours will be enough"?

P.S. It could be only 16 cells, each one reserving 2 bits for R,G,B intensity value, respectively. Such way we could have 16 colours at the same time, selectable out of 4*4*4=64 possible colours pallette. And if the remaining 2 bits were used for e.g. "overall intensity", then we could have even more.

Edited 2012-08-06 10:37 UTC

Anything else but the default made you either load it first or use the cartridge port, which means you couldn't use it for anything else.

Almost every home computer had BASIC standard, even the IBM PC had it. It would have been cool if Commodore had opted for Pascal for example, but commercially BASIC would be the best choice, just a shame they didn't update/extend it compared to the VIC-20.

It wasn't possible. Commodore engineers too late realized, that VIA6522 (used in 1541 floppy disk station) has "hardware bug". Only the later models (1571) had VIA6522 replaced with CIA6526, having the transfer 5x faster since the very beginning (burst mode).

And once more "of course": as we all saw, it could be "fixed in software" anyway (variety of free "fastloaders") - but most probably they had no time. "

I know, but I was just theorizing how the same computer could have been (much) better without adding to the cost. It was supposed to have much quicker disk access if they hadn't messed it up and only discovered after production had started.

Indeed it was. But almost every commercial program/game used its own "fast-load" routine. "

Indeed, but your own programs didn't. :-p



During C64 vs ZX Spectrum wars colors often show up. The C64 had a number of pretty ugly colors, while the Spectrum had very nice ones. The advantage in serious software would be for the Spectrum, but I think the ugly C64 colors worked very well in game graphics. They could very easily be combined to make very nice graphics, while the Spectrum colors were all so bright and distinct that combining them wasn't so easy.

Minds you 16 colors was a very acceptable number those days.