I think it's 2nd gen but for some reason "game computers" of yesteryear were not in the game generation tables and I'm really curious now.Apparently systems like the spectrum were the first video game systems people had in europe, like the US had the Atari 2600.What do you guys think?
speccys a microcomputer m8 not a console
>>12272449the speccy had two previous generations, the ZX80 and the ZX81.and its not a "game computer" it just became one because it had a thousands of 13 year old bedroom coders
For me, it's Zniggy 3: Revenge of the Znigs for the Speccy
>gives kids a cheap computer to program"why are they all making games?!? it's a serious computer dammit!"what was Clive hoping to happen here, to create a nation of spreadsheet wizards?
>>12272449Sir Clive Sinclair came unglued a destroyed a prototype ZX80 when he caught an engineer trying to write a pong program. Sinclair wanted serious computers and only reluctantly accepted the gaming capabilities when it became apparent that people wanted games and his rivalry with Chris Curry (who left Sinclair and founded Acorn) and Acorn made it competitive for Sinclair’s micros to start having more games
>>12272469He just wanted to “beat the japs and the yanks at their own game” oh wait the required… games
>>12272470PS that that is the same Chris Curry and Acorn that created ARM.
>>12272470JET SET FUCKING WILLY!
https://youtu.be/V3l_NV9oQ1c?si=pcYyFoJi2OACGEh7
>>12272483I think Sir Clive needs a drinkhttps://youtu.be/eAl0ld3to24
>>12272469Actually, just programmer. Sir Clive envisioned that Britain’s future would be forged by a generation of coders and computer literate people. BBC agreed and started the BBC Micro program. Sir Clive lost to Acorn. BBC spent billions of pounds trying to teach kids BASIC right as Macintosh and Windows hit the market. American innovation dominated and the only contribution the Brits have today is ARM.
>>12272449OI M8 LEMME TELL YEH IT DUN MATTA WOT GENERATION THE SPECCY IS THE SPECCY TRANSCENDS ALL THAT NONCERY TALK IS THE GREATEST BLOODY SYSTEM EVA MADE BLOODY YANKS AND BLOODY SLANTEYES WILL NEVA UNDERSTAND ITS GREATNESS ROIGHT CHEERS
It’s 2nd gen. 3rd gen starts in 1983
>>12272449It was neither, it was a microcomputer.
>>12272496and explains why America never had a homebrew industry or bedroom coders.kids didnt own Macs or IBMs in 1982. businesses did
>>12272520Are you retarded? Akalabeth was made by a teenager in high school. Wizardry was created by a bunch of college students.America had THE homebrew scene, where some of the biggest hits were made by avid hobbyists and students.
>>12272524nope, those games were written on computers owned by schools and universities. thats not homebrew or bedroom coding. the clue is in the name.
OI ME SPECCY
>>12272543>Rape drive initialized
My wife's grandma's estate had one thing with my name on it - a fully 100% unused ZX80 with her name on the box / mailing label. It was totally unused. I was actually totally jazzed. I grabbed it and plugged it in to my CRT and I heard this "BZUNK" and there was nother. Turns out the PSUs go bad, frying the PLA and then the chip, thus ruining the whole computer. I did this in front of the whole family and they didn't even blink. So I was like "Looks like this TV doesn't work with such an old thing!" and everybody laughed and I packed it back away. But I'm sure it's fried.FUCK "sir" Clive Sinclair. He was a scammer.
>>12272620Imagine if you had simply left it in the box? Literally Schrödinger's ZX80
>>12272469He thought his toy computer could compete with the likes of IBM
>>12272620>Turns out the PSUs go badFried a lot of C64s as well, including mine. Power supplies are just like that, if you're ever gonna plug in a reaaaally old one, it's smart to check it with a voltmeter beforehand and make sure it's putting the right volts and amps, and hasn't started to break down to where it'll toast your electronics.
>>12272449>Ordinal video game "generations" are bullshit.Yeah
>>12272496BASIC is a n00b trap. It's like teaching "whole math".We learned it on TRS-80 and Apple IIe, the normie kids got nothing out of it, the nerds had to figure out assembly on their own.
>>12272713>if you're ever gonna plug inYeah but it's better just not to use the original PSU's. The C64 ones are particularly notorious for going bad.
>>12272449>a microcomputer is now a console>What do you guys think?i think you're a dense retard. so dense that when people look at you from any angle, all they see is light being pulled into a black hole>>12273197>The C64 ones are particularly notorious for going badmostly exaggeration.. for years. only c64 psus that do shit the bed are the early wedge shaped versions. the epoxy filled bricks released after '85 last a long time. mine still work reliably after 40+ years.
>>12272449>I think it's 2nd genYour gay retarded classification system doesn't count.Only the gay retarded classification system of wikipedo counts.
>>12272452What is the big difference? Consoles have hardware specialized for gaming, and the spectrum although it was intended for coding and general stuff, its main application was gaming, same as the Amiga computers.>>12272515Please elaborate>>12272716No they are not. My main interest in asking what gen the speccy was, is to gage what it competed with mostly. Was it the Atari 2600 or the NES of europe?It seems to me that it was our atari 2600, my country was mostly gaming computers until the sega mega drive (genesis for the burguers).>>12273205I'm a coomer, but not a retard, most of the time atleast. Anyhow, nowadays PCs could be categorized into console gens, depending on what games their particular GPU and CPU can run, so the same can be applied to the speccy the consoles of the time.>So, the spectrum, as a whole is 2nd gen or 3rd gen?The 16k and 48k definitively are 2nd gen, the 128k I'm not so sure, but I'd class it equal to the 2nd gen.T. Zoomer
>>12274363Please elaborate on that, I'm really interested anon. How would you classify the spectrum
>>12274393>My main interest in asking what gen the speccy was, is to gage what it competed with mostly.It competed with other 8-bit microcomputers, the biggest rival for most of its lifetime being Commodore 64. Consoles weren't direct competitors, partly because micros had other uses, but also because in 80s Europe, consoles just weren't as popular as elsewhere. People gamed on computers.Micros aren't usually categorized into generations, it would be too messy, but there's an obvious divide between 8-bit and 16-bit. When Amiga and Atari ST were introduced, that meant the 8-bits were clearly on their way out, though they still chugged along for several years.
>>12274440>It competed with other 8-bit microcomputers, the biggest rival for most of its lifetime being Commodore 64What the fuck are you talking about?! Its rivals were all similarly-built purpose microcomputers: the PET, VIC-20, and the UK home-computer market: Acorn, Dragon, BBC Micro. It was never built or marketed around a computer introduced two years later!
>>12274576>It was never built or marketed around a computer introduced two years later!No one said it was.I believe I said, and I quote;>It competed with other 8-bit microcomputers, the biggest rival for most of its lifetime being Commodore 64
Oh, I see.In case you didn't know, and I suppose it's possible if you're too young to remember, but both C64 and the Spectrum were being produced, and remained relevant for years after all the computers you mentioned had fallen to the wayside.Yes, VIC-20 (predecessor of C64) and BBC Micro were probably the Spectrum's most important rivals in the very earliest years, but they weren't really players in the early 90s when both the Spectrum and C64 still were in the market.
>>12274581>I believe I said, and I quote;>It competed with other 8-bit microcomputers, the biggest rival for most of its lifetime being Commodore 64In that case, the Atari 400's biggest rival was the Commodore 64. In fact, fuck it all! Anything 8-bit was a lifetime rival of the C64. Gotcha!
for a 48k calculator the Speccy had no rival
>>12274608More like, anything 8-bit was a rival of the C64 at some point, but not lifetime.
>>12274614You'll perish on your own bile in your sleep, and it will happen during your short lifetime. Praise be! One less nuisance.
>>12274608The 400's life ended before the C64 really took off. If you had said 800, then yes, and the 800XL
>>12274638Please die. Use anything chemical and organ melting
>>12274631>>12274646>can't muster any argument>just elaborate seethingHope your life gets better some day, spergo
>>12272449>love me speccy>love me football games>love me licensed games by oceansimple as
>>12274393>What is the big difference?One is made for computer things, one is highly specialized to just be a gaming machine.If you bought a microcomputer, you might have been using it for games but you might have been using it for something else. You could also make your own games. Consoles of the era had the benefit of mappers which didn't seem to make their way over to microcomputers so in the end consoles usually had more impressive games while microcomputers were more of a creative outlet than a device for playing vidya. Both microcomputers and dedicated consoles were awesome, just for different reasons/purposes.
>>12274689>can't muster any argumentJFC. You are using words which you don't know what they mean
>>12272520>shit I just made up in between another bout on zniggy v return of the ziggers
>>12274886Read a dictionary, ESL-kun
>>12274440I see... So was in fact the spectrum the first machine (console or microcomputer) that most people first played their first video game? Not counting arcades?In the end, that's what really interests me. And the first spectrum games DO look like atari 2600's, like chuckie egg and jet set willy.I want to have whatever had atari 2600's role here in europe>>12274601Cool, that's probably what happened in my country, people mostly played on microcomputers, the spectrum being the most popular, until the sega mega drive (genesis) came along, nes ane snes were very rare.>>12274708The original dude bro, "do you have Fifa bro?" Ay lmao>>12274828I see, and I agree with you. What are mappers, could you explain?And also, couldn't we classify games instead of consoles into generations? Like, with proper porting could the speccy play atari 2600 games?It probably could never play NES games, as it would be beyond its haedware, even the 128k
>>12274409>How would you classify the spectrumSteaming hot turd. Something 99% of /zr/ is on.In it's day pedants would generally classify it as a "microcomputer". Today pedantlings generally classify it as a "home computer"Only the gayest of pseuds give a flying fuck about "generations". That's entirely arbitrary dorkspeek contrived by the most autistic of pseuds.
>>12275865>Steaming hot turdonly soulless niggers say that
>>12275593>I want to have whatever had atari 2600's role here in europeThat's just Atari 2600.>until the sega mega drive (genesis) came alongAmiga was the big thing in Mega Drive era, after that people moved on to PC and Snoy Playstation. >Like, with proper porting could the speccy play atari 2600 games?You couldn't directly port from Atari to Speccy, nor from NES to Speccy, the architectures were too different. Many games were of course multi-platform but they were usually separately programmed for each machine by different people, and didn't share code.
>>12276281I meant mostly as in the first system to play video game people had access to. In most cases it seems it certainly wasn't the atari 2600 for europeans.And also that is the main reason of why I'm asked if the spectrum was a 2nd or 3rd gen "console".I should rather have asked, is the spectrum far ahead enough of the atari 2600, in terms of hardware power, to be considered the next gen, or are they about the same?>But thanks for specifiying that their architectures were so different as in to not allow direct ports.I'm still curious about their power, if they are about the same (for gaming) or if one is much better
>>12276709Atari 2600 was a global phenomenon. It was popular everywhere, including in Europe. It was also earlier than the Spectrum, and the Spectrum had significantly more "power".48kb of RAM vs 128 bytes. That's BYTES, not kilobytes. The spectrum had literally hundreds of times more memory than 2600.3.5 Mhz Z80 vs 1.19MHz MOS 6507.If you look at the raw stats alone, yes it was a different generation of computing hardware. It's not surprising since it's 5 years later.The games were also obviously more complex.But Atari 2600 was the first real video game system for a lot of people, there wasn't much else out there when it came out, other than dedicated single game machines which would play some variation of pong.
>>12276730>3.5 Mhz Z80 vs 1.19MHz MOS 6507Clock for clock, the 6502 outperformed the Z80.
>>12277658Yep, they are very different architectures so you could make synthetic benchmarks where one mops the floor with the other, but, for general use, a good rule of thumb is that 1Mhz of the 6502 is worth 2Mhz of the Z80.
>>12277658Outperformed, how? If you're talking about frame rates, yes A2600 games generally had smoother animation and less input lag, but that's more to do with the video hardware and how it was designed for playing games, not raw CPU power. The spectrum could literally play 3D games with flat shaded polygons powered by the CPU alone. This is like UFO technology by 1970s standards lol.
>>12277924>The spectrum could literally play 3D games with flat shaded polygons powered by the CPU alone. This is like UFO technology by 1970s standards lol.Name one
>>12277960The SentinelStunt Car Racer-All the Freescape engine ones:DrillerDark SideTotal Eclipse I & IICastle Master I & II
>>12277908>2mhzi think it might be closer to 3-4mhz>>12277924>howmhz doesn't equate to performance. z80 instructions can take between 4 - 20+ cycles. 6502 is beween 2 and 7 cycles (if i remember this right). >>12277970>Stunt Car Racerthe screen it draws is quite small and slower than the c64 version, which is drawing a much larger screen.
>>12277970Also Virus and Fat Worm Blows a Spark>>12278069I'm not sure what you're even arguing for here. Atari 2600 is more powerful than Spectrum because theoretically the CPU can run code faster? How does this manifest in the actual software that was released? Is there a single real 3D game on 2600? (sprite based crap like Star Raiders and Battlezone don't count)
Oh, and also, Carrier Command.Good luck porting this to 128 bytes of RAM.
>>12278086>>12278105>spectrum faggot mental breakdown timewhat's it like not knowing anything about how a cpu works?>oi me speccy can run a game that won't run on a machine designed in the mid 1970sliterally a fucking retard. doesn't matter if it's atari 2600, c64, apple 2..the z80 is still a slow piece of shit.
>>12278069>i think it might be closer to 3-4mhzOnly in very specific scenarios where individual instruction timings are the only thing affecting performance. A huge advantage the Z80 has over the 6502 is a much larger register set, which allows to perform complex algorithms without accessing the RAM. The 6502 on the other hand has to continuously load & store intermediate results from memory.>the screen it draws is quite small and slower than the c64 version, which is drawing a much larger screen.now do the freescape games, even with the C64 lower res
>>12272449It was a home computer. Those don't really follow the same generations. That said, if you really wanted to compare it to a console, I'd put it somewhere between second and third gen.
>>12276709>I should rather have asked, is the spectrum far ahead enough of the atari 2600, in terms of hardware power, to be considered the next gen, or are they about the same?If that's the question you really wanted to ask, then that's what you should've put in the original post.
>>12278163>Only in very specific scenarioshttp://www.z80.info/z80time.txtmost scenarios. read the text file of instructions and cycles. merely adding things to a register costs you 15 cycles. please nigga. get real.
>>12278129Hey I'm not the one who brought up the Spectrum vs Atari 2600 comparison. Maybe you should stop making threads if you can't handle online discussion forums. You may have also forgotten your meds.
>>12278329Ok, obviously you're not a programmer. You don't understand that a computer does more things than merely executing instruction after instruction, and that there are performance concerns regarding register counts and memory accesses.If you want to learn, there are worse starting points than this discussion: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/5748/comparing-raw-performance-of-the-z80-and-the-6502
>>12278105So is it the RAM or the CPU holding back the 2600? You "oi m8 me speccy" fags can never seem to agree
>>12278401>Ram or cpu>2600It had neither of those
What I don't get is why the british sperg so hard about the spectrum when the BBC Micro was an actual goated 8-bit computer produced by their country
>>12278401Lack of RAM (somewhat mitigated by having ROM cartridges, microcomputers generally had to load game code/data into RAM), and lack of video hardware (the TIA is as minimalist as it gets, it doesn't even have a framebuffer).The CPU is perfectly acceptable for 8 bit games, it's the same one used in the C64 and the NES.
>>12278405The speccy was cheaper, therefore more popular, which led to more software being made for it, which made it even more popular. There isn't much more to it, it's like Gameboy winning over Game Gear and Atari Lynx. It's also hardly brits alone, it was pretty big in mainland Europe, while BBC barely had any presence outside UK.
>>12276730Thanks anon. And although I don't doubt you about the Atari 2600 having been a global phenomenon, in my southern european country nobody had them, doesn't remember them, neither do the neighbouring countries' citizens that I've asked. The spectrum on the other hand, is fondly remebered, some were even manufactured here apparently.>>12278172Right! I tend to agree to that. But technicaly, wouldn't the spectrum be just at the end of the 2nd gen then? The later systems in the gen tend to be a little more powerful and the games more impressive graphically due to dev's experience.>>12278178I should, but I'm a retard, it took me a while to understand why I was even asking that>>12278436The speccy being cheap apparently was the main reason for it's popularity, especially in other european countries. The poorer ones proably couldn't afford to import Atari 2600's from the US back then, especially for soemthing that could be seen as a fad at the time, and not the mainstay of the entertainment industry that it is today.
>>12278532>The poorer ones proably couldn't afford to import Atari 2600's from the US back then,Again, the Spectrum wasn't really in a direct competition with Atari 2600, since the popularity of 2600 predates it by a few years and they weren't the same kind of thing anyway, game console vs a micro computer. It just doesn't make sense to compare the two. The speccy was a popular budget choice vs more expensive computers like the MSX and C64 however thanks to its price. I'm sure it was even more dominant in the poorer countries. Some countires like the communist Yugoslavia didn't get western computers at all, until later, instead they had their own homegrown 8-bit computer Galaksija, that people could build themselves out of off the shelf electronic component parts with the blueprints published in a popular science magazine. That's a fun rabbit hole to get into.
>>12274393>What is the big difference?we could pirate our games on the school ground and learned how to hack and codeconsole'tards learned how to blow their cartridges the rich parents bought them
>>12272449>>12272469>"why are they all making games?!?and they were even shit as the specs were so abysmalAMSTRAD/Schneider beat that little fruitbox handily and on the market,even against the giant C64
Spectrum games are ugly let's talk about the Amiga.
>>12279525OH SHIT they're all fuckin' bug people the bastards!
>>12279525>16bit Amigathat's unfair, we're talking about the previous gen>8bit
>>122795328-bit is ugly
>>12279538then make a fucking 16-bit thread, retard and stop shitting in this 8-bit one
>>12278372>Ok, obviously you're not a programmer. >post link to stackoverflowyou're obviously nothing at all. just a larping dumb cunt. it's amazing how you didn't even bother to read the text file and see the amount of clock cycles used by z80 instructions compared to 6502, solely so you can continue having a mental breakdown. not the same anon but I've been programming for decades and even I can see just from that text file just how fucking terrible the z80 is and how inefficient it is. anon was right, z80 is slow as fuck. you are nothing but coping and seething fucking retard that just can't handle reality. you do know that no amount of seething or revisionist history from /vr/'s ultimate collective of the internet's talentless losers is going to make the z80 good, right?
>>12279725Ah, here it is, the glorious meltie from the sad retard that was raped by uncle Clive as a kid and has been cursed to shit up every speccy thread ever since.The Z80 was such an awful processor that Commodore decided to include it in the C128.
>>12280063You're being really disingenuous here.It only had it for CP/M compatibility, not because it's such an amazing processor.
>>12280068Yes, Commodore wanted to offer access to the vast library of software written for the Z80, a perfectly competent 8 bit processor. What's disingenuous about pointing that out to our resident C64-Spectrum warbrained moron?
>>12280076If the discussion was about Z80s are great for backwards compatibility, you'd have a point.But this discussion is about performance, which isn't why the C128 included a Z80.By mentioning it, you're either trying to imply they included it for performance or you're trying to suddenly move the goal post. Both would be very dishonest.
>>12280084That post was a reply to a diatribe, not a discussion. The Z80 included in the C128 would make for a poor poster boy for its performance, since it was underclocked to 2Mhz.
>>12280084Speaking of moving goalposts, what does any of this have to do with Atari 2600?
>>12272458Maybe because it's a fucking keyboard.
>>12280076>What's disingenuous about pointing that out to our resident C64-Spectrum warbrained moron?Off topic and not what the post did or even tried to do. Your cope-fu is not strong.
