Re:The Chloe 280SE, a New Z80 Microcomputer
by cmrdporcupine on Tuesday February 04, 2020 @12:15PM
(#22238152)
65816 addressing high resolution graphics that the Amiga had would have been a nightmare to deal with. There are no real 24-bit pointers on the 816, you deal with 64k chunks at a time.
The planar graphics also would have been a PITA as the 816 has no bit manipulation instructions.
Floating point also an issue.
Amiga chipset on 816 with a C64 compatibility mode would have made a nice fast game and home machine but not a real competition for the PC in any kind of productivity aspect.
But I agree the Amiga should have had a C64 compatibility mode. They should at least have offered an expansion card with a C64 on it, like Apple did with the Apple II on a Macintosh. But at this time Tramiel had left Commodore along with Shiraz Shivji and other C64 engineers. So we had this weird situation where the Atari 16-bits looked more like a C64 than an Atari 8-bit and the Amiga looked more like an Atari 8-bit (same chipset designer) than a C64.
The planar graphics also would have been a PITA as the 816 has no bit manipulation instructions.
Floating point also an issue.
Amiga chipset on 816 with a C64 compatibility mode would have made a nice fast game and home machine but not a real competition for the PC in any kind of productivity aspect.
But I agree the Amiga should have had a C64 compatibility mode. They should at least have offered an expansion card with a C64 on it, like Apple did with the Apple II on a Macintosh. But at this time Tramiel had left Commodore along with Shiraz Shivji and other C64 engineers. So we had this weird situation where the Atari 16-bits looked more like a C64 than an Atari 8-bit and the Amiga looked more like an Atari 8-bit (same chipset designer) than a C64.