I remember seeing this back then. I was 10 years old. I though that's how the games were programmed and then they would probably cut the cables from the cartridge after the game is done and it would become a real game cartridge.
THIS was my first computer, I learned Basic on that thing. Started my journey, then switched to C128, Amiga, PC. Today I have a CS Master's degree and make decent money. The "area" on the back is a "garage" for the Spectravideo cartridge when the CompuMate is not connected to the Atari 2600, just to be able to put it away nice and tidy.
My first computer in the 70s was literally a virtual computer! My dad got me a book on programming but we were too poor and I ran the programs in my mind 😅 now I'm CTO of a public company 😅
So someone actually used it with the intended purpose and didn‘t throw it away after 3hrs - Spectravideo was right all along! 😂 You‘ve made some former Spectravideo Marketing Manager very happy today (if still alive and reading your comment).
@@supercompooper Do you live, or have you ever been, in The Netherlands? I remember some student from the 80's with exactly you name, having internship at the company I worked for in those days.
You have this rare gift... No matter if the stuff you show us is "good" or "bad", the video always feels too short. It always feels special when you start exploring and take us with you. Thank you very much! P.S.: The Outro-Music not only proofs your love for music... It also tells me that you have a great sense of humor ;) Stay well and healthy! Greetings from germany.
I hate to say it, but I'd be morbidly curious to see some of the "software" they thought to create for this. I'd love a follow-up going into more detail. ^_^
@@MetalApe That won't work on the Compumate, due to limitations of the BASIC: Only upper case letters are supported, INP statements can't print a text prompt, variable names have to be a single letter, only the variables A-P can be used for numeric values, PR statements can't have multiple fields, variable assignments need LET, there's no END statement. A version will actually work on the Compumate: 10 PR "ENTER THE FIRST NUMBER" 20 INP A 30 PR "ENTER THE SECOND NUMBER" 40 INP B 50 LET P=A+B 60 PR "THE SUM IS" 70 PR P
I had a memory, what I thought was a dream, of my uncle and his friend playing with some kind of computer keyboard on a wooden Atari. It wasn't until maybe 2 decades later I discovered the CompuMate and it looked exactly like this "dream". My grandfather and uncle were well into the SpectraVideo systems in the 80s. My grandfather gave me his SV-328 in the 90s, but it stopped working and ended up being thrown out. I wish I kept it in hindsight as I would have been able to fix it with my current skills.
This thing really can perform computations, so I guess some of the marketing fluff is accurate. My guess why the box for this is in such good shape is because the CompuMate got usage for 15 minutes and then was quickly put into the closet. #ControversialHotTake
Robin! there's a Korean computer called the "Bit 60" (1983) that's nearly identical to this being fully compatible with the 2600 featuring BASIC and a not dissimilar keyboard layout. The computer has the 2k memory and basic ROM inside the 'computer' and the cartridge slot is free for Atari games. But it's so similar that I wouldn't be surprised if it's a related development - perhaps even a related BASIC ROM - perhaps more can be learned via the "Bit 60"
@@Mrshoujo - My apologies - but is it not such a big stretch to imagine the Basic ROM might be related? Same time period - nearly identical system (just inside out)
These are awesome. The 2600 and it's market were far ahead of their time in so many ways, but this was always one of my favorites. I really just wish they were more available so I could have one myself! That you have one in such a clean box is truly a feat of time travel.
Mine doesnt even work anymore 😟 theres two double stacked rom chips in it, one of them has lost its memory, i have an eprom burner, but ive been too scared to take it apart and try to re flash them in case i cant put it back together properly
Aw you drew a lovely heart ❤ Seriously though as a kid born in the 60s this would have been amazing. And a nice introduction to computing. It's also great to see the comments of people who were inspired to code by all these 'starter' devices. My first was a borrowed ZX80 and first owned was a ZX Spectrum. Hours of typing from magazine is one way to see whether you have the patience for the world of comupting. Key skill!
When I was a kid back in '83 I thought this would be the wave of the future! Turn a video game console into a home computer? Who'd bother with a dedicated computer then?! Ah, naivety!
In case anyone was curious why some of the notes sounded flat, the Atari 2600's audio channels derive all of their pitches from a single fixed-frequency oscillator. They would divide a 30 kHz base tone by one five-bit value to determine the pitch, and another 4-bit value to determine the volume. This basically gave the A2600 the ability to play about 32 discrete tones at 16 volume levels, with only some of the tones coincidentally landing on what we'd recognize as a musical note.
@@maxi-me I don't agree. It had a bitmapped display compared to the Atari's shift registers. Atari had the programmers and designed their very limited technology to do a few things very well, but the VCS wasn't more technologically advanced per se.
This is a great, awesome accessory for the 2600. Back in the day, it would blow my mind to use and make some music with Atari's square notes. Probably inspired many people to love computers. For those younger: on 1981, 1982 computers were something kind of magical for us, the end users.
I vividly remember seeing the official Atari "computer" add-on in the Atari magazine and wanting it SOOOOOO badly! I think it was only shown one time and then was cancelled. Ended up with a C64 a year or two later.
Same story here. In retrospect I'm glad my parents saved up for a 64 instead, but at the time I so desperately wanted to turn my Atari into a 'real' computer and dive into programming!
What an interesting bit of kit and what an in-depth review! I never knew this was a thing. Shame the Basic is somewhat disappointing, I guess I'll stick to my ZX81 for now! 😄
hey, I wrote my first game with that basic. it was a maze game where you had to navigate a maze to find the miinotaur. biggest problem was the limit to number of lines in your game
Was it a 2D maze, with your character moving inside the fixed maze? This BASIC is so limited I can't even figure out how to do that without redrawing (and scrolling) the screen every single move. But maybe there's some features I haven't discovered yet.
I did... the Atari Basic Programming cart was better than this, but the interface (two 3×4 button pads) was far worse. And the Odyssey was doing machine code...
Oh my goodness, what an absolutely fascinating pile of trash! In reality though, making a 2600 do this is pretty amazing. A couple software tweaks could make it a lot more usable.
Back in the day there was one for the vectrex I managed to find and I got it working briefly. But apparently it needs a very unusual type of bubble memory to make it work properly
What's even more amazing IMHO is Warren Robinett's "BASIC Programming" cartridge which came out well before this. It's hamstrung by having to use two 12-key controllers rather than a proper keyboard, and by only having 128 bytes of RAM in the system (of which it makes 64 available to the programmer), but it includes sound and graphics commands.
Dude I want to have a powerful personal computer😋 I remember this one, a real oddity. With the VC20 around it wasn't even a question. I'm getting the impression that the manual was written by the same person as the "Black Book" of the C64 I think, you showed it some time ago😂
In the early 80s I was looking for a computer but Apple and Radio Shack computers were too expensive. I wasn't aware of Commodore at the time, but a PET would have also been to dear for my budget. I tried the programming cartridges for the Magnivox and the VCS and found them less than interesting. When the Atari 400 came out I sold of the game consoles and splashed the cash for the real computer with the crappy keyboard. I bought an upgrade keyboard, 32K memory and was happy as a clam. I probably would have skipped this too.
Yes. I got an Atari 400 for my birthday in 1981. It was pricy - $400 (over $1000 today). That machine was far more capable than the VIC-20, and even though it was designed in 1979, was still a match for the C64 in 1983. Loved that machine!
@@Chordonblue I learned to program on that 400 with the Progammer's kit. It lead to a career in IT and laboratory automation. Those 2 extra joystick ports with the analog inputs and digital I/O was the lead-in to my introduction to real world interfacing. It was a old-time answer to the modern Raspberry Pie. I still think there was a reason they called the keyboard computer version of the Pie the 400.
Great video!! I was hoping to see benchmarks on loops with math or other items to compare with other platforms. We know it will be slow!! But Id love to see just how slow via a timer. I think theres some standard basic benchmarks out there. Thanks for your awesome channel!
I would l to see a follow-up video where you compare the CompuMate’s BASIC with the BASIC Programming cartridge. I had that cartridge and was thrilled when my parents bought me a TI 99/4A which was quite the upgrade for not that much more.
Great video! Man I wanted one of these when I saw the ad in Electronic Games. Looks like I dodged a bullet. Looks more frustrating then anything. I ended up getting a TRS-80 MC-10, which led to the Commodore 64.
Hi Robin, thanks for the video! We discussed it half a year ago, when I pickup up one myself and you collected yours. Honestly I was also disappointed by it myself. Love to see what software you found for it.
I love this. I just got a 2600 and several cartridges and am waiting for time to really get into it. As a kid, I had Atari's BASIC and the keyboard controllers, but didn't appreciate it at the time.
Another idea is use a Similar Case,to do with an Raspberry Pi,or something,a Compumate that Acesss Internet via sorta of Linux Terminal,with BBS,linx browser and play CLI Games....and Stella Emulation of course....
Please make a short video where you take the cartridge apart. I’d like to see if there’s a 2k SRAM chip and some interface logic for the keyboard/joycon cables (in addition to a mask-programmed ROM.) I’m guessing there’s not much you can do in only 2 kilobytes of RAM, so no space for arrays, but it should at least have the ability to use “;” to suppress the carriage return/line feed like pretty much every other BASIC out there, not to mention an actual backslash. I think the underlying 2600 has a 6502, right? So there’s 512 bytes right there for pages 0 and 1 (0x0000-0x01FF) + it would need some of the 2k to store the BASIC program and the rest to store the variable’s values + a buffer for the keyboard input + 12x(# screen rows) for the screen buffer. I’m surprised it even has “GOSUB” given these tight memory limitations, since that would require the stack to push the return value (next line #?). Definitely would work better if they has 16k of RAM, and basic math and string operations.
Thanks for this! This thing really makes the MC-10 (which was also aimed at the Sinclair market) look like a rocket ship by comparison. And that was not much more expensive than this was, really less if you add in the cost of the VCS. Had all these system came out a year or two earlier they might have had a chance, but they were already outdated on launch.
I wonder if the developers were told they had a certain amount of time, but then market conditions made it clear that if they waited until they'd developed everything they intended, the product would be obsolete on launch so the developers had to rush to get *something* out. If the schedule had been established more in advance, I think adding music commands to BASIC would have been quicker and easier than trying to include a music editor, but having an editor available in addition to the BASIC commands could have been helpful for people trying to figure out what commands they should use to play sounds. Likewise, adding some graphics commands to BASIC, would have offered a major qualitative boost to functionality, but a picture editor could have been useful adjunct to the BASIC if there were a command to copy a portion of a hand-drawn screen to the displayed screen. Thinking about it, adding PEEK and POKE commands could also have made the graphics editor useful as a means of viewing and entering data tables for some powerful but memory-efficient programs.
I got the Famicom Family Basic recently. So far I have also not found any way to make a backslash for the proper 10 print. But I'm still working on it.
Great job Robin. Keep it up. Also remember seeing around 84 or so a c64 adapter that plugged into a port that speed typing with one hand. Had 4 buttons or so in the peripheral and the combo of buttons pressed responded w the appropriate character. U remember this? Or anyone?
I'll give them credit for this much: I've never seen a computer with dedicated, multi-tile-wide characters for BASIC commands. Closest I can think of is the weird "PK" "MN" characters the 8-bit Pokémon games used when they couldn't fit the full name where a pair of kanji used to be. I'm now imagining an alternate universe where Commodore used something like that for displaying control codes inside quotes, instead of repurposing the inverse characters. I'm also curious what happens if you try typing one right on the last character in the line; does it get cut in half around the wrap? That might be something to demonstrate in the followup video.
BASIC Programming (Atari 2600 title) did something similar. Many calculator "BASICs" treat Print, Let, etc. as single characters that can only be input with special button presses. It was commonplace for terminals to display ASCII control characters as two or three characters of their mnemonic codes (NUL, SOH, STX, etc.) packed into a single character cell, much like PK MN.
From a hardware design perspective, I thought this had a lot of potential. The software falls so short that it is an incredible shame. Very cool video tho. I enjoyed your frustration with it a lot. It is a size we don't normally see! :)
Most of Spectravideo's carts fall short. On the other hand, the CPU on the 2600 is a lobotimized 6502 variant, the 6507, with only 13 memory lines (8k), and only implemented 12 of them, for 4k address space. So this thing's 16k is very much bank switched, especially given the 128 bytes RAM in the console.
It's not even 16k ROM. If you take the Compumate cartridge apart, there's actually a 2764 EPROM chip in there, which is an 8k device. Plus a 2k RAM chip.
Weird! There's a ROM dump on the AtariMania website and it's 16K. I went looking for pictures of the cartridge's EPROM and only found unmarked ones. It's got 28 pins, but both the 2764 and 27128 have 28 pins, so I couldn't tell from that. Maybe I'll open mine up.
@@8_Bit I was looking at the-liberator website for the internals of the CompuMate, and can see a single Hitachi HN482764 EPROM device, which is 8k AFAIK. With a sticker over the UV window hand written in biro "PI". There's also a Synertek SY2128-2 2k SRAM chip, along with three 74LS TTL devices. RUclips won't let me post the actual URL for the image.
@@8_Bit BTW I downloaded the 16k ROM dump of the CompuMate from AtariMania, and it runs in the Stella 2600 emulator. And it does support the computer's keyboard, so can try some very basic Basic for myself. :)
@@michaelturner4457 Managing to add SRAM and bank switching using only three 74xx devices is impressive, given that a typical bank-switch cartridge--even without RAM--would need that many if not using custom silicon. I wonder how the cart would have managed to generate SRAM write timings? The simplest way to manage write timings would probably be to latch the address at the start of a write cycle, and hold it until the end of the cycle that performs the access, but that would require using two 74xx chips for the address latching alone. Perhaps there's an RC timing circuit which is used to release the /WE line while the address is still valid, but I can't think offhand how to manage any of this using only three 74xx chips. BTW, I find it curious that adding a couple of 9-bin plugs and wiring connecting to them was cheaper than adding some circuitry to allow use of the cartridge bus to perform I/O.
Never knew this product existed. By 1983, I had a TRS-80 Model 3, a TI-99/4A, and an Atari 5200 console, so the 2600 didn't get much use by then. In 1979 I got the "Basic Programming" cartridge Atari had marketed for the 2600, which was stunningly disappointing (63 symbols total to work with that had to be shared between program, variables, and stack as I recall, far less powerful than even this peripheral) so I had to go shopping for a real (expensive) computer. But times they were a-changing. By 1990 I had a 286 clone, an Amiga 500, and had entirely left behind BASIC for C++. Good times.
That is super interesting. I'm impressed that the basic on this thing can do as much as it can to be honest, given the extreme limitations of the 2600. Love to see more of the horrendous software. Even if it has 16k of memory of basic ROM, I bet thats including the kernel and character set for the device as well as load/save functions to the audio adapters, and I bet its all bank switched on top of that given the 6507 micro can only address 8kb max, so some of those address lines must also be dedicated to switching banks on the cartridge which must have more than 16 kb total memory for all its other programs, so that probably leaves you with about 4kb of actual working ROM+RAM at any given time
Haha you've found one. I never thought anyone would buy this. It had a whopping 2k RAM and was (incl. the VCS) more expensive than a stock VIC20 when this device was in stores.
I like how it stressed that it used "standard" cassette tapes, I don't think I knew anyone that used the expensive data cassettes. I used to buy prerecorded tapes to use, one day I found a Bay City Rollers cassette on clearance for, I think 49 cents, blank cassettes were 99 cents, (I believe it was at a Kmart) so I bought 4 of them and used them as my data cassettes.
@@WilliamHostman i always wanted an Adam, hopefully I will add one to my Coleco collection soon...then I guess I will have to find some of the data cassettes for it!
@@CanadianRetroThings I only had one data cassette, and one prerecorded one (planet of Zoom, which really isn't great - Emulation does it fine) I'd honestly rather have seen Planet of Zoom on cartridge.
THIS. In April of 1983, Commodore dropped the price of the VIC-20 to $99. That was the beginning of the end for the video games market. Not that the VIC was 'the wonder computer of the 80's', like a certain Shatner said, but it was enough to get people interested and into programming. Remember: Linux Torvalds, the writer of the Linux kernel used almost everywhere today, got his start on a VIC-20.
@@Chordonblue VIC-20 was a widely availabe computer back then. And because a lot of owners upgraded to a C64 which got a lot cheaper around that time also the VIC-20 was even cheaper second hand. What I've heard Linus Torvalds started really programming on the Sinclair QL. But if you were a kid back then it could be any of the massively dumped end of life computers back then. A lot of IT people in Europe started on computers like ZX81 , VIC20 and Acorn Electron after the real nerds were moving on to the C64, C128 and MSX. And honestly it's a bit ridiculous to assume anything Torvalds has touched had a major influence in his following succes. And don't forget that GNU license movement was a bigger part of the initial succes of Linux than the programming skills of Linus Torvalds (which he mostly just had learned on university and was based on UNIX which was around for a long time already)
@@erikkarsies4851 Linus Torvalds did program on his Sinclair QL. He cut his teeth with it, because there were too few programs available in Finland for it, and because as a young person, he confused machine code and assembly code, thinking the former to be the latter (this from one of his interviews from the 2000s somewhere in RUclips). When the Linux kernel made its splash, it was the last piece of the puzzle to complement the GNU toolset, thus making a complete free and open-source operating system, during a time when BSDs had issues with UNIX licensing, which GNU/Linux did not. Torvalds later created Git, which is widely-used version control software, and has spawned other Git-based projects, including GitHub and GitLab. He still codes on occasion, and maintains the Linux kernel, and governs what gets into it and what not. Torvalds has fundamentally changed the world. At his core, he is an engineer and a programmer, not a major businessperson.
Most people don't know this but these were the very first home computers not the apple ones. The disk drive was a normal cassette tape and player and you had to buy a special game insert and the shown keyboard which were both expensive even to that time period.
7:18 You should warn a guy before bringing a ZX81 into view. Those things are creepy. 8:30 The font is actually pretty good. I've never seen this before (the screen live) 11:29 Which is a proper computer! Some folks might laugh at things like this, but when you think about the limits of the Atari VCS/2600, it's pretty amazing what the engineers pulled off. Sure, the end result wasn't perfect, but you have to respect how they turned a simple, low-powered game console-a key part of gaming history-into something close to a working computer (and I'm stretching the term "close"). A few tweaks here and there, and it might have even been good for a few specific uses, especially for kids.
If it got some kids into programming then it’s a win. But it’s so limiting it might have turned some kids off! So I guess I’d have to hear from people who actually did have this to know if it was really good for them.
Just give me a CHR$() and an equivalent of a semicolon in a PRINT statement, and I'd be much happier. The concept is decent, it's just let down by the ROM.
This isn't as terrible as I remember. I picked one up at a flea market for less than five bucks - no box or manual of course and had no idea it had the art and music options. I wonder, can you copy the Snowman into the other slots? If so you could copy it into all six slots, and then draw snow falling down the screen by drawing a pixel, moving one screen over and one pixel down, repeating until you had loops of pixels. I guess it would pass a little time!
Interesting to see they use the interlaced trick with the two sprites for rendering text, same as can be seen for example on the Atari 2600 chess game. No wonder, that is why there is only 12 characters per line. Each sprite is used to render two chars each and then reprogrammed for the next set of 4 chars - 3 times in total. So the code for that for a full screen is likely pretty substantial part of that supposedly 16kb basic rom.
In and around this 1981 or 1982, there was talk of Atari releasing a similar system to plug into the 2600 VCS to turn the game system into a full-fledged computer. My understanding was that Atari had promised something like this and was under legal pressure to deliver. I had some Atari magazine back then that showed the Atari version. Perhaps SpectraVideo was contracted ("look, see it can be made into a computer, just like we said") or maybe they followed Atari, thinking there would be money in it.
Mattel had marketed the Intellivision with the promise that they were going to release a Keyboard Component to turn it into a home computer. The Keyboard Component was fairly impressive and they actually did a very limited release of it in some test markets, but they were never able to get the manufacturing cost low enough to sell it for a competitive price. Eventually the federal government started fining them for false advertising until they released some kind of computer expansion--so they eventually brought out a completely different, much less powerful one that did not sell very well. I think Atari had been mulling over the idea of a keyboard expansion but did not market the 2600 on those grounds (aside from the very simple "Basic Programming" cartridge they did have that used the 12-key controllers), so they weren't under the same kind of pressure.
I'd love something like this for my Odyssey 2, except Magnavox hosed that possibility by making the controllers permanently cabled... :D That is some next level "We don't know ourselves the right words to use, so we threw words on a page that we think are somehow related and it's all on you now to figure it out." Anyways, here's Wonderwall.
I remember all the products or attempts to make an Atari 2600 a ‘full’ computer. Considering how bad the interface is, I can understand the limited BASIC, I wouldn’t want to type on this system for long.
I remember when I was a kid and I wanted one of these. I had the 2600, but no home computer. After seeing this I'm sure glad I didn't get one back then. It is a shame they didn't make the basic come capable with graphics and sound commands, peek poke to access all the colors and player missile graphics would have been something fun to play with.
When I was a kid I was fascinated by the Philips Videopac "computer programmer" cartridge. My friend had one he didn't want to sell and I never got a chance to see what it could do. Knowing the Videopac's limitations (which were more severe than those of the 2600) I wonder how it measures up against the Spectravideo one.
This thing turned up in an article about weird 2600 peripherals in this month's issue of Retro Gamer. Weird.🤔 I thought you'd be the one person on RUclips to have one.
I remember seeing an advertisement for this back in the day. I always wished we could have gotten it. Maybe it was fo the best that we never did. Great video aa always.
Back when I was looking, I did not know of this "computer" attachment. I also didn't know of all the different game systems back then, and there were quite a few. So I was looking chiefly between an atari and a coco. I went with the coco because I wanted games & computer stuff. After seeing this attachment, I still think I made the right decision. ;)
I literally never knew this existed, which just blows my mind, because I definitely know more about Atari 2600 peripherals and such than anyone I've ever met. Such a clever design. The video capture for things like this and Basic Programming really needs all the temporal information (60fps) to help avoid looking obviously interlaced. It could be that your device captured 60fps but that was inevitably lost due to the upload being 1080p30.
@@datacipher i'm with the other guy on this one, i had over 400 games and went out of my way to buy special controllers and i never saw this thing either lol
@@blakenaftel3637 I wouldn’t expect anyone to have seen it, but it was in the magazines - I still have some of them. What was off-putting is him trying to humble-brag about his own expertise at the same time! 🤡
It's a bit like a Borg implant designed to vainly resurrect an already dead corpse into a resemblance of life in the home computer world of the early eighties!😮😝
OK, not done with video yet, but I already have some thoughts... 1. Had this been released in 1980/81, this would have been AMAZING to have! In 1983 (the beginning of the video game crash), not so much. In April of 1983, the VIC-20 was dropped to only $100 and *far* more capable than this. $79 wasn't too bad though, compared to other attempts... Like the one below: 2. I had an Odyssey2 at this time and my parents got me 'Computer Intro' for it in 1980. Man, if you think THIS is limited, you should've tried THAT! The O2 had a built-in keyboard, so that was a major advantage. BUT... You were dealing with 64 BYTES of RAM - yes, half that of the Atari 2600. Concerning the 'Computer Intro' cartridge: You got 1 sound: "BUZZ!" You got 1 line to display text and characters - no user-defined ones either - just the built-in. You had to switch between seeing one line of code at a time and the runtime display. It was hard to keep track of where you were. Part of the reason for that is that wasn't BASIC either - it was ASSEMBLY! While the manual was great, and first introduced me to the concept behind Moore's Law (over 100000 transistors on ONE chip by 1980, wat???!!!), was it all worth $79 (around $300) today? Er, not so much. I did learn about machine language and step-through logic though, but it seemed all but useless for anything but proof of concept. I'd already done some of that learning on one my school's TRS-80 - a real micro. The O2's processor was also very limited and in fact, was an Intel 8048 8-bit - more suitable for running a TV remote than console gaming. So I suppose it's understandable to a point - but again, the O2 Voice was done on it, so I think it could've and should've been more. I suspect the management internals behind the chaos at the rotting corpse that was Magnavox (later, Philips) were to blame. They had one foot in the games, one foot out. It's too bad, but this was the fate of MANY products made around this time period. Lots of terrific ideas, but they would take YEARS to come to fruition. I think the Compumate would have been GREAT if it had arrived 2 or 3 years before it's eventual release.
Oh man, I picked an Odyssey2 at a garage sale as a kid, because "It's a Home Computer! I can learn to program on this!" What a naive fool I was. I didn't even get a BASIC/"Computer Intro" cartridge with it. Sometimes I pull the thing out of storage just to reassure myself that it exists and wasn't some kind of strange fever dream. Still didn't stop me from wanting to learn, I just never had any of stuff that actually taught you. I wanted to get a Commodore 64, but my parents complained that I already had a Nintendo, and we already had a DOS-based "family computer" that I generally wasn't allowed to touch until later. I picked up what books I could, but they were few and far between because I didn't know where to go, what to look for, and school was useless on that front. Even when I had access to the internet in my teens, the best I had was a graphing calculator, but I managed to get a working Tetris game built from scratch on it. I didn't get a single actual programming course until college. Sometimes I wonder how different life would've been if I'd had a VIC20 or C64 back in the day, or access to the resources I always dreamed of. ^_^;;
@@TyphinHoofbun The O2 was really my parent's idea. They thought it would be more educational. My parents were of a generation that thought that video games were a complete waste of time... Well, they ARE, but... 🤡 Also, in their day, pinball and mechanical game arcades were run by some not so savory individuals. The Mob was known to use them as money laundering outfits. I thought that was BS until I read a book (Commodore: A Company on the Edge - highly recommended!), that interviewed Chuck Peddle, the inventor of the 6502. He went around the country showing people how this processor could be used. He went down to an pinball manufacturer in Florida and had a run in with some scary people there. Seems mom and dad may have had a point! They did not like me going to the arcades in town - just the association they had with those places made them fear for my well being. So, by Christmas of 1978, it was the O2 or the Atari. I secretly wanted the Atari, but when I found out that there was a Computer Intro cartridge, I was sold. I knew from the time I was around 9 that I wanted to work with computers. That happened primarily because of two shows: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Trek. Like every other nerd at that time, I wanted to be part of that future, and computers really appealed to me. Only trouble was: In 1975, there were no 'real' home computers. So I read all the science fiction and electronics magazines I could get my hands on. Radio Shack was a hangout for me. I agree with you about books/school being useless, but you can't blame them. There was no Internet. Back then, you'd go to the library and I'm certain that I read every book that mentioned computers and/or technology. I read computer history now and realize how much ground was moving beneath my feet. I had NO IDEA what was going on, really, and unless you were in the industry, how else would you know? Most magazines (spent a LOT of money on those!), were either very basic in nature or were like Byte or Dobbs - WAY over my head until I got older. My life changed one day in 1978 when my local Radio Shack got in a TRS-80 microcomputer. THAT. WAS. IT! It was what I was looking for... Except about that price. There was simply no way my family could afford it. So, I was hopeful that the O2 would be the nearest best thing. It wasn't, really, other than the 'Intro' cart. It was not practical, but it did get me thinking about programming in general, and the manual was terrific, even introducing me to the idea behind Moore's Law. It was also a great way to waste time with my two younger brothers until I got my Atari 400 in 1981. Now THAT machine had a lot going for it. I learned to program on it, eventually moving to an 800XL and from the built-in BASIC to Action!, a C-like programming language. I started transcoding stuff from other computer magazines or even Byte. I went to college with the intention of studying programming, but not long after I started, networking and finally the Internet exploded onto the scene, and I dropped out of school, got my certs, and entered the networking field. My job these days involves less networking, more work directly with Linux scripting, VMs, and remote server repair and diagnoses, which suits me fine. My parent's never understood my obsession with the things, and it's funny, when my dad asked me about that, it was like: Er... Hey dad, remember the hours we watched Star Trek together? Remember all the sci-fi movies we saw? Remember all the books we shared? My dad's reply, "Oh, yeah..." 😁🤷♂
@@TyphinHoofbun The O2 "Basic Programming" is a case of «note the lack of majescule letters» ... it's using machine code programming. I had one. It was lost in an interstate move... along with a majority set of the games. It does NOT use BASIC.
@@Chordonblue You should write this story into a blog post: your comment is succinctly written, with clear language and proper punctuation. Otherwise, your story gets lost in the RUclips comment system.
@@mardus_ee I appreciate that, thank you! I love to write - especially about the early days of gaming and computing. WHERE to put it, is the problem. When I was a kid, I thought me and only 1 or 2 other friends were the ONLY ones who were interested in this stuff. I've since learned otherwise... 😏 I see a video like this and I just feel the need to comment. One thing I notice as I grow older is often the lack of context people have - especially about things 30-50 years ago. It's not enough to just say, 'well, it was a different time...' It WAS a different time, but unless you explain why that matters, people today just don't understand it. I'm not immune. I did this when I was younger too. I thought the world of my parents and grandparents was somehow intentionally simplistic. Perhaps it was, but they wouldn't have known it then, any more than wondering today why something like the CompuMate might've been successful only 1 or 2 years before its eventual release... And so, here I am again, commenting on why I'm commenting here. 😃
Great video! Yeah, the Spectravideo branding and packaging looked awesome (same with SV-318 and 328). Would be fun to see the data format of the Compumate as well as those additional programs. The BASIC on the SV-318/328 by Microsoft is really a step up (it's basically pre MSX-BASIC), even from CBM BASIC. I think you would have enjoyed that, Robin.
If you do a part 2, you could cover the really interesting ways the Spectravision CompuMate works with the 2600's profound technical limitations, which you didn't really go into in this video. I found it very interesting to see how the 12x9 text mode was achieved: The text mode uses both player sprites from player/missile graphics, and it uses the NUSIZ register hack that was more commonly used by games to display six-digit score counts, but then it also uses the fake scanlines hack known from the 2600's chess program to double six to twelve characters. You can see how in the COMPUMATE™ logo the C uses lines not used by the O. The colour limitations of the graphics mode exist because it used the playfield background, which was monochrome (but you got to choose the hues). The MUCH more interesting mystery is how the paint program managed for the 40x40 graphics mode to be all-points-addressable. After all, the playfield register for each line was only 20 bits plus a mirror or repeat bit, so how are they achieving 40 pixels instead of 20 pixels per line? Are they somehow rewriting the register on the fly each line? This may be a unique hack; I've not seen it in any other 2600 cartridge. Or maybe only half of the 40 pixels are playfield and the other half is player sprites+NUSIZ hacks? I need to know. It's really one heck of an achievement to make even this very limited BASIC work with the 2600. To appreciate how much of an achievement that is, see David Crane's _The Internal Magic of the Atari 2600_ and _Racing the Beam._ That said, this wasn't the only BASIC for the 2600; there also was the (even more limited) _BASIC Programming_ cartridge for the VCS (see Wikipedia).
David Crane invented the 12-character kernel, which was used in Atari's BASIC Programming and Stellar Track cartridges. I've invented a 13-charater variation exploiting cycle-74 HMOVE and mid-line RESPx, but I don't think either trick was known in 1982. An interesting quirk of Crane's kernel is that the sprites only move back and forth by seven pixels, rather than eight, but the cycle-74 HMOVE trick makes it possible to move sprites left by 8 pixels on a scan line rather than seven. The ability to show a 40-column playfield bitmap was demonstrated in the 1977 Surround cartridge. Rewriting the playfield registers twice per line is hardly unusual, though many games that do so only use the middle 32 pixels with the "reflected" playfield mode, and with one of the writes timed to hit on the cycle before the screen midpoint. Donkey Kong is a very nice example of a game that does that while managing a very busy screen. Other games that use a non-symmetric playfield include all of the Pac Man variants, the amazing homebrew Thrust +, Hangman, Street Racer, etc. I'd perhaps be much more impressed with this BASIC had I not played with Warren Robinett's "Basic Programming" cartridge that came out a couple years earlier. That only had 4K of ROM and no expansion RAM, and was thus in many ways more limited than the SV Basic, but it could simultaneously have one window show the BASIC program with a cursor highlighting the current part being executed, a second window showing the contents of all used variables, and a third window showing the text screen output from print statements. It was necessary to use CLEAR statements a lot to limit the amount of text in the text window, since every byte displayed there would use up a byte of memory, but pulling off a Codeview-style display on a system with 128 bytes of RAM total, while leaving 64 bytes available for user programs, is mind boggling.
@@flatfingertuning727 Wow. Thank you for the info. Are you a member of the old guard, someone whose name is known? Only if you're comfortable sharing: Are you happy to say who you are?
I'm not a member of the old guard, but I have exchanged email with Warren Robinett who told me David Crane did the kernel used in Basic Programming, and worked with Rob Fullup to finish off and release a prototype cartridge of Actionauts. I've also met David Crane at a convention, and he told be the DPC Chip stands for David Patrick Crane (which is funny because I've always read other acronym expansions for it). I've done a couple games on the 2600 including Strat-O-Gems and Toyshop Trouble, as well as the menu code and music for Stella's Stocking.
Its pretty impressive what they managed, theres only 2 sprites which is why the text is limited and the music is better than any original game on the system apart form pitfall 2 but there are better homebrews out now. If they had of put that effort into making it for the nes or sms it would have been very useful and possibly better than the c64.
Those single byte token commands were for optimization of the limited 2k RAM, just like similarly on the VIC-20 when you could use abbreviated commands for the same reason of limited RAM.
@@CthulhuWaitsDreaming ... huh! Now I think the VIC-20 was just strange. :) I had Ataris which would turn any command, abbreviated or not, into a token of 1 or 2 bytes when you entered a line, and convert that byte back into the unabbreviated form when you listed it. BBC BASIC did the same if I remember right. I thought every 8-bit did that, but I guess not. Though on the other hand, you'll have to excuse me for continuing to doubt; it's normal for erroneous "facts" to be extremely pernicious in some circumstances, and this is exactly such circumstances. So I'm trying to find a reason why abbreviated commands might use less memory in the VIC-20. Do abbreviated commands have restrictions which the full-length commands don't?
this computhing made me anxious just by watching your pain 😬 I’m glad I didn’t have to make a video on it! I think you could buy a calculator for that price back then, much more useful 😂
Wow, a personal computer BASIC that makes the TI and Timex BASICs look good! That takes some doing. I wonder in the music thing if scale was actually intended at one point. Also, how much would have (say) another 2 K of RAM and 2K of ROM cost in 1983? I dare say there's a resource problem.
This video is a revelation! ☺ I'd often thought back in the day that the one essential thing missing from these consoles was a Keyboard! How wrong I was. No good having a keyboard if there's no decent way of making good use of it. They could have done so much better, I'm sure! Did they actually make any SV-318s?
I thought the same. They did make the SV-318; it was a decent computer except for its poor chicklet keyboard. Built-in joystick though. They made an SV-328 too. It was the same internally but had a better keyboard.
There are varieties of both Microsoft and non-MS BASICs that have both the OK and READY prompts, so that's not enough to trace the lineage, I believe. Various Tiny BASIC derivatives use "OK" and many Microsoft BASICs (such as Commodore) use READY.
This is one of the accessories I've been looking for (at a reasonable price) to add to my old consoles. I've got the Intellivision keyboard which from this demonstration is a better BASIC than the Atari's. Been looking for addons for retro consoles to make them have more micro computer functions.
The 2600 was intended to last only a couple of years. It was intentionally crippled on purpose. The actual proper continuation was the Atari 800/400. But 2600s just continued selling like pancakes, the rest is history. With several 2600 in the market someone saw a market opportunity to bring Basic to the kids i guess. In 1983 the Family Computer, (aka, Nintendo's NES) debuted in Japan with tape and keyboard, and of course a Basic cartridge. But i guess the Atari with its Stella chip (made originally for a 70ies gadget to show psychedelic patterns on a tv): had more colors, but nothing else its seriously crippled because it was meant to sell cheap, and sell cheap it did. I guess the Atari 800 was the opposite, over-engineered and built it like a tank lol. The 400 unfortunately had a membrane keyboard, and everyone knows how long those last, yet was not cheap like the Sinclair, because the rest of the unit was the same tank minus the second cartridge slot. I love how those were proper S-100 computers inside.
Wow! That music almost sounds good. I have this contraption and with my PAL 2600 all it outputs is earrape that has the occasional one note that is actually near where it's supposed to be. How to compare? Take a Commodore 16, type in one of the music programs from the manual, but round every number to the next 100. Or take a C64, type in one of the music programs. Drop the frequency LSB and round everything else to the next 10.
Imagine being a kid in 1982, visiting a friend that had just got a brand new C64, being blown away. Going home to mum and dad bugging them for a home computer. Mum or dad goes to shop and look at different options, sees this and thinks, "Oh, yea, this is perfect because we already have a VCS at home!". This device seems more like a burden than anything else. Also, can the cartridge port looking hole just be a place to put the actual cartridge when the device is not in use and attached to the VCS?
I’d say pull the ROM out of it and put it in a chip reader to see if you can find anything interesting in BASIC features that the manual doesn’t say or that were disabled but the code is still there.
Well, it's undeniable that the SV-318 is a far superior machine, both hardware as well as firmware-wise. So regarding that note in the manual, I'm not even mad.
What does the cartridge do if you try to output 4/3, or 4/3*9? I think you should get a couple of keypad controllers and Warren Robinett's "BASIC Programming" cartridge. That is hamstrung by lack of any expansion RAM, and it's only a 4K cartridge, but what it manages within the RAM limitations is pretty darned amazing. That cartridge makes 64 bytes available for program, variables, and text output screen, and also has commands to produce sound and even plot two points on a "graphics" screen. It also features a "Codeview" style debugger which--if a program is short enough--can highlight the part of the program being executed in one window while showing variables in another window and a text screen in a third, all simultaneously. If Warren Robinett had been given the hardware found in e.g. a Defender II cartridge (8K of ROM and 128 bytes of RAM) I think he could have easily offered much more functionality than this SV toy. As it is, what he managed is simply amazing given that even just displaying 12 characters using David Crane's text-rendering code would require 24 (of 128) bytes of scratchpad RAM, and the font storage alone required 1280 (of 4096) bytes of ROM, While the BASIC Programming cartridge is too weak to do anything useful or particularly fun (the most interesting thing I managed was writing a program to cycle through showing all the primes from 0 to 99, clearing the text window before showing each one to avoid overflowing it), I think it would be an interesting contrast to the Compumate which, while it had vastly superior hardware, was severely lacking in aspiration compared with Warren Robinett's cartridge.
I remember seeing this back then. I was 10 years old. I though that's how the games were programmed and then they would probably cut the cables from the cartridge after the game is done and it would become a real game cartridge.
like an umbilical cord
Have you cut the cartridge cable? 😁
Awww😅
That sounds like it.
I think it would have been a very frustrating "first computer" for any kid to own back in the day.
THIS was my first computer, I learned Basic on that thing. Started my journey, then switched to C128, Amiga, PC. Today I have a CS Master's degree and make decent money. The "area" on the back is a "garage" for the Spectravideo cartridge when the CompuMate is not connected to the Atari 2600, just to be able to put it away nice and tidy.
I think I got lucky then, by starting on the Apple ][ europlus...
My first computer in the 70s was literally a virtual computer! My dad got me a book on programming but we were too poor and I ran the programs in my mind 😅 now I'm CTO of a public company 😅
So someone actually used it with the intended purpose and didn‘t throw it away after 3hrs - Spectravideo was right all along! 😂 You‘ve made some former Spectravideo Marketing Manager very happy today (if still alive and reading your comment).
Good to find another user! We're a rare breed! Did you ever find any software for it?
@@supercompooper Do you live, or have you ever been, in The Netherlands? I remember some student from the 80's with exactly you name, having internship at the company I worked for in those days.
You have this rare gift... No matter if the stuff you show us is "good" or "bad", the video always feels too short. It always feels special when you start exploring and take us with you.
Thank you very much!
P.S.:
The Outro-Music not only proofs your love for music... It also tells me that you have a great sense of humor ;)
Stay well and healthy!
Greetings from germany.
I was laughing out loud when I heard that music for the first time and thought I have to use it for the end credits. I'm glad you enjoyed it too.
I hate to say it, but I'd be morbidly curious to see some of the "software" they thought to create for this. I'd love a follow-up going into more detail. ^_^
Maybe:
10 INPUT "Enter the first number: "; A
20 INPUT "Enter the second number: "; B
30 SUM = A + B
40 PRINT "The sum is: "; SUM
50 END
;)
@@MetalApeit's a start
@@MetalApe
That won't work on the Compumate, due to limitations of the BASIC:
Only upper case letters are supported, INP statements can't print a text prompt, variable names have to be a single letter, only the variables A-P can be used for numeric values, PR statements can't have multiple fields, variable assignments need LET, there's no END statement.
A version will actually work on the Compumate:
10 PR "ENTER THE FIRST NUMBER"
20 INP A
30 PR "ENTER THE SECOND NUMBER"
40 INP B
50 LET P=A+B
60 PR "THE SUM IS"
70 PR P
@@gwishart Interesting. Thank you. Incredible how far this technology has come. And what to expect. What an age we live in!
I had a memory, what I thought was a dream, of my uncle and his friend playing with some kind of computer keyboard on a wooden Atari. It wasn't until maybe 2 decades later I discovered the CompuMate and it looked exactly like this "dream". My grandfather and uncle were well into the SpectraVideo systems in the 80s. My grandfather gave me his SV-328 in the 90s, but it stopped working and ended up being thrown out. I wish I kept it in hindsight as I would have been able to fix it with my current skills.
This thing really can perform computations, so I guess some of the marketing fluff is accurate. My guess why the box for this is in such good shape is because the CompuMate got usage for 15 minutes and then was quickly put into the closet. #ControversialHotTake
Robin! there's a Korean computer called the "Bit 60" (1983) that's nearly identical to this being fully compatible with the 2600 featuring BASIC and a not dissimilar keyboard layout. The computer has the 2k memory and basic ROM inside the 'computer' and the cartridge slot is free for Atari games. But it's so similar that I wouldn't be surprised if it's a related development - perhaps even a related BASIC ROM - perhaps more can be learned via the "Bit 60"
I reviewed the BIT60 for an issue of The 2600 Connection newsletter years ago. As I recall, it was from Taiwan. Not Korean.
@@Mrshoujo - My apologies - but is it not such a big stretch to imagine the Basic ROM might be related?
Same time period - nearly identical system (just inside out)
@@Mrshoujo - The keyboard layout is almost identical to this machine too - if nothing else? the keyboard seems like a related development
I wonder if someone could make homebrew for it
These are awesome. The 2600 and it's market were far ahead of their time in so many ways, but this was always one of my favorites. I really just wish they were more available so I could have one myself! That you have one in such a clean box is truly a feat of time travel.
Mine doesnt even work anymore 😟 theres two double stacked rom chips in it, one of them has lost its memory, i have an eprom burner, but ive been too scared to take it apart and try to re flash them in case i cant put it back together properly
@@Colt45hatchback I was just about to say the opposite, that it's so crazy my systems still work fine.
Aw you drew a lovely heart ❤ Seriously though as a kid born in the 60s this would have been amazing. And a nice introduction to computing. It's also great to see the comments of people who were inspired to code by all these 'starter' devices. My first was a borrowed ZX80 and first owned was a ZX Spectrum. Hours of typing from magazine is one way to see whether you have the patience for the world of comupting. Key skill!
When I was a kid back in '83 I thought this would be the wave of the future! Turn a video game console into a home computer? Who'd bother with a dedicated computer then?! Ah, naivety!
In case anyone was curious why some of the notes sounded flat, the Atari 2600's audio channels derive all of their pitches from a single fixed-frequency oscillator. They would divide a 30 kHz base tone by one five-bit value to determine the pitch, and another 4-bit value to determine the volume. This basically gave the A2600 the ability to play about 32 discrete tones at 16 volume levels, with only some of the tones coincidentally landing on what we'd recognize as a musical note.
Can you add strings ?
10LETC=0
20LETQ$=""
30LETA=RND(1)
40IFINTA=0THENQ$=Q$+""
60LETC=C+1
70IFC
It makes me smile to think that somewhere out there in a closet or storage unit, is a VHS tape of some rad spectravision art.
That would be a real find. It would predate Mario Paint by almost a decade!
The dweeb that created the masterpiece was going to change the world!
@@BigAL68xyz The Fairchild Channel F had a "video art" program built in, so that's the granddaddy.
@jaxtraw IDK.....
It was less than a year ahead in release date and half a decade behind technologically. Seems more like _deadbeat dad_ .
@@maxi-me I don't agree. It had a bitmapped display compared to the Atari's shift registers. Atari had the programmers and designed their very limited technology to do a few things very well, but the VCS wasn't more technologically advanced per se.
This is a great, awesome accessory for the 2600. Back in the day, it would blow my mind to use and make some music with Atari's square notes. Probably inspired many people to love computers. For those younger: on 1981, 1982 computers were something kind of magical for us, the end users.
I vividly remember seeing the official Atari "computer" add-on in the Atari magazine and wanting it SOOOOOO badly! I think it was only shown one time and then was cancelled. Ended up with a C64 a year or two later.
Same story here. In retrospect I'm glad my parents saved up for a 64 instead, but at the time I so desperately wanted to turn my Atari into a 'real' computer and dive into programming!
There were about four computer upgrades announced for the 2600; this was the only one to ever reach the market.
What an interesting bit of kit and what an in-depth review! I never knew this was a thing.
Shame the Basic is somewhat disappointing, I guess I'll stick to my ZX81 for now! 😄
hey, I wrote my first game with that basic. it was a maze game where you had to navigate a maze to find the miinotaur. biggest problem was the limit to number of lines in your game
Was it a 2D maze, with your character moving inside the fixed maze? This BASIC is so limited I can't even figure out how to do that without redrawing (and scrolling) the screen every single move. But maybe there's some features I haven't discovered yet.
Would love to see more on this. I always wanted one on these but I've heard most have dead keyboards, even new in box ones.
I never actually appreciated Microsoft BASIC until now.
I did... the Atari Basic Programming cart was better than this, but the interface (two 3×4 button pads) was far worse.
And the Odyssey was doing machine code...
Oh my goodness, what an absolutely fascinating pile of trash! In reality though, making a 2600 do this is pretty amazing. A couple software tweaks could make it a lot more usable.
Back in the day there was one for the vectrex I managed to find and I got it working briefly. But apparently it needs a very unusual type of bubble memory to make it work properly
What's even more amazing IMHO is Warren Robinett's "BASIC Programming" cartridge which came out well before this. It's hamstrung by having to use two 12-key controllers rather than a proper keyboard, and by only having 128 bytes of RAM in the system (of which it makes 64 available to the programmer), but it includes sound and graphics commands.
Thas why I love this channel. He buys this crap so we don't have to!😂
That is beautiful. I never knew it existed
Dude I want to have a powerful personal computer😋
I remember this one, a real oddity. With the VC20 around it wasn't even a question.
I'm getting the impression that the manual was written by the same person as the "Black Book" of the C64 I think, you showed it some time ago😂
In the early 80s I was looking for a computer but Apple and Radio Shack computers were too expensive. I wasn't aware of Commodore at the time, but a PET would have also been to dear for my budget. I tried the programming cartridges for the Magnivox and the VCS and found them less than interesting. When the Atari 400 came out I sold of the game consoles and splashed the cash for the real computer with the crappy keyboard. I bought an upgrade keyboard, 32K memory and was happy as a clam. I probably would have skipped this too.
Yes. I got an Atari 400 for my birthday in 1981. It was pricy - $400 (over $1000 today). That machine was far more capable than the VIC-20, and even though it was designed in 1979, was still a match for the C64 in 1983. Loved that machine!
@@Chordonblue I learned to program on that 400 with the Progammer's kit. It lead to a career in IT and laboratory automation. Those 2 extra joystick ports with the analog inputs and digital I/O was the lead-in to my introduction to real world interfacing. It was a old-time answer to the modern Raspberry Pie. I still think there was a reason they called the keyboard computer version of the Pie the 400.
Very interesting. More content on this and Sinclair computers would be great. Thanks for sharing
That box is just... Wonderful.
Great video!! I was hoping to see benchmarks on loops with math or other items to compare with other platforms. We know it will be slow!! But Id love to see just how slow via a timer. I think theres some standard basic benchmarks out there. Thanks for your awesome channel!
Given the 2600 limitations and had this come out in 1978 it would have been a huge deal!, Imagine that!!
I would l to see a follow-up video where you compare the CompuMate’s BASIC with the BASIC Programming cartridge. I had that cartridge and was thrilled when my parents bought me a TI 99/4A which was quite the upgrade for not that much more.
Great video! Man I wanted one of these when I saw the ad in Electronic Games. Looks like I dodged a bullet. Looks more frustrating then anything. I ended up getting a TRS-80 MC-10, which led to the Commodore 64.
Interesting piece of hardware, I had never heard of this. Great channel looking forward to checking out your other content. Subscribed!
Thanks, yeah, it's an unusual item and I found it pretty interesting to play around with.
Hi Robin, thanks for the video! We discussed it half a year ago, when I pickup up one myself and you collected yours. Honestly I was also disappointed by it myself. Love to see what software you found for it.
I love this. I just got a 2600 and several cartridges and am waiting for time to really get into it.
As a kid, I had Atari's BASIC and the keyboard controllers, but didn't appreciate it at the time.
Another idea is use a Similar Case,to do with an Raspberry Pi,or something,a Compumate that Acesss Internet via sorta of Linux Terminal,with BBS,linx browser and play CLI Games....and Stella Emulation of course....
Please make a short video where you take the cartridge apart. I’d like to see if there’s a 2k SRAM chip and some interface logic for the keyboard/joycon cables (in addition to a mask-programmed ROM.) I’m guessing there’s not much you can do in only 2 kilobytes of RAM, so no space for arrays, but it should at least have the ability to use “;” to suppress the carriage return/line feed like pretty much every other BASIC out there, not to mention an actual backslash. I think the underlying 2600 has a 6502, right? So there’s 512 bytes right there for pages 0 and 1 (0x0000-0x01FF) + it would need some of the 2k to store the BASIC program and the rest to store the variable’s values + a buffer for the keyboard input + 12x(# screen rows) for the screen buffer. I’m surprised it even has “GOSUB” given these tight memory limitations, since that would require the stack to push the return value (next line #?). Definitely would work better if they has 16k of RAM, and basic math and string operations.
Quite interesting. I'd enjoy to poke around with that setup. Thanks for the vid and keep up the good work.
Hey, you have a good show here! I'm glad I found it! Keep up the good work!
Yes! Please, more on this add-on! Bring on the software for it. Cassette load/save functionality too!
There are two cassette tapes of commercial software; one each of music and graphics.
Thanks for this! This thing really makes the MC-10 (which was also aimed at the Sinclair market) look like a rocket ship by comparison. And that was not much more expensive than this was, really less if you add in the cost of the VCS. Had all these system came out a year or two earlier they might have had a chance, but they were already outdated on launch.
I wonder if the developers were told they had a certain amount of time, but then market conditions made it clear that if they waited until they'd developed everything they intended, the product would be obsolete on launch so the developers had to rush to get *something* out. If the schedule had been established more in advance, I think adding music commands to BASIC would have been quicker and easier than trying to include a music editor, but having an editor available in addition to the BASIC commands could have been helpful for people trying to figure out what commands they should use to play sounds.
Likewise, adding some graphics commands to BASIC, would have offered a major qualitative boost to functionality, but a picture editor could have been useful adjunct to the BASIC if there were a command to copy a portion of a hand-drawn screen to the displayed screen. Thinking about it, adding PEEK and POKE commands could also have made the graphics editor useful as a means of viewing and entering data tables for some powerful but memory-efficient programs.
My thoughts exactly
If I'd had a 2600 back in the day, I would have loved this, but those things were expensive. Luckily I had a ZX81, which was a joy at the time.
I got the Famicom Family Basic recently. So far I have also not found any way to make a backslash for the proper 10 print. But I'm still working on it.
I heard you use the Yen symbol instead of backslash
¥
Great job Robin. Keep it up. Also remember seeing around 84 or so a c64 adapter that plugged into a port that speed typing with one hand. Had 4 buttons or so in the peripheral and the combo of buttons pressed responded w the appropriate character. U remember this? Or anyone?
This video just makes me happy. I remember this device, never had one, and settled for the Atari key pads that included BASIC.
I'll give them credit for this much: I've never seen a computer with dedicated, multi-tile-wide characters for BASIC commands. Closest I can think of is the weird "PK" "MN" characters the 8-bit Pokémon games used when they couldn't fit the full name where a pair of kanji used to be. I'm now imagining an alternate universe where Commodore used something like that for displaying control codes inside quotes, instead of repurposing the inverse characters. I'm also curious what happens if you try typing one right on the last character in the line; does it get cut in half around the wrap? That might be something to demonstrate in the followup video.
BASIC Programming (Atari 2600 title) did something similar. Many calculator "BASICs" treat Print, Let, etc. as single characters that can only be input with special button presses.
It was commonplace for terminals to display ASCII control characters as two or three characters of their mnemonic codes (NUL, SOH, STX, etc.) packed into a single character cell, much like PK MN.
From a hardware design perspective, I thought this had a lot of potential. The software falls so short that it is an incredible shame. Very cool video tho. I enjoyed your frustration with it a lot. It is a size we don't normally see! :)
Most of Spectravideo's carts fall short. On the other hand, the CPU on the 2600 is a lobotimized 6502 variant, the 6507, with only 13 memory lines (8k), and only implemented 12 of them, for 4k address space. So this thing's 16k is very much bank switched, especially given the 128 bytes RAM in the console.
It's not even 16k ROM. If you take the Compumate cartridge apart, there's actually a 2764 EPROM chip in there, which is an 8k device. Plus a 2k RAM chip.
Weird! There's a ROM dump on the AtariMania website and it's 16K. I went looking for pictures of the cartridge's EPROM and only found unmarked ones. It's got 28 pins, but both the 2764 and 27128 have 28 pins, so I couldn't tell from that. Maybe I'll open mine up.
@@8_Bit I was looking at the-liberator website for the internals of the CompuMate, and can see a single Hitachi HN482764 EPROM device, which is 8k AFAIK. With a sticker over the UV window hand written in biro "PI". There's also a Synertek SY2128-2 2k SRAM chip, along with three 74LS TTL devices. RUclips won't let me post the actual URL for the image.
@@8_Bit BTW I downloaded the 16k ROM dump of the CompuMate from AtariMania, and it runs in the Stella 2600 emulator. And it does support the computer's keyboard, so can try some very basic Basic for myself. :)
@@michaelturner4457 Managing to add SRAM and bank switching using only three 74xx devices is impressive, given that a typical bank-switch cartridge--even without RAM--would need that many if not using custom silicon. I wonder how the cart would have managed to generate SRAM write timings? The simplest way to manage write timings would probably be to latch the address at the start of a write cycle, and hold it until the end of the cycle that performs the access, but that would require using two 74xx chips for the address latching alone. Perhaps there's an RC timing circuit which is used to release the /WE line while the address is still valid, but I can't think offhand how to manage any of this using only three 74xx chips.
BTW, I find it curious that adding a couple of 9-bin plugs and wiring connecting to them was cheaper than adding some circuitry to allow use of the cartridge bus to perform I/O.
@@michaelturner4457 I found that the-liberator picture you mentioned, and it looks to me like there's two 2764s stacked on top of each other!
Never knew this product existed. By 1983, I had a TRS-80 Model 3, a TI-99/4A, and an Atari 5200 console, so the 2600 didn't get much use by then. In 1979 I got the "Basic Programming" cartridge Atari had marketed for the 2600, which was stunningly disappointing (63 symbols total to work with that had to be shared between program, variables, and stack as I recall, far less powerful than even this peripheral) so I had to go shopping for a real (expensive) computer. But times they were a-changing. By 1990 I had a 286 clone, an Amiga 500, and had entirely left behind BASIC for C++. Good times.
That is super interesting. I'm impressed that the basic on this thing can do as much as it can to be honest, given the extreme limitations of the 2600. Love to see more of the horrendous software. Even if it has 16k of memory of basic ROM, I bet thats including the kernel and character set for the device as well as load/save functions to the audio adapters, and I bet its all bank switched on top of that given the 6507 micro can only address 8kb max, so some of those address lines must also be dedicated to switching banks on the cartridge which must have more than 16 kb total memory for all its other programs, so that probably leaves you with about 4kb of actual working ROM+RAM at any given time
I had one of these. Good times and memories. Thanks.
You opened this funky can of worms machine... I've always been curious about it, so of course I want to see more!
Haha you've found one. I never thought anyone would buy this. It had a whopping 2k RAM and was (incl. the VCS) more expensive than a stock VIC20 when this device was in stores.
I like how it stressed that it used "standard" cassette tapes, I don't think I knew anyone that used the expensive data cassettes. I used to buy prerecorded tapes to use, one day I found a Bay City Rollers cassette on clearance for, I think 49 cents, blank cassettes were 99 cents, (I believe it was at a Kmart) so I bought 4 of them and used them as my data cassettes.
I can't think of a better use for a Bay City Rollers cassette. 🤣
@@Metal_Maxine Hey now! 🤡
The ColecoVision Adam used a custom datatape format. it was noisy, but worked ok...
@@WilliamHostman i always wanted an Adam, hopefully I will add one to my Coleco collection soon...then I guess I will have to find some of the data cassettes for it!
@@CanadianRetroThings I only had one data cassette, and one prerecorded one (planet of Zoom, which really isn't great - Emulation does it fine) I'd honestly rather have seen Planet of Zoom on cartridge.
16Kbit Basic 😂
With a Vic 20 being 90 dollar back then according to google you immediately understand why it wasn't a succes I think :)
THIS. In April of 1983, Commodore dropped the price of the VIC-20 to $99. That was the beginning of the end for the video games market. Not that the VIC was 'the wonder computer of the 80's', like a certain Shatner said, but it was enough to get people interested and into programming. Remember: Linux Torvalds, the writer of the Linux kernel used almost everywhere today, got his start on a VIC-20.
@@Chordonblue VIC-20 was a widely availabe computer back then. And because a lot of owners upgraded to a C64 which got a lot cheaper around that time also the VIC-20 was even cheaper second hand. What I've heard Linus Torvalds started really programming on the Sinclair QL. But if you were a kid back then it could be any of the massively dumped end of life computers back then. A lot of IT people in Europe started on computers like ZX81 , VIC20 and Acorn Electron after the real nerds were moving on to the C64, C128 and MSX. And honestly it's a bit ridiculous to assume anything Torvalds has touched had a major influence in his following succes. And don't forget that GNU license movement was a bigger part of the initial succes of Linux than the programming skills of Linus Torvalds (which he mostly just had learned on university and was based on UNIX which was around for a long time already)
@@erikkarsies4851 Linus Torvalds did program on his Sinclair QL. He cut his teeth with it, because there were too few programs available in Finland for it, and because as a young person, he confused machine code and assembly code, thinking the former to be the latter (this from one of his interviews from the 2000s somewhere in RUclips).
When the Linux kernel made its splash, it was the last piece of the puzzle to complement the GNU toolset, thus making a complete free and open-source operating system, during a time when BSDs had issues with UNIX licensing, which GNU/Linux did not.
Torvalds later created Git, which is widely-used version control software, and has spawned other Git-based projects, including GitHub and GitLab. He still codes on occasion, and maintains the Linux kernel, and governs what gets into it and what not.
Torvalds has fundamentally changed the world. At his core, he is an engineer and a programmer, not a major businessperson.
This is so cool. Can’t thank you enough for this. You are the best.
Nice one Robin. I'd heard of this and was always interested to learn more
Most people don't know this but these were the very first home computers not the apple ones. The disk drive was a normal cassette tape and player and you had to buy a special game insert and the shown keyboard which were both expensive even to that time period.
7:18 You should warn a guy before bringing a ZX81 into view. Those things are creepy.
8:30 The font is actually pretty good. I've never seen this before (the screen live)
11:29 Which is a proper computer!
Some folks might laugh at things like this, but when you think about the limits of the Atari VCS/2600, it's pretty amazing what the engineers pulled off. Sure, the end result wasn't perfect, but you have to respect how they turned a simple, low-powered game console-a key part of gaming history-into something close to a working computer (and I'm stretching the term "close"). A few tweaks here and there, and it might have even been good for a few specific uses, especially for kids.
If it got some kids into programming then it’s a win. But it’s so limiting it might have turned some kids off! So I guess I’d have to hear from people who actually did have this to know if it was really good for them.
Just give me a CHR$() and an equivalent of a semicolon in a PRINT statement, and I'd be much happier. The concept is decent, it's just let down by the ROM.
@@8_Bit We could disassemble the ROM and fix it ;-)
@@MichaelDoornbos Exactly! Open it up, let's see what's inside it!
21:00 awesome
This isn't as terrible as I remember. I picked one up at a flea market for less than five bucks - no box or manual of course and had no idea it had the art and music options. I wonder, can you copy the Snowman into the other slots? If so you could copy it into all six slots, and then draw snow falling down the screen by drawing a pixel, moving one screen over and one pixel down, repeating until you had loops of pixels. I guess it would pass a little time!
Just found your channel. Excellent Content - Another sub for you sir!
I remember that Atari got sued over the computer add-on they advertised never being available.
I don’t understand much of this but I love your videos. I did some simple programming on my TI-99 but nothing I remember now.
Interesting to see they use the interlaced trick with the two sprites for rendering text, same as can be seen for example on the Atari 2600 chess game. No wonder, that is why there is only 12 characters per line. Each sprite is used to render two chars each and then reprogrammed for the next set of 4 chars - 3 times in total. So the code for that for a full screen is likely pretty substantial part of that supposedly 16kb basic rom.
I'd like to see more, what this bad boy can really do in BASIC! (very little, but fun to see)
The ultra multi for the bally astrocade looks like something good to review in the future.
In and around this 1981 or 1982, there was talk of Atari releasing a similar system to plug into the 2600 VCS to turn the game system into a full-fledged computer. My understanding was that Atari had promised something like this and was under legal pressure to deliver. I had some Atari magazine back then that showed the Atari version. Perhaps SpectraVideo was contracted ("look, see it can be made into a computer, just like we said") or maybe they followed Atari, thinking there would be money in it.
Mattel had marketed the Intellivision with the promise that they were going to release a Keyboard Component to turn it into a home computer. The Keyboard Component was fairly impressive and they actually did a very limited release of it in some test markets, but they were never able to get the manufacturing cost low enough to sell it for a competitive price. Eventually the federal government started fining them for false advertising until they released some kind of computer expansion--so they eventually brought out a completely different, much less powerful one that did not sell very well.
I think Atari had been mulling over the idea of a keyboard expansion but did not market the 2600 on those grounds (aside from the very simple "Basic Programming" cartridge they did have that used the 12-key controllers), so they weren't under the same kind of pressure.
I'd love something like this for my Odyssey 2, except Magnavox hosed that possibility by making the controllers permanently cabled... :D
That is some next level "We don't know ourselves the right words to use, so we threw words on a page that we think are somehow related and it's all on you now to figure it out."
Anyways, here's Wonderwall.
Alwayse wanted one of them for my 2600.
That's actually a great looking font. Some love went into this I'd say.
I remember all the products or attempts to make an Atari 2600 a ‘full’ computer. Considering how bad the interface is, I can understand the limited BASIC, I wouldn’t want to type on this system for long.
I remember when I was a kid and I wanted one of these. I had the 2600, but no home computer. After seeing this I'm sure glad I didn't get one back then. It is a shame they didn't make the basic come capable with graphics and sound commands, peek poke to access all the colors and player missile graphics would have been something fun to play with.
An Atari “holy grail” I have sought for a lifetime
When I was a kid I was fascinated by the Philips Videopac "computer programmer" cartridge. My friend had one he didn't want to sell and I never got a chance to see what it could do. Knowing the Videopac's limitations (which were more severe than those of the 2600) I wonder how it measures up against the Spectravideo one.
See my note about that very thing. I had one - you didn't miss out on much, believe me. 🙄🙄
This thing turned up in an article about weird 2600 peripherals in this month's issue of Retro Gamer. Weird.🤔 I thought you'd be the one person on RUclips to have one.
I remember seeing an advertisement for this back in the day. I always wished we could have gotten it. Maybe it was fo the best that we never did. Great video aa always.
Back when I was looking, I did not know of this "computer" attachment.
I also didn't know of all the different game systems back then, and there were quite a few.
So I was looking chiefly between an atari and a coco. I went with the coco because I wanted games & computer stuff. After seeing this attachment, I still think I made the right decision. ;)
I literally never knew this existed, which just blows my mind, because I definitely know more about Atari 2600 peripherals and such than anyone I've ever met. Such a clever design. The video capture for things like this and Basic Programming really needs all the temporal information (60fps) to help avoid looking obviously interlaced. It could be that your device captured 60fps but that was inevitably lost due to the upload being 1080p30.
I'll try to make sure I get a 60fps video next time.
Stella emulated it literally since the DOS days, at least I think so. Could been a CX50 too. In real life I only saw one in a museum.
Uh… ok. It was advertised in magazines back in the day along with several other keyboards.
@@datacipher i'm with the other guy on this one, i had over 400 games and went out of my way to buy special controllers and i never saw this thing either lol
@@blakenaftel3637 I wouldn’t expect anyone to have seen it, but it was in the magazines - I still have some of them. What was off-putting is him trying to humble-brag about his own expertise at the same time! 🤡
It's a bit like a Borg implant designed to vainly resurrect an already dead corpse into a resemblance of life in the home computer world of the early eighties!😮😝
Was thinking about the tape software. Would love to see it!
OK, not done with video yet, but I already have some thoughts...
1. Had this been released in 1980/81, this would have been AMAZING to have! In 1983 (the beginning of the video game crash), not so much. In April of 1983, the VIC-20 was dropped to only $100 and *far* more capable than this. $79 wasn't too bad though, compared to other attempts... Like the one below:
2. I had an Odyssey2 at this time and my parents got me 'Computer Intro' for it in 1980. Man, if you think THIS is limited, you should've tried THAT! The O2 had a built-in keyboard, so that was a major advantage. BUT... You were dealing with 64 BYTES of RAM - yes, half that of the Atari 2600.
Concerning the 'Computer Intro' cartridge: You got 1 sound: "BUZZ!" You got 1 line to display text and characters - no user-defined ones either - just the built-in. You had to switch between seeing one line of code at a time and the runtime display. It was hard to keep track of where you were. Part of the reason for that is that wasn't BASIC either - it was ASSEMBLY! While the manual was great, and first introduced me to the concept behind Moore's Law (over 100000 transistors on ONE chip by 1980, wat???!!!), was it all worth $79 (around $300) today? Er, not so much. I did learn about machine language and step-through logic though, but it seemed all but useless for anything but proof of concept. I'd already done some of that learning on one my school's TRS-80 - a real micro.
The O2's processor was also very limited and in fact, was an Intel 8048 8-bit - more suitable for running a TV remote than console gaming. So I suppose it's understandable to a point - but again, the O2 Voice was done on it, so I think it could've and should've been more. I suspect the management internals behind the chaos at the rotting corpse that was Magnavox (later, Philips) were to blame. They had one foot in the games, one foot out.
It's too bad, but this was the fate of MANY products made around this time period. Lots of terrific ideas, but they would take YEARS to come to fruition. I think the Compumate would have been GREAT if it had arrived 2 or 3 years before it's eventual release.
Oh man, I picked an Odyssey2 at a garage sale as a kid, because "It's a Home Computer! I can learn to program on this!" What a naive fool I was. I didn't even get a BASIC/"Computer Intro" cartridge with it. Sometimes I pull the thing out of storage just to reassure myself that it exists and wasn't some kind of strange fever dream.
Still didn't stop me from wanting to learn, I just never had any of stuff that actually taught you. I wanted to get a Commodore 64, but my parents complained that I already had a Nintendo, and we already had a DOS-based "family computer" that I generally wasn't allowed to touch until later.
I picked up what books I could, but they were few and far between because I didn't know where to go, what to look for, and school was useless on that front. Even when I had access to the internet in my teens, the best I had was a graphing calculator, but I managed to get a working Tetris game built from scratch on it. I didn't get a single actual programming course until college. Sometimes I wonder how different life would've been if I'd had a VIC20 or C64 back in the day, or access to the resources I always dreamed of. ^_^;;
@@TyphinHoofbun The O2 was really my parent's idea. They thought it would be more educational.
My parents were of a generation that thought that video games were a complete waste of time... Well, they ARE, but... 🤡 Also, in their day, pinball and mechanical game arcades were run by some not so savory individuals. The Mob was known to use them as money laundering outfits. I thought that was BS until I read a book (Commodore: A Company on the Edge - highly recommended!), that interviewed Chuck Peddle, the inventor of the 6502. He went around the country showing people how this processor could be used. He went down to an pinball manufacturer in Florida and had a run in with some scary people there. Seems mom and dad may have had a point! They did not like me going to the arcades in town - just the association they had with those places made them fear for my well being.
So, by Christmas of 1978, it was the O2 or the Atari. I secretly wanted the Atari, but when I found out that there was a Computer Intro cartridge, I was sold. I knew from the time I was around 9 that I wanted to work with computers. That happened primarily because of two shows: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Trek. Like every other nerd at that time, I wanted to be part of that future, and computers really appealed to me. Only trouble was: In 1975, there were no 'real' home computers. So I read all the science fiction and electronics magazines I could get my hands on. Radio Shack was a hangout for me.
I agree with you about books/school being useless, but you can't blame them. There was no Internet. Back then, you'd go to the library and I'm certain that I read every book that mentioned computers and/or technology. I read computer history now and realize how much ground was moving beneath my feet. I had NO IDEA what was going on, really, and unless you were in the industry, how else would you know? Most magazines (spent a LOT of money on those!), were either very basic in nature or were like Byte or Dobbs - WAY over my head until I got older.
My life changed one day in 1978 when my local Radio Shack got in a TRS-80 microcomputer. THAT. WAS. IT! It was what I was looking for... Except about that price. There was simply no way my family could afford it. So, I was hopeful that the O2 would be the nearest best thing. It wasn't, really, other than the 'Intro' cart. It was not practical, but it did get me thinking about programming in general, and the manual was terrific, even introducing me to the idea behind Moore's Law. It was also a great way to waste time with my two younger brothers until I got my Atari 400 in 1981.
Now THAT machine had a lot going for it. I learned to program on it, eventually moving to an 800XL and from the built-in BASIC to Action!, a C-like programming language. I started transcoding stuff from other computer magazines or even Byte. I went to college with the intention of studying programming, but not long after I started, networking and finally the Internet exploded onto the scene, and I dropped out of school, got my certs, and entered the networking field. My job these days involves less networking, more work directly with Linux scripting, VMs, and remote server repair and diagnoses, which suits me fine.
My parent's never understood my obsession with the things, and it's funny, when my dad asked me about that, it was like: Er... Hey dad, remember the hours we watched Star Trek together? Remember all the sci-fi movies we saw? Remember all the books we shared? My dad's reply, "Oh, yeah..." 😁🤷♂
@@TyphinHoofbun The O2 "Basic Programming" is a case of «note the lack of majescule letters» ... it's using machine code programming. I had one. It was lost in an interstate move... along with a majority set of the games. It does NOT use BASIC.
@@Chordonblue You should write this story into a blog post: your comment is succinctly written, with clear language and proper punctuation. Otherwise, your story gets lost in the RUclips comment system.
@@mardus_ee I appreciate that, thank you! I love to write - especially about the early days of gaming and computing. WHERE to put it, is the problem. When I was a kid, I thought me and only 1 or 2 other friends were the ONLY ones who were interested in this stuff. I've since learned otherwise... 😏
I see a video like this and I just feel the need to comment. One thing I notice as I grow older is often the lack of context people have - especially about things 30-50 years ago. It's not enough to just say, 'well, it was a different time...' It WAS a different time, but unless you explain why that matters, people today just don't understand it.
I'm not immune. I did this when I was younger too. I thought the world of my parents and grandparents was somehow intentionally simplistic. Perhaps it was, but they wouldn't have known it then, any more than wondering today why something like the CompuMate might've been successful only 1 or 2 years before its eventual release...
And so, here I am again, commenting on why I'm commenting here. 😃
Great video! Yeah, the Spectravideo branding and packaging looked awesome (same with SV-318 and 328). Would be fun to see the data format of the Compumate as well as those additional programs. The BASIC on the SV-318/328 by Microsoft is really a step up (it's basically pre MSX-BASIC), even from CBM BASIC. I think you would have enjoyed that, Robin.
If you do a part 2, you could cover the really interesting ways the Spectravision CompuMate works with the 2600's profound technical limitations, which you didn't really go into in this video. I found it very interesting to see how the 12x9 text mode was achieved: The text mode uses both player sprites from player/missile graphics, and it uses the NUSIZ register hack that was more commonly used by games to display six-digit score counts, but then it also uses the fake scanlines hack known from the 2600's chess program to double six to twelve characters. You can see how in the COMPUMATE™ logo the C uses lines not used by the O. The colour limitations of the graphics mode exist because it used the playfield background, which was monochrome (but you got to choose the hues). The MUCH more interesting mystery is how the paint program managed for the 40x40 graphics mode to be all-points-addressable. After all, the playfield register for each line was only 20 bits plus a mirror or repeat bit, so how are they achieving 40 pixels instead of 20 pixels per line? Are they somehow rewriting the register on the fly each line? This may be a unique hack; I've not seen it in any other 2600 cartridge. Or maybe only half of the 40 pixels are playfield and the other half is player sprites+NUSIZ hacks? I need to know.
It's really one heck of an achievement to make even this very limited BASIC work with the 2600. To appreciate how much of an achievement that is, see David Crane's _The Internal Magic of the Atari 2600_ and _Racing the Beam._ That said, this wasn't the only BASIC for the 2600; there also was the (even more limited) _BASIC Programming_ cartridge for the VCS (see Wikipedia).
That really is interesting, it sounds like nearly a miracle they got any kind of BASIC running on that machine.
David Crane invented the 12-character kernel, which was used in Atari's BASIC Programming and Stellar Track cartridges. I've invented a 13-charater variation exploiting cycle-74 HMOVE and mid-line RESPx, but I don't think either trick was known in 1982. An interesting quirk of Crane's kernel is that the sprites only move back and forth by seven pixels, rather than eight, but the cycle-74 HMOVE trick makes it possible to move sprites left by 8 pixels on a scan line rather than seven.
The ability to show a 40-column playfield bitmap was demonstrated in the 1977 Surround cartridge. Rewriting the playfield registers twice per line is hardly unusual, though many games that do so only use the middle 32 pixels with the "reflected" playfield mode, and with one of the writes timed to hit on the cycle before the screen midpoint. Donkey Kong is a very nice example of a game that does that while managing a very busy screen. Other games that use a non-symmetric playfield include all of the Pac Man variants, the amazing homebrew Thrust +, Hangman, Street Racer, etc.
I'd perhaps be much more impressed with this BASIC had I not played with Warren Robinett's "Basic Programming" cartridge that came out a couple years earlier. That only had 4K of ROM and no expansion RAM, and was thus in many ways more limited than the SV Basic, but it could simultaneously have one window show the BASIC program with a cursor highlighting the current part being executed, a second window showing the contents of all used variables, and a third window showing the text screen output from print statements. It was necessary to use CLEAR statements a lot to limit the amount of text in the text window, since every byte displayed there would use up a byte of memory, but pulling off a Codeview-style display on a system with 128 bytes of RAM total, while leaving 64 bytes available for user programs, is mind boggling.
@@flatfingertuning727 Wow. Thank you for the info. Are you a member of the old guard, someone whose name is known? Only if you're comfortable sharing: Are you happy to say who you are?
I'm not a member of the old guard, but I have exchanged email with Warren Robinett who told me David Crane did the kernel used in Basic Programming, and worked with Rob Fullup to finish off and release a prototype cartridge of Actionauts. I've also met David Crane at a convention, and he told be the DPC Chip stands for David Patrick Crane (which is funny because I've always read other acronym expansions for it). I've done a couple games on the 2600 including Strat-O-Gems and Toyshop Trouble, as well as the menu code and music for Stella's Stocking.
@@flatfingertuning727 Very cool. So what did you think (or read that) DPC stood for?
It would be fun to see how loading & saving worked. Shame there's no poke & peek. That at least would allow you to bypass the awful basic.
Its pretty impressive what they managed, theres only 2 sprites which is why the text is limited and the music is better than any original game on the system apart form pitfall 2 but there are better homebrews out now. If they had of put that effort into making it for the nes or sms it would have been very useful and possibly better than the c64.
Those single byte token commands were for optimization of the limited 2k RAM, just like similarly on the VIC-20 when you could use abbreviated commands for the same reason of limited RAM.
All 8-bit BASICs tokenized commands into 1 or 2 bytes anyway.
@@eekee6034 No. Programs with the abbreviations were absolutely smaller than those that were not abbreviated.
@@CthulhuWaitsDreaming ... huh! Now I think the VIC-20 was just strange. :) I had Ataris which would turn any command, abbreviated or not, into a token of 1 or 2 bytes when you entered a line, and convert that byte back into the unabbreviated form when you listed it. BBC BASIC did the same if I remember right. I thought every 8-bit did that, but I guess not. Though on the other hand, you'll have to excuse me for continuing to doubt; it's normal for erroneous "facts" to be extremely pernicious in some circumstances, and this is exactly such circumstances. So I'm trying to find a reason why abbreviated commands might use less memory in the VIC-20. Do abbreviated commands have restrictions which the full-length commands don't?
the whole unit is fascinating aesthetically good thing as a mesmerizing computer toy.
this computhing made me anxious just by watching your pain 😬 I’m glad I didn’t have to make a video on it! I think you could buy a calculator for that price back then, much more useful 😂
Wow, a personal computer BASIC that makes the TI and Timex BASICs look good! That takes some doing. I wonder in the music thing if scale was actually intended at one point. Also, how much would have (say) another 2 K of RAM and 2K of ROM cost in 1983? I dare say there's a resource problem.
This video is a revelation! ☺
I'd often thought back in the day that the one essential thing missing from these consoles was a Keyboard! How wrong I was. No good having a keyboard if there's no decent way of making good use of it. They could have done so much better, I'm sure! Did they actually make any SV-318s?
I thought the same.
They did make the SV-318; it was a decent computer except for its poor chicklet keyboard. Built-in joystick though. They made an SV-328 too. It was the same internally but had a better keyboard.
Gates made Altair Basic say "OK" instead of "READY" to compress as much space as possible for the 4k rom
Thats why this is believed to be M$ basic
There are varieties of both Microsoft and non-MS BASICs that have both the OK and READY prompts, so that's not enough to trace the lineage, I believe. Various Tiny BASIC derivatives use "OK" and many Microsoft BASICs (such as Commodore) use READY.
The biggest surprise, to me, is that it did not utilize the difficulty switches or the game select switch on the Atari itself.
Dan Conner _be_ rockin the spectra....
This is one of the accessories I've been looking for (at a reasonable price) to add to my old consoles. I've got the Intellivision keyboard which from this demonstration is a better BASIC than the Atari's. Been looking for addons for retro consoles to make them have more micro computer functions.
The 2600 was intended to last only a couple of years. It was intentionally crippled on purpose. The actual proper continuation was the Atari 800/400. But 2600s just continued selling like pancakes, the rest is history. With several 2600 in the market someone saw a market opportunity to bring Basic to the kids i guess. In 1983 the Family Computer, (aka, Nintendo's NES) debuted in Japan with tape and keyboard, and of course a Basic cartridge. But i guess the Atari with its Stella chip (made originally for a 70ies gadget to show psychedelic patterns on a tv): had more colors, but nothing else its seriously crippled because it was meant to sell cheap, and sell cheap it did. I guess the Atari 800 was the opposite, over-engineered and built it like a tank lol. The 400 unfortunately had a membrane keyboard, and everyone knows how long those last, yet was not cheap like the Sinclair, because the rest of the unit was the same tank minus the second cartridge slot. I love how those were proper S-100 computers inside.
Wow! That music almost sounds good. I have this contraption and with my PAL 2600 all it outputs is earrape that has the occasional one note that is actually near where it's supposed to be.
How to compare? Take a Commodore 16, type in one of the music programs from the manual, but round every number to the next 100.
Or take a C64, type in one of the music programs. Drop the frequency LSB and round everything else to the next 10.
Imagine being a kid in 1982, visiting a friend that had just got a brand new C64, being blown away. Going home to mum and dad bugging them for a home computer. Mum or dad goes to shop and look at different options, sees this and thinks, "Oh, yea, this is perfect because we already have a VCS at home!".
This device seems more like a burden than anything else.
Also, can the cartridge port looking hole just be a place to put the actual cartridge when the device is not in use and attached to the VCS?
Yep. Still happy that despite thinking I wanted a console as a kid as all my friends had those, we got a VIC20 instead!
I’d say pull the ROM out of it and put it in a chip reader to see if you can find anything interesting in BASIC features that the manual doesn’t say or that were disabled but the code is still there.
Well, it's undeniable that the SV-318 is a far superior machine, both hardware as well as firmware-wise. So regarding that note in the manual, I'm not even mad.
What does the cartridge do if you try to output 4/3, or 4/3*9?
I think you should get a couple of keypad controllers and Warren Robinett's "BASIC Programming" cartridge. That is hamstrung by lack of any expansion RAM, and it's only a 4K cartridge, but what it manages within the RAM limitations is pretty darned amazing. That cartridge makes 64 bytes available for program, variables, and text output screen, and also has commands to produce sound and even plot two points on a "graphics" screen. It also features a "Codeview" style debugger which--if a program is short enough--can highlight the part of the program being executed in one window while showing variables in another window and a text screen in a third, all simultaneously. If Warren Robinett had been given the hardware found in e.g. a Defender II cartridge (8K of ROM and 128 bytes of RAM) I think he could have easily offered much more functionality than this SV toy. As it is, what he managed is simply amazing given that even just displaying 12 characters using David Crane's text-rendering code would require 24 (of 128) bytes of scratchpad RAM, and the font storage alone required 1280 (of 4096) bytes of ROM,
While the BASIC Programming cartridge is too weak to do anything useful or particularly fun (the most interesting thing I managed was writing a program to cycle through showing all the primes from 0 to 99, clearing the text window before showing each one to avoid overflowing it), I think it would be an interesting contrast to the Compumate which, while it had vastly superior hardware, was severely lacking in aspiration compared with Warren Robinett's cartridge.