Howdy Tarragon,

 In a message of 03 Sep 94 Tarragon Moon wrote to Kevin Picone and Brett:

 BOC>>    2.  Any way I could store the games on the 'ol XT (or amiga) and
 BOC>> load them from the 64?  Sort of keeping the disk image files (ideally
 BOC>> compressed) on the hard drive and fooling the 64 into thinking the XT
 BOC>> was a 1541 or something.
 TM> Yes, Brett, there is such a thing. It is called "64NET".
Ask Russell
 TM> Alphey (on this conference) to tell you more.
 
 Yeah i remembered somebody talking about such a thing a couple of
 days later OPPS... 8^(

 KP>>  There are some kick ass little carts getting around, imagine coding
 KP>> the software within the cart..  what a nightmare that would be.
 TM> Not really. :)

 Yeah well, its a little less complex than freezing tasking systems with
 WRITE/READ only hardware. YUCK.

 KP>>  Yep they still develop games for it, (17-18 million 64's were sold)
 BOC>>    Wow!
 TM> I believe that figure is closer to 10-12 million.

 Peter ?? from CBM GERMANY (raves in COMP.SYS.AMIGA.PROGRAMMER) said that
 figure ??...

 oh well 6 million less door stops & book ends then .. 8^)

 >> why couldnt they have spent a bit of time upon the c64 when the amiga hit
 >> the streets !...
 TM> They did... well sort of. They were still producing C64's for about 6
 TM> years after the release of the Amiga. Though their software support
 TM> wasn't exactly great, even after '84.

 Yeah sure but thats not really what i meant.

 They really didnt put in the development time it needed to stay actively
 afloat for all these years... but i guess they simply thought it didnt
 warrant it. pity
 
 The C64 was a great learning tool, the games industry owes this machine
 more than any other, My real concern with the c64 fading out is that
 where do entry level programmers begin these days , 16/32 bit systems
 just aint as forgiving as the good old c64 was. 8^(

 >> maybe the infamous c65 would today be the most popular home computer ????
 >> who knows..
 TM> Doubtful. I do concur with Commodore's reasons for canning it, as
 TM> having that many different types of Amiga out, the C65 wouldn't have
 TM> got anywhere. As it was, canning the 65 still didn't save them.

 Well yep, im also of the same opinion i dont think it (c65) could have
 saved CBM. well not it they had of released it within the last couple
 of years. it might have made a diference like in 88-89 but they were
 boom amiga years .. so again as you say this is very unlikely.

 >>  Its a pity the C128 never really got a chance either.
 TM> Yes, but this was because software producers thought "why produce for
 TM> 128's, when you can sell to them AND normal 64 users, by producing
 TM> software for the 64?".

 hmmm its hard to say really, I had my original machine (c128) way back in
 85 (maybe late 84 now ?) at that time i WANTED and was VERY willing
 to produce C128 only software . But i couldnt get any hardware info what
 so ever, the only stuff we really hit upon was the $d030 toggleing
 the 2 meg mode in 64 mode .. wow impressive stuff hey ... 8^)

 Nobody really seemed to take it upon them selves to make the killer 128
 only game, CBM really seemed to push it as more of a business
 based system at the time (rather vague that??) (release of the AMIGA
 didnt help its case much either)

 Like all new hardware if deveoplers dont deliver upon it, well why
 should the public jump on it then. (catch 22)

 One thing i didnt like about the C128 was not being able to read the
 current vertical beam position.... from memory theres only a frame
 refresh bit ?? whatever .. it made doing rasters lots of fun at the
 time.

 its a shame it didnt really take off all the same. maybe they should
 have keep making 128's and stoped 64 production... (C= are to cheap
 for that but.. 8^)

 >>  KP>>  For there now exists a computer generation that will look upon
 >> this
 >>  KP>>  time as their woodstock - something truely special.
 TM> Ok, who's the poet? Woodstock? No, I think the computer generation is
 TM> something totally different.... :)

 heheh . You must be a lot younger than me .. 8^)

 For i can smell the eproms burning now.... far into that haze...
 As if it were only yesterday... 8^)
  
 Later M8.

 Kevin Picone,
 Underware Design

--- Spot 1.2c Unregistered