[Coco] Japanese PC Game in CoCo Style?

Diego Barizo diegoba at adinet.com.uy
Mon Mar 3 19:14:59 EST 2008


I think that a  3.8 Mhz Z80 is no match for a 1.8 Mhz 6809, may not even 
be for a 0.9 Mhz
All my friends had Sinclair Spectrums (or clones), and when we managed 
to find some similar programs, the CoCo was usually faster.
Of course, it might have been because many other reasons beside CPU 
power, but....

Diego

>> Can we create a similar game on arguably worse hardware (I still say
>> YES)...?
>>
>>     
> Arguably?  I'll argue that point!  :)  According to old-computers.com
> the PC-6001 had 16-32K of RAM.  The CoCo easily meets or exceeds that
> capability.  I think one could make a case that the 6809 is a generally
> superior processor to the Z-80.  Comparing a 3.8 MHz Z-80 to a .89 MHz
> 6809E is apples and oranges of course, but I think the 6809 generally
> gets more done per clock cycle than the Z-80.  Still, that's a pretty
> big gap in clock rates, so the 6001 might have a slight edge in raw
> CPU.  I'll bet Sockmaster could give us a pretty good comparison, given
> his experience with the Donkey Kong translation.  But the 6809 may still
> make up some ground in sophistication that it loses in RPM.  We can MUL,
> doggone-it.  And a 64K CoCo might find opportunities to trade storage
> space for speed in ways that a 32K 6001 couldn't.
>
> For graphics, it looks like they are at a dead tie, unless the chip in
> the 6001 has a few enhancements that the stock 6847 doesn't.  So they
> can't boast better graphics.  It looks like the CoCo's only real
> deficiency in comparison to the PC-6001 is in its sound hardware.  But
> the sound chip in the 6001 is (I believe) a subset of the chip in the
> Radio Shack Speech and Sound Cartridge.  So if you are lucky enough to
> have one of those, the 6001 has basically nothing on the CoCo.  If the
> 6001 has better hardware than the CoCo, it's marginal -- maybe a little
> more raw CPU for some purposes, and better built-in sound, though a CoCo
> expansion betters it with an improved version of the sound chip, plus
> hardware speech synthesis to boot.
>
> So I'm with you, Andrew.  I don't think there's any reason the CoCo 1/2
> couldn't have that game.  The CoCo 3 of course could blow the 6001 out
> of the water, but that's not really a fair comparison.
>
> JCE
>   
>> -- Andrew L. Ayers
>>    Glendale, Arizona
>>
>> Andrew wrote:
>>     
>>> I sent an email to the owner of the linked webpage, the one with the
>>> download. He informed me in readable english that it was a windows
>>> executable, and that it was fun to play. He noted that he wasn't the
>>> author (and didn't know who was), and only had put it up on his page
>>> for others to download.
>>>
>>> Too bad - I wonder if you disassembled it, what you might find out?
>>>
>>> -- Andrew L. Ayers
>>>    Glendale, Arizona
>>>
>>>
>>>       
>>>> Message: 6
>>>> Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 19:05:33 -0500
>>>> From: "Joef6809" <joef6809 at gmail.com>
>>>> Subject: Re: [Coco] Japanese PC Game in CoCo Style?
>>>> To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
>>>> Message-ID: <006901c87bf9$22f62910$7001a8c0 at ncc1701>
>>>> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
>>>>     reply-type=response
>>>>
>>>> The download is a win32 executable using Directx8. definatly done
>>>> recently. (last 10 years) But yes this really does look like a coco2
>>>> game using pmode 3 graphics. Or at least a simulation of a system
>>>> using a 6847. The main play colors imply it Red/Green/Blue/Yellow
>>>> and when you die is swaps to the second 6847 color set.
>>>>         
>>>       
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>>     
>
>
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