[Coco] VHD 256 or 255 disks

[Nick Marentes]

GENE WROTE:

You Nick, want to standardize on the lowest common denominator and live
with those restrictions. I don't and I refuse to, but then I was never a
conformist. Not even at 17 years old standing behind the podium explaining
to a large room full of tv dealers, the technical details in the 1952
Zenith tv's that were head and shoulders better than anything else they
could sell. That, obviously was 61 years ago and the rest is now history.



NICK REPLIES:

Standards are very important because they setup a structure that others 
can base their creations on. Programming in any OS such as OS-9 actually 
forces you to conform to many rules, so you actually do conform very 
much under OS-9. There are certain areas which the OS gives you freedom 
and easing the programming requirements... such as the support for 
multiple I/O.

I too do like to go beyond the restrictions and I have found that, as 
far as games programming goes, the OS is a huge bottleneck that shields 
me from the hardware and the abilty to release it's full potential.

My new game currently features split screen hardware horizontal 
scrolling, 2 channel interrupt drive sound sample playback and 
(currently) runs it all in 1 video frame (30fps). That is impossible 
under OS-9 (unless you cheat by turning it off).

No, I like to expand beyond the norm but I do understand the importance 
of standards in an OS such as OS-9 to keep things from fragmenting and 
breaking the OS ecosystem and spreading confusion to those users just 
trying to get into the grips of it all.

Nick