| Posted By
Stall Warning
on 2009-01-30
20:18:25
|  Blast from the P
Just spent the last 48 hours glued to this site playing games I havent seen in 20 years-thanks.
Why is there so much interest from Hungary on the Plus4?
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Posted By
Chicken
on 2009-01-30
22:09:28
 | Re: Blast from the P
Welcome 
Because it was the (semi-)official school computer in Hungary. I think I remember an article about 50000 units being purchased for that reason. I'm not Hungarian but from what I heard many of them had their first computer experience on a plus/4 or C 16.
To plus/4 users in "western" countries this was the best thing that ever happened to this system (even beating Udo Gertz' "Winter Events"  ). It caused a huge wave of software. Sure, lots of it was converted from C 64 but that doesn't make it worth less. And it did (finally) prove what the plus/4 is capable of (and many software houses were not).
There are only a few systems that suffered so much from prejudice as the 264er series did. You can still smell that on almost every "retro computer site". People are just as ignorant as they used to be in the 80s
With the plus/4 being somewhat popular in Hungary it was just a logical consequence, that Hungarians made up most of the demo scene (still true). And gave others lots of inspiration (still true, as well ).
It's not just limited to "one generation", though. Since users left for other systems, plus/4s were passed on to new owners. So you can find "old school" ppl, some of them of almost legendary fame, and later on, those who admired them became just as good. There have been times, when there wasn't much scene life and even if inet makes communication easier it hasn't helped to revive the scene all the time. Nevertheless, many of those who owned a plus/4 once came back. And some stayed always
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Posted By
Stall Warning
on 2009-01-31
07:13:13
| Re: Blast from the P
Yes, I wish we used the plus4 in school, I have a distant memory of some very old apple computers with green the only colour on screen in our school. I was only 5 years old when we got the Plus4 and I wasn't allowed near it. I remember on Saturday mornings I would get up at 6am, boot her up and play fire ant with the TV volume down as not to get caught. I also have a vague memory of a huge instruction manual with small exercise programs to write up? Is this right? Anyhow, a painful day arrived when the keyboard stopped working and I couldn't type LOAD- We got the keyboard fixed but the same thing happened again and that was the end. No more ACE, Big Mac, Treasure Island etc anymore, until, well, 3 days ago!
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Posted By
MMS
on 2009-02-01
15:49:52
 | Re: Blast from the P
Hi,
Well, I am Hungarian, some insider story... When the C16 and Plus/4 started, they were VERY expensive. Plus/4 costed in the shops ~42000HUF (hungarian forint). a VHS recorder unit was 25000HUF, and my parent's monthly salary was ~26000, together. In fact, both of them were team or groupleaders in office, so this salary was not at all bad at that time...
When the 264 series fallen in the mid 80s, THEN it became the de facto school PC here, as the companies could buy 3 Plus/4s from the price of a C64 (which was still rather expensive till Amiga 500 arrived).
Schools were really hungry in Hungary for a computer more powerful than the HT computer series. ( http://ht.homeserver.hu/ ). In fact it was a mixed one: had a rather good sound, but only B/W, low resolution graphics...
Videoton had also rather OK one (mainly based on Enterise, which became later rather ), but it was also expensive. (http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=39). BTW, I suppose a GEOS would be more powerful with that 512x240 resolution, than with 320x200 especially in DTP or GeoWrite...
After schools bought a lot of Plus/4, and the prices were already low, tons of Hungarians went to Vienna to but their cheap computer.
We all know, that despite of this low price it was a capable computer.
I already think a lot, what could be done better, without major uplift on the costs. I think there were some mistakes, or they could make it more capable still keeping costs low:
- 4 sound channels, 1 sawtooth, 1 noise, 1 square, 1 other. Without ADSR or filters, on the price of 1-1 register, it could make the sound moe diversified.
- 16 shades of grey, if Black could be also shades. Would able to make scanning in the quality of very first Amigas.
-C64 compatible joy ports, including paddle support. Well, I think they decided to use other sockets to do not confuse people have paddle. But this missing feature later became very annyoing, not able to link C= mouse to Plus/4. Not to mention, thtat it was the VERY first incompatibility potential customers noticed... We all had the adapters, but imagine those shops not so well prepared.
- Well, the useless 3 office programs. They were just crap. They could better use the money or the provided memory. I mean in double ROM they could have REALLY professional programs with nice GUI.
- Faster Basic. Well, I just try to put together some small routines now, and it is REALLY slow. Even direct POKE is slow when conbined with FOR or DO...WHILE routines... On Spektrum I could write simple games in Basic, as it was able to manage this speed. I do not know, if it was possible in C16 or not... I wrote only few tools for myself, made graphics and later small raster routines in assembly. But this speed was really shocking I heard it is because of continuous memory banking between ROM and RAM.
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Posted By
Jakec
on 2009-02-02
00:00:33
| Re: Blast from the P
Hey MMS!
1HUF = 1 ice cream... Hmmm. in 80s.
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Posted By
Crown
on 2009-02-04
11:46:46
| Re: Blast from the P
I remember the times when 1 ice cream was 50 filler, which incidentally was 0.5 HUF...
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Posted By
MMS
on 2009-02-07
14:45:24
| Re: Blast from the P
Good old times.
just for fun a weird calculation.
Well, nowadays 1 icecream costs ~150-200HUF, so our strong HUF became 200-400x weaker compared to the early 80s...
Imagine, what would be the cost of a Plus/4 today, if it would keep the value. At that time it was 42000HUF, now it would be 200x more, 8.4 million HUF. Actually it is the price of a small flat here, hahaha !
Certainly this calculation is not right, as the forint not became so weak in all areas (as it shows via the icecream, it seems icecream became TOO expensive, we shoulr protest), but also it could be that the flat's price did not increase in the same way.
But surely it would not be a big success today at that price
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