Posted By
MMS
on 2016-09-18
19:34:37
 |  Re: What would I do differently in the Plus/4
Actually you are right in a lot of points. But I did NOT say to drop IEC. Keep if for the masses,and provide IEEE-488 for the classes :-)
264 shaped in the management mind as a more serious platform just only after Mr.Traimler left Commodore.
1571 is a nice product, one of the most "sexy looking" floopies ever made, I have one and defintiely my first prio device to link to my Plussy or C64. (in fact, due to VDC RMA size, if I will ever buy a C128, it will be the second C128D release with integrated 1571 + 64K RAM VCD)
1571 burst mode is just the mode/speed originally planned on VIC-20, C64 and 1541, if no bug would have been existed in the original HW, something realted to bit-banging, or what. (hopefully my sentences are right...  )
Anyhow, despite 1571 is a nice product, it is still nowhere to the SFD-1001, even at similar speed (burst mode VS IEEE-488) the SFD has several times higher capacity. As it was released in 1984, it was sdevelopped paralelly to Plus/4.
So the C= team may work out the SFD1001 absed 1551, instead of the 1541 based 1551, if they already wanted a faster drive. I think SFD1001 was the right evolution pattern, not the 1551.
As SFD offered not only speed, but extra capacity too, no disc swapping during play and games on 4 discs.
And if someone has no need of high speeds (cost), can just select the IEC 1541/I or 1541/II
The 364 was a good idea, except the magic voice. I think magic voice and it's price killed the numeric keyboarded 364.
With 364's width, the extra IEEE-488 port would not hurt anyone.
C116 and C16 could have only the IEC (cheap platform, small space/old shape, no User port too).
So the current Plus/4 with 3+1 "feature" could have been skipped, and the other two should have 32KB RAM.
If you remember, with C64V3, Commodore packed the Berkeley GEOS1.2 on floppy free.
What if they would pack the Trimicro 3+1 on floppy in the same way? Probably for C= a floppy disc would be much cheaper, than a ROM, would be a nice (full) package instead of the semiseable 3+1 ROM (=less critical reviews, also 3+1 does not work with datasette) and generally speaking from almost the same HW price you get a semiprofessional interface with available devices. Or at least Commodre should have release an IEEE-488 on the expansion port as did for VIC-20.
I think Commodore already had a lot of experience and built in development cost with IEEE-488 and it's devices via PET series, too had they left that fast platform to die (up to 1MB/sec theoretical speed! )
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