

From: Geoff Oltmans <geoff@sprynet.com>


Well, I just read a good batch of messages from Ron, Will, and
Zonker regarding programming on the ADAM, and thought I would lend 
my own thoughts to this discussion.

As a self-proclaimed video game/home computer historian, I wish
to point out a few things which are great reasons why there is a 
lack of new software titles for the ADAM, and insight into my 
struggle with programming the ADAM, as well as the current state 
of personal computer software.

Firstly, I send out super-dittos to Zonker for the remarks regard-
ing lack of/poor documentation for the ADAM. This is CLASS 'A', #1
reason that there is a lack of software to begin with. In contrast
I'll compare the ADAM to the C-64...hands down the most popular 8
bit computer there was.

The Commodore 8 bit computers had an OVERWHELMING supply of GOOD
documentation for their computers! Why, just the other day I was
reading through the 1541 users guide, and in the back it describes
registers for the controller itself, detailed programming informa-
tion (low level information), as well as file organization. Commo-
dore even published a book containing the SCHEMATICS for the C-64 
for $20.00. Coleco didn't make any such information public.

The other reason that I think that there is a lack of software
available for the ADAM is that it never really had a lot of popu-
larity to begin with (duh). This due, I think mostly to unfair 
treatment of the press regarding the first few SmartWriter printers
that were defective (never did I see an article stating that Coleco 
fixed them all, just that Coleco made junk). I remember asking 
people who had bought home computers at the time why they didn't 
buy an ADAM. Mind you that everyone I talked to had HEARD of the 
ADAM, and EVERYONE with the exception of two ADAM owners remarked 
that the reason they didn't buy an ADAM was because they had heard 
about all kinds of problems with the printers by salespeople (who
presumably echoed and amplified the misconceptions of the press), 
or magazines. I think there's no doubt that Coleco got a raw deal 
with the ADAM.

But that's water underneath the bridge...

To expand on what Will said regarding, "It's the interface,
stupid"  concerning the current condition of the personal computer.
That certainly is an important issue, however, I think you missed 
the main problem.  Today, programmers in general are lazy. They 
are content to program in high level languages (Visual Basic, C, 
C++), and why shouldn't they? Why should they slave away to pro-
duce rock-solid code that doesn't crash (ten years ago, crashy 
programs weren't a serious problem like they are today)? Why 
bother optimizing our program in order to make it run faster
on older machines? I mean, for crying out loud, it's ridiculous
that you should need a PENTIUM class machine with 16 MB of RAM 
just to do WORD PROCESSING!!!!  Programmers today have too many 
resources available to them; to the extent that they've lost 
touch with reality. Today's programmer EXPECTS that if a program 
he (or she) writes on a Pentium II 266 that run PERFECTLY WELL on 
their machine, and doesn't run well on someone's 586-133 or Pen-
tium class 100 MHz machine, that the USER needs to upgrade!! 
Never before have I seen such hostility towards the user.

I build and sell PC's for a living. Yesterday I was asked by a
mother of a multimedia programming student for the following 
equipped system:
Pentium II 266 MHz MMX processor (I am still convinced MMX is a
pipe dream for the above reasons in the previous paragraph) ;
128MB RAM;  24X Recordable CD-ROM (I explained that no such 
thing exists yet);
4.0GB hard drive or better
32 bit Sound Blaster (again, no such thing exists)...

This kid was told by a counselor to get a machine like this! 
They get these machines that cost on average $3000-5000, when 
the average consumer can really only afford to spend $1000-2000.
Who cares about backward compatibility? Come on. They then learn 
from the likes of Bill Gates and company that Quarterly upgrades
to software is "okay", even if the user has to pay for said up-
grades...after all, that's how a lot of software companies make 
money today...they gouge the consumer with "upgrades" (what 
they mean to say is "bug fix")

The problem compounds when the user has to upgrade every 6 months
to a year (to keep up with current computing trends). It's an 
absolute travesty...A part of me wishes that computer prices 
would skyrocket, if anything to discourage the amount of hardware 
upgrade inflation that we are currently experiencing.

Next Spring, I'm jumping off the Windows95 bandwagon and I'm
going to start using BeOS instead (since it will be ported to x86
architecture then). This should help curb the hardware inflation 
I mentioned.

Now to answer Ron's question about why I don't program for the
ADAM...hey...I'm having a hard enough time just reorganizing my
disk collection and attempting to load a whole bunch of software
onto my hard disk that won't boot from the hard drive, or don't
have any support for the hard disk.

Plus I got a new toy, the MIB3 card...which also lacked documen-
tation when I got it. 

Talk later,

*Geoff!*


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