Arcania - "User Friendly" Sony DRM

pibbur said:
I considered buying an IBM PC in 1983, for around $6000. That was without a hard disk drive, probably 128 K RAM and monochrome monitor. If I added a 10 Mb disk ($3000), 512K extra memory (another $3000) and a CGA adapter and monitor, it would probably cost around $15-20000.

I didn't buy it. I also avoided the bare-bones Apple Lisa at $15000. In stead I bought an 8bit Z80 based machine, 100K RAM and 2x200K diskette drives, which set me back $3000.
Click to expand...

Well, I was never much into PCs at that time, so I could be wrong.

I started with the ZX81, moving to ZX-Spectrum 48, then C64, then A500, then A1200, and then finally a PC back in ~1993.

I was always a passionate gamer, since my brother introduced me to the concept.

PC didn't become a good platform until the early 90s. I clearly remember Civilization and Wolfenstein being influencial in me making the switch. That was around 1991.

At that time, they'd dropped quite significantly in price - and I bought my first PC - a DX2-486 for around 3200$ or something like that.

So I figure - they couldn't have been THAT more expensive, seeing as how they must have been total crap XT machines or something.

Anything more than 10000$ sounds utterly ridiculous.

Still, I wouldn't be surprised :)
 
DArtagnan said:
…
Anything more than 10000$ sounds utterly ridiculous.

Still, I wouldn't be surprised :)
Click to expand...

You shouldn't be. There was a huuuuuge price drop during the eighties. So in the range of $20 000 in 1983 for an IBM PC with 640K RAM, 10 Mb hard disk and colour display, which was a monster, is fairly accurate.

The first 486 machine, an Apricot PC was advertized for $25-30000 in '89 (in Norway).
 
pibbur said:
You shouldn't be. There was a huuuuuge price drop during the eighties. So in the range of $20 000 in 1983 for an IBM PC with 640K RAM, 10 Mb hard disk and colour display, which was a monster, is fairly accurate.

The first 486 machine, an Apricot PC was advertized for $25-30000 in '89 (in Norway).
Click to expand...

The Amiga 1000 would completely annihilate that in 1985 though - except for the harddisk (which I know were ridiculously expensive then), and I think they started out for ~2000$ with 512KB ram and a color monitor. It even had a fully functional multitasking OS.

So, you can see my confusion ;)

Then again, IBM were hardly about fair prices even then, were they ;)
 
Yepp, all through the 80's IBM PC's were significantly more expensive than comparable PC clones.
 
pibbur said:
Yepp, all through the 80's IBM PC's were significantly more expensive than comparable PC clones.
Click to expand...

I bet they're still kicking themselves for allowing Gates to develop the mandatory OS, and keep the profits ;)
 
Alrik Fassbauer said:
Edit : By the way, I don't quite understand the fuzz around SecuRom. It's been around for ages, and almost every game I know nowadays uses SecuRom. I have the impression as if other DRMs are only of minor importance regarding their distribution (Tagés, StarForce).
Click to expand...

Depends on the SecuRom version and how it is used. See Wikipedia for examples.
 
Joined
Oct 13, 2007
Messages
7,313
DArtagnan said:
I bet they're still kicking themselves for allowing Gates to develop the mandatory OS, and keep the profits ;)
Click to expand...

Perhaps they kick themselves more for opening the architecture, so that anyone could maike clones, in stead of keeping a monoploy like Apple.

As for MS, they're possibly more angry with them for killing OS/2. Which IMHO was an excellent OS, I used it from 1.0 to 3.0.
 
I remember the price of an IBM "personal" computer being upwards of $20,000 in the mid-1970s. But by the early 80s prices had dropped well below$10,000. Every new PC I've purchased since 1982 has cost me between $2500 and $3500. Maybe that's just been in the U.S. though.

I perma-banned SecuROM a few years back when my PC bombed and then my CD writer bricked after installing something that carried the SecuROM virus -er- DRM. Because of this, I have missed out on some titles I would have like to have played, but I'm just so tired of DRM only penalizing the "law"-abiding consumer. I understand SecuROM's solution has improved a great deal, but it would probably take Ultima X to get me to install it again.
 
Joined
Apr 8, 2008
Messages
118
pibbur said:
As for MS, they're possibly more angry with them for killing OS/2. Which IMHO was an excellent OS, I used it from 1.0 to 3.0.
Click to expand...
Well there is still eComStation, which is based on OS/2 and thus OS/2 compatible and had a major release this year. Your old applications might still run ;)

As a software developer I loved OS/2 at the time, it was so much more mature compared to the sloppy way the Windows API was designed.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
Messages
11,223
I loved OS/2 as well, but had it installed only for a limited period of time, which was ended by a serious headcrash.

I found their installation procedure horrible, to put it mildly.

I'd LOVE to have the eComStation installed, but I just can't afford it.
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,964
Location
Old Europe
Myrthos said:
Well there is still eComStation, which is based on OS/2 and thus OS/2 compatible and had a major release this year. Your old applications might still run ;)

As a software developer I loved OS/2 at the time, it was so much more mature compared to the sloppy way the Windows API was designed.
Click to expand...

Yepp. A very clean and consistent API. My master thesis was an image analysis program written for OS/2.
 
Well, at the time, I was much more impressed with the AmigaOS - to be frank. It handled multitasking perfectly and had for years.

OS/2 was slow and very memory intensive. Definitely better than Windows, but that wasn't exactly a feat. Also, as a gamer - it was worthless, because there were no games, except GalCiv or similar crap. I suppose for the PC, it was the only Unix alternative at the time, but that's for banks or people who really needed the added stability in a development environment. Not me, certainly.

AmigaOS was tiny, stable, and way ahead of its time.

But since XP, I think Windows has solved most of the important issues. People bitch and moan about it, but in reality it's obvious that the dominant OS will suffer more vulnerabilities - as there are WAY more people working on breaking it down.

I've never had a single serious issue since XP, and only few since Win98SE.
 
DArtagnan said:
Also, as a gamer - it was worthless, because there were no games, except GalCiv or similar crap.
Click to expand...

Windows at the same time was absolutely worthless for gamers as well, don't you forget that.

Until MS "invented" Direktx - which was also a neat way to keep all of the OS/2 developers out.

Games became "bound" to MS Windows because of Direktx.

You can see Direktx like some kind of DRM : It binds effectively games using Drektx to MS Winows.

Direktx isn't portable. I'm sure it was explicitely meant / built to be so. MS wanted to effectively bind gamers to their platform like the One Ring binds the other Ringbearers (at least to some extend) to the One Ring.
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,964
Location
Old Europe
Dhruin said:
Developers didn't have to use it. They could have used OpenGL for starters, no?
Click to expand...

Well, DOS was considered the PC gaming platform at the time. Windows wasn't really meant for games.

The PC as a whole, wasn't considered a gaming computer… But it had certain advantages unique to that platform, like Soundblaster and a processor more suited for early Vector graphics. Amiga couldn't compete…

Windows was complete crap at the time, but it become decent as time went on.

I was comparing OS/2 to AmigaOS - which is why I wasn't too impressed.

I despised Windows back then, because I was stupid enough to be almost religious in my Amiga fanboyism ;)

Actually, I'm still kinda sad Commodore dropped the ball and came out too late with the Amiga 3000 and onwards.

The reason OS/2 failed, was because it simply didn't catch on - as Microsoft dominated the market completely.

Besides, it definitely wasn't a good gaming system - with crappy driver support and way too memory intensive.

People tend to overrate it, because it was NOT Microsoft and because it was multitasking. The same can be said for Unix fanatics, who hate Microsoft for being as greedy as all other companies - but in a dominant position.
 
Dhruin said:
Developers didn't have to use it. They could have used OpenGL for starters, no?
Click to expand...

Yes, but who uses Direktx ?

It's like with MS Windows - nobody is forced to use it.

But the majority uses it - and that 's what I call an indirect kind of quasi-monopolism.

The aim is there to have the majority being developed for MS Windows - and especially among younger gamers you are out if you aren't able to play the newest Direktx-based game.

Just look into my current signature to see what I mean with indirect.
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,964
Location
Old Europe
Then again despite the apparent magnificence of AmigaOS it was useless for business applications as in the early nineties we had only PC's to work with for office applications and VME based systems for the industry.
OS/2 was never intended as a gaming platform, neither was Windows NT. They were targetted as business OS platforms, not really a market where an Amiga was to be found.
I'm sure NeXT was a lot better than OS/2 or Windows as well, probably BeOS was too.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
Messages
11,223
Myrthos said:
Then again despite the apparent magnificence of AmigaOS it was useless for business applications as in the early nineties we had only PC's to work with for office applications and VME based systems for the industry.
Click to expand...

I disagree. AmigaOS was fully capable of handling business applications at the time. However, Amiga suffered from the same issue as Atari and Macintosh;
A) The hardware is barely customizeable/replaceable
B) They were produced and sold by one company who held most of the rights to the platform

PC was an open market and could thus adapt to the market by many unaffiliated companies producing both it's hardware and it's software according to demand.

Once the leadership in Amiga and Atari failed, the platform was toast. This could be compared with a too centralized state. Macintosh managed to survive because it's niche market (marketing exclusively to creative minds within design, music, artwork etc with a great almost religious advertisement campaign) while also allowing 3rd party hardware in time.
 
Joined
Oct 26, 2006
Messages
6,027
I didn't say it was useless as a business OS. It was useless because we only had PCs.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
Messages
11,223
Amiga suffered a lot for being perceived as a non-serious platform, and it didn't have a harddisk as a standard addition. Harddisks were obscenely expensive back then, so it didn't work well as a business support machine.

Also, most applications weren't released for it, until later - when it was already too late.

Nah, it was really no good for business.

Not because of technical limitations, but reality simply got in the way.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom