Among all the generations of computers of the past, the 8bit, 16bt, 32bit, and the present 64bit computers, the most charming category is, without doubts, is the 8bit computers. They were computers like the Commodore Vic 20, the Commodore 64, the ZX Spectrum, the Philips/Atari MSX, the Texas Instruments TI-99/4, the Apple II, and many others computers of the 1980 years.
Commodore 64 start screen
I will not talk here about these computers in detail, because you can find plenty information in internet.
But why among all the generations of computers, right the 8bit are the most charming one? It has nothing to do with nostalgia, it has a pure technical reasons.
The RAM memory of a computer is a grid of boxes, where the CPU stores all the data it is working on. Each box contains 1 single character (a letter, a number, or a symbol).
The 8bit computers accessed to the RAM memory using a 16bit long address, which allows to directly access to a maximal amount of 2 to the power of 16 = 65536 boxes (bytes) = 64KB!
The 16bit computers could access to an already huge amount of RAM, compared to the 8bits computers. They could access to several hundreds of KB, like 640 KB or more, meaning a grid of 800×800 rows and columns, or more.
The 32bit computers could access to an amount of 2 to the power of 32 = 4.294.967.296 boxes (bytes) = 4 GB of RAM memory, a grid made of 65536 x 65536 rows and columns.
The 64bit computers, our present PCs, can theoretically access to grid made of 2 to the power of 64 = 4.294.967.296 rows and columns = 18.4 million terabytes of RAM memory!
Of all these computers, the 8bit computers are the only that works at a “human” scale level. A more reachable, touchable, viewable in mind, scale.
You can take a paper sheet and with a yet reasonable effort you can draw a grid made of 256×256 rows and columns.
If the rows and columns are 1mm wide, the grid will measure only 25,6cm x 25,6cm! You can fit it in even a DIN A3 sheet.
If you use 1/10 of inches, the grid will measure 25,6 x 25,6 inches.
If you draw the rows and columns 5mm wide (ca. 0,2 inches) the grid would be 128cm x 128cm big (50,4 inches). You can hang it on the wall in your room and write by hand the characters inside of each box!
This grid of 256×256 characters, is the maximum that an 8bit computer avails of, to store and running the software, having direct and fast access to it. All the programs and games written for an 8bit computer have to fit into this grid. All what you get on the screen comes from a different combination of characters entered in this grid. 64KB are about 12 pages in DIN A4 format, filled with text with font size 10. A desktop icon on a modern PC is about 1 to 2 KB big!
Furthermore, on a 8bit computer you never had the entire RAM available for your software code, in reality, because a part of the RAM was occupied by routines and other software components that are necessary to let the computer work. In the most cases, a portion of the RAM was reserved as video memory.
ddaNowadays it looks incredible how the developers could create so many different games, with complex graphic (for that hardware), with so many rooms and almost never ending environments in platform games, like the game Caves of Venus (which actually were caves on the Moon, but that’s it) and many others.
Screenshots from Caves of Venus and Livingstone (Commodore 64 games)
Caves of Venus |
Caves of Venus |
Livingstone |
The CPUs of the 8bit computers worked about at 1 up to 4 MHz (0,001 to 0,004 GHz!) and had only 1 core.
When you have GHz of CPU clock, multi CPU cores, you have Megabytes, Gigabytes on RAM, Gigabytes on hard drives to store tons of code, junk data, not optimized bloated code, temporary files, third part software, etc, of course you can do anything, and endless games. There is no charm in it. It is all a matter of how much stuff you want put into it. I am simplifying extremely the concept, but I think you get the point.
The most of the 8bit computers had even less than 64KB of memory. Many had only 8KB or 16KB built in, expandable typically up to max. 32 KB or 48KB.
Due to the high costs of that time, the most of the 8bit computers had no additional banks of memory with they could switch to get avail of more than 64KB, or hard disks, to load and discharge additional parts of the software. Anyway it would be much slower than a direct to the main RAM.
A grid of 256×256 boxes is the only you can draw and display at a human scale. So, the 8 bit computers are the only computers you can display and read with your eyes the whole memory map of!
You could even display it on a big screen and view in real time all what moves and happens inside of the memory.
With a 16bit computer it is already no more feasible. Not to mention with a 32 bit computer. Nobody would draw a grid made of 65536 x 65536 rows and columns. And even if, you could not keep all the boxes readable under your eyes in one piece at the same time.
The small memory map is not the only reason why the 8bit computers are the most charming. Their hardware architecture is more simple too, it works also at more human scale.
There is no operative system (as we mean of today), there are no drivers. The software communicates directly with the hardware. If you want generate a sound note, you enter an instruction that sends a commend directly to the sound chip, it generates a note. If you want lit a pixel on the screen, you write an instruction that communicates directly with the video chip.
A good software developer could keep in mind all the instructions to use all the functions of the hardware of an 8bit computer. The instructions to generate graphic, sound, manage the configurable I/O hardware ports, etc.
The direct communication between software and hardware is also the reason why there were no compatibility among the software written for different 8bit computers. Even if the software was written for the same CPU type. The CPU could be the same, but all the rest of the hardware was different, and differently wired.
Among all the 8bit computers, the most successfully was the legendary Commodore 64. It has been the most sold PC model in the whole PC history. One of the reasons of its success was that it was equipped by default with 64KB of RAM, the maximum addressable memory for an 8bit computer, as explained. This meant that you could run any existing piece of software written for the C64, without the need of RAM expansions, which were very expensive at that time. So, every sold C64 could run every piece of software existing in the world, written for it! The hardware of the C64 was standard. I think it was the only case among the 8bit computers. I am not sure whether the C64 was actually the only 8bit computer equipped with 64KB built in as default, but among all its direct competitors, it was the only one. Except the Commodore 128, which was its successor.
The charm of the 8bit computers lays also in the limited graphic of their games, that let you imagine the environment around you (this is valid also for the graphic of the 16bit PCs and game consoles), whereas in the present games you are watching a movie. You have to imagine nothing around you. But this may be a matter of personal taste.
If you want know more about the 8bit computers, here some reference sites:
The 8-Bit Guy Youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@The8BitGuy
The 8-Bit Guy site:
https://www.the8bitguy.com
A big site about the Commodore 64:
https://www.c64.com
but there are also many others, just do a search.