Micro Computer comparison – Part 1

Recently I ran into the rantings of fan boys about the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. I wasn’t very satisfied with the arguments of either side, as they were both filled with bias and ignorance, just like pretty much any flaming on the internet. One C64 fan even claimed the 6502 was faster than the IBM PC (an 8088 @ 4.77Mhz). So I decided to do some reading of data sheets myself to get a more balanced and accurate view of the real potential of the machines. Just to clarify, whilst I own one of each kind of machine, I didn’t have either as a kid and thus don’t have childhood memories to bias my opinion one way of the other.

This is an incredibly long article so read on if you dare!