knudsen (12/17/82)
A friend just bought a C64, so we know for a fact that, in addition to its built-in RF modulator, this box has NTSC baseband video out at 75 ohms (that's with the color modulated onto the 3.58 MC subcarrier), but no R-G-B video output. Lots of color monitors take NTSC, to say nothing of slightly hacked TV sets. My friend says you eliminate a lot of color smearing by using the NTSC. He mentioned the terrible lack of official documentation at present, and is going to buy Commo's big BASIC manual for the C64. The graphics "sprites" seem to be very much like Atari's player/missiles. I predict that in 2 years, the hardware & software support for the C64 will approach that of the Apple today, and CP/M in another year. It's the coming machine. Plus its cost is offset by its cheap ($350) disk, and each disk drive has its own built-in 6502 controller! And I'm a Color Computer owner who really wanted to buy an Atari... Not ashamed to goodmouth the competition -- mike k