Looking to the other side...

Hi all,

RedPower pr5 came out some time ago, And this time it included the first version of RP Control, which contains a computer system similar to ComputerCraft. So, I just took a look at the new RP computers and tried to make a comparison to CC.

1) RedPower computers are definetely far more expansive. You need two diamond blocks and three additional diamonds to build them (including drawing plate and saw, which can be used again, but still this is the price). And this isn't even the final recipe. CC computers on the other hand can be nuild as soon as you get some redstone.
2) One notable bonus in RP is the existance of ribbon cables to connect peripherals to computers. Something really needed in CC.
That means you can place the CPU somewhere in your factory and have multiple monitors controlling it (in theory).
3) The disk drives are pretty much the same.
4) Most important thing: Programming.
In RP, you first have to insert a boot disk to get the computer running. The Computer is an emulation of an 6502 microcontroller; the default os is written in forth. Programming forth is very different from programming lua, its much closer to the hardware, but that also makes it difficult. You only have 8k memory by default, the firmware uses 6k of it. The programmer has to be aware of nasty things like operand stacks.

The CC inpterpreter is also a bit faster. In RP, one instruction is executed per update.

All in all, lua programming is much easier than this. And I am skilled in coding. Maybe custom OSes will bring some kind of help, but I don't see that yet.

That is my opinion at least, but I would like to know what you think about it.

1) I don't really care about this, since I play in csp :)/>/>
2) I really liked this feature, it would be nice to have it on CC, but I think it would be hard to implement.
3) Yes, they are the same, but I liked that you can right-click with the disk to insert (without a gui). I think this was suggested on the forum.
4) I haven't done much programming with RP computers, what I can say is: I don't like forth :)/>/>. You can expand the memory, but it takes more space and resources to do it.
When I have the time, I think I'll make a new os for RP computers, without forth if possible :)/>/>

Overall CC computers are easier, RP computers are more reallistic.

Edit: oh, also the title of the post remind me of a problem with frames and CC computers: they look to the other side ;)/>/>. When a frame moves a computer, it faces the same point before, like this:
C: computer, F: frame
before:
C->
F
computer is facing right, after frame moves:
<-C
F
computer faces left.

I just saw that I forgot a very important point:
5) RP Computers are state-persistant. The Memory, the registers and the program counter are all saved with the tile entity. That means that after world save and re-load, or even after chunk unload/load, the computer still continues to execute it's program!