9 ms·
My MEGA65 is finally here
- IronWolve 2y agoThats pretty cool, expensive but nice features and so expandable. Looks like a large community too.
- mass_and_energy 2y agoDidn't one-byte man do a good review on this product?
- unwind 2y agoYes, here is the MEGA65 video from The 8-Bit Guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qHdTKjPXww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qHdTKjPXww.
- MarkusWandel 2y agoSpeaking of whom, I'm surprised nobody has mentioned his Commander X16 project yet. Much in the same spirit, a "fantasy C64 successor", just not based on the C65. Looks like about the same market penetration too (on the order of 1K units to date).
- timbit42 2y agoMEGA65 is around 1,800.
- PaulHoule 2y agoMy favorite modern retrocomputer these days is https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/AgonLight2/open-source-hardware https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/AgonLight2/o... which is orders of magnitude more powerful than the computers it is modeled on but affordable.
- NikkiA 2y agoThe ez80 is nice, but it's not 'orders of magnitude' more powerful than a regular z80, especially clocked at 20Mhz (the CMOS Z80C was available up to 20MHz). (The ez80 is capable of 50MHz, I'm not entirely sure why they limited it to 20Mhz in the Agon Light).
- Lerc 2y agoA just had a quick look at the ez80 it and it seems like it's pipelined, so the instructions per clock will be a lot better than the z80. A 20MHz ez80 is probably one order of magnitude improvement than the oftentimes 4MHz z80. Wikipedia says three times faster at the same clock speed. So 20*3/4=15 give or take. As an aside, last time I did napkin math estimation on the 8-bit AVR it was faster than a 68000 at the same clock speed. The 68k took 4 clocks to do register to register, AVR is mostly one clock so could do most 32 bit operations as fast or faster using multiple instructions.
- PaulHoule 2y agoI love AVR8 assembly so much and how AVR8 is so much better than any of the 8-bit micros in so many ways except for the small RAM size (though it does make it up in ROM)
- Lerc 2y agoMe too, I made a silly fantasy console using it https://k8.fingswotidun.com/static/ide/?gist=78d170a65bc6c9ddaecefa4424915ac3 https://k8.fingswotidun.com/static/ide/?gist=78d170a65bc6c9d... In hindsight, it's not the best for emulation, I think most of the emulator time goes into extracting the bits from instructions. I really should make a translator that turns it instruction by instruction into something easier to decode.
- lastdong 2y agoGreat job! Anyone knows of similar projects but for the Amiga?
- icedchai 2y agoHave you seen the Vampire? https://www.apollo-computer.com/v4standalone.php https://www.apollo-computer.com/v4standalone.php
- Locutus_ 2y agoIt's just a bummer the community around it is super-cultish.
- codezero 2y agoIf you’re looking for something bare bones and DIY the Mister can run Amiga cores.
- jandrese 2y agoAccording to other sources on the internet that 12 pin header by the removable access cover connects to GPIO pins on the FPGA. https://shop.trenz-electronic.de/media/pdf/ca/ca/31/Mega65-Pressemitteilung.pdf https://shop.trenz-electronic.de/media/pdf/ca/ca/31/Mega65-P...
- jsheard 2y agoIt looks like the standard-ish PMOD expansion connector found on a lot of FPGA development boards. Maybe it's compatible with those.
- unwind 2y agoLinks for the lazy: PMOD at Digilent [1] and Wikipedia [2]. There are a lot of modules using it! [1]: https://digilent.com/reference/pmod/start https://digilent.com/reference/pmod/start [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pmod_Interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pmod_Interface
- stonethrowaway 2y agoA fully assembled computer? Get out of here with your fancy X2 safety caps and shock proof solder joints. Now where’d I leave those Galaksija resistors…
- bezkom 2y agoDoesn't that name risks to be confused with Atmel Mega CPUs used in Arduinos? https://www.microchip.com/en-us/product/atmega64 https://www.microchip.com/en-us/product/atmega64
- ziddoap 2y agoI don't think there is much risk of confusion between a microcontroller and an all-in-one retro computer. They also have different numbers (64/64A vs. 65) and the Mega65 isn't prefixed with an 'AT'.
- mcejp 2y agoI am mildly impressed that the floppy drive is not a supply chain liability nowadays.
- reaperducer 2y agoI've never understood why retro computer enthusiasts go through such effort to replace their floppy drives with CF cards, when Sony had a solution almost 25 years ago. My DSC-30 came with a metal floppy disk that has no moving parts. But you could insert a Memory Stick into it, and then stick it in any 3.5" floppy drive and read the stick as FAT. Every time I see someone on the VCF forums struggling with the latest floppy drive replacement board I wonder what ever happened to that technology.
- an-unknown 2y agoSimple: a real 3.5" floppy disk drive has moving parts and various things that age and eventually break. For example I have an old device with a broken floppy disk drive which can't even read a real floppy anymore. With the metal floppy "emulator disk" you mentioned, the FDD itself still has to be fully functional in order to read this "emulator disk". A floppy emulator board which reads SD/CF cards or USB sticks doesn't have that problem at all since it's purely solid state electronics and directly connected to the electronic interface of the FDD instead of the real FDD, and usually you can put thousands of floppy disk images onto such a memory card/stick and select which disk image is to be put into the emulated floppy disk drive ⇒ there is simply no need for the "emulator disk" technology you mentioned anymore.
- JPLeRouzic 2y ago> "metal floppy disk" That's an interesting combination of words!
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoThose floppy disk emulators require special drivers to prevent the drive head moving off the transducer. It isn't worth the hassle to get them working on non-PCs.
- 2y ago
- tines 2y agoI love this project. I've been feeling lately that as computers have become more advanced and software has become more inscrutable, our relationship with our computers has changed, for the worse. This essay hit home for me: https://explaining.software/archive/transparent-like-frosted-glass/ https://explaining.software/archive/transparent-like-frosted... These old-school computers viewed their users as creators, as developers. Modern computers (read: smartphones) _are_ the users, and the "used" are just ad-watching revenue cows. I passionately hate this arrangement. When I have children, I want them to know what computing should feel like---empowering, creative and stimulating, not controlled, consumptive, compulsive and mindless. I want to give them a computer that builds up their spirit, rather than grinding it down. I think this computer should have several qualities: 0. The computer should be about _creation_ and not consumption. 1. The computer should be _local_, not global. Intranet should be prioritized over Internet. 1.5 A corollary, the computer should be _personal_. It should encourage and reward in-person interaction, physical sharing of information and programs, and short-range connection between computers. 2. The computer should be _limited_. Because the medium is the message, we have to restrict the capabilities of our media to better promote the messages we value. 2.5. A corollary, the computer should be _text-oriented_. Graphics shouldn't be impossible, but text should be primary. The computer should cultivate a typographic mind, not a graphic mind (in Marshall McLuhan's terminology). 3. The computer should be _focused_. It should never distract you from what you want to work on. 4. The computer should be _reactive_, not proactive. It should never give you a notification. You should be in charge of retrieving all information yourself, like a library, not a call center. 5. The computer should be _physical_. It should be oriented around physical media. 6. The computer should be _modifiable_. It should encourage and reward inspection into its internals, and be easy to change. 7. The computer should be _simple_, understandable by a single person in its entirety with time and study. The Mega65 is amazing and checks these boxes, but unfortunately it's a tad expensive for me. What other machines are out there like this?
- GenericDev 2y agoI agree with you a million percent, so you're not alone in this. But we are very much the minority :( It feels like people aren't interested in being creators. Just consumers. And that shows in how media and companies refer to people as consumers. I wish there was a way to reverse this trend. It feels in many ways like a Plato's cave kind of situation.
- vunderba 2y agoI've been following this project pretty closely and even though it is based on the prototype Commodore 65, I kind of wish they had just gone with the superior aesthetics of the classic c64 for the outer shell even if that would have been less accurate. And the extra long spacebar, just ugh.
- snozolli 2y agoThat box design is giving me huge nostalgia waves. A program most nerds (including me) used to run on every computer we came across in department stores back in the 80’s. The salesmen must have been sick to death of kids doing this all day every day – some of the messages weren’t always so polite either! As a diehard Amiga fan, I would always stop at the Macs on display at office supply stores and switch the color setting from "thousands of colors" to grayscale. Just doing my part. In programming class at school, we'd be taught for a bit, then go to the computers to practice what we'd learned in BASIC. When class was over, we'd write programs to loop for maybe 15 minutes, then emit an obnoxious sound to interrupt the next class. Ideally, the chosen frequency would be high enough that the teacher couldn't hear it, but the class could. Truly madlads.
- gwd 2y agoOh man, Mac and their "thousands of colors" -- that lit up some neural patterns that have been dormant for a long time!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- MarkusWandel 2y agoYou have to have played with Commodore BASIC's PETSCII graphics abilities "back in the day" to really appreciate them. With no starting skill you could do animations, rudimentary video games and what have you, all in BASIC with just character graphics. The reason it worked so well was the cursor control characters. Just by printing a string, for example, you could draw an outline box with text in it, or a little man, or whatever, in an instant. The speed of BASIC was still an issue. I animated a train driving across the screen, about 10 characters high, and it worked fairly well but you could see a bit of a ripple. I don't remember how exactly, but, for example, each 1-character wide "slice" of the train could be a string, then you just print your 40 "slice" strings in a row and there's your train; pick your starting offset in a larger array to draw it in different phases of motion. A faster CPU totally solves this. Now you have a machine where non-programmers can do really cool graphic stuff and smoothly too, without ever leaving BASIC. The next step, generally, was about reprogramming the character set. Now your BASIC, character cell based graphics could have custom pixels, not just the preformed PETSCII characters. I once saw a cute little character based platform jumper game on someone's VIC20 and went home and implemented it, from scratch, on the C64 in an afternoon. In BASIC, with a few custom characters. But what may be missing in this retro scene is being able to show off your creations to everyone else who has the same computer. Without that, kids may not get interested.
- Cockbrand 2y agoIf you haven’t already, you should check out the amazing realtime* PETSCII art of Raquel Myers, e.g. https://youtube.com/watch?v=DCP-DbkbiLA https://youtube.com/watch?v=DCP-DbkbiLA More can be found on her website: https://www.raquelmeyers.com/ https://www.raquelmeyers.com/ *) Realtime meaning that she‘s typing in the images as you watch them come into existence
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- timbit42 2y agoThis reminds me of the Foenix series of computers by Stephany Allaire, the F256K2 which is much like what a Commodore 256/512 might have been like as a successor of the Commodore 128. They are available in 8, 16, 24 and 32-bit systems with a variety of CPUs such as the 65c02, 6809, 65816, 68000, or 68040. Main website: https://c256foenix.com/ https://c256foenix.com/ Wiki: https://wiki.c256foenix.com/index.php?title=Main_Page https://wiki.c256foenix.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
- squarefoot 2y agoRetrocomputing enthusiasts in search of a cheap platform to tinker on may find interesting the VGA32, also ESP32 based, which employs the FabGL library. https://www.lilygo.cc/products/fabgl-vga32 https://www.lilygo.cc/products/fabgl-vga32 http://www.fabglib.org/ http://www.fabglib.org/