The Commodore 64 has a Successor (and it's amazing!) | Nostalgia Nerd
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- čas přidán 14. 05. 2024
- Head to www.squarespace.com/nostalgia... to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code NOSTALGIANERD.... So, the Mega 65 is here. If we're counting the days since the Commodore 65 prototypes, it has been a long time coming, but this "Mega 65" is so much more than the Commodore 65 was intended to be. This is a complete machine, a whole machine, and although this is only the Mega 64 Dev Kit, it gives us a very firm taste of what the complete machine will hold. Let's dive in.
00:00 Intro
00:24 Background
02:34 Building
04:53 Connecting up
05:44 Powering on
06:34 Specifications
07:55 Ad
08:41 Functionality
12:23 Games & compatibility
16:06 Manual
16:37 Programming
17:45 Other functions
18:30 Bundled software
19:44 Credits
🔗Video Links🔗
More details at mega65.org/
Trenz Electronic listing shop.trenz-electronic.de/en/P...
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I got my C64 in December 1982. I was a senior in college. I eventually wrote my master's thesis on it!
In 2002? :-p
@theoldar Cool Story! How did you deal with the column size? I came from TRS-80 & Apple II which had 80 columns, couldn't imagine banging out a big paper on a C64. What word processor did you use?
I was in elementary school when we got our C64 (1983) and I used to do homework on it.
@@josephbseeley I started with Quick Brown Fox on cartridge, but I can't remember what I was using in 1985. I don't think it was QBF by then. I printed it on an Epson dot matrix in double strike mode. It took forever to do each page.
@@DenkyManner Meany! 😂
I missed out on the whole Commodore 64 computing era, but gosh dang I've always loved that blue screen. I always had an affinity for blue boot colors, I still remember the first time I booted OpenBSD 2.3 and saw the wonderful kernel boot output in blue.
I used to love the old Fedora 14 text-mode boot abstraction. It had multiple progression stages, one for each color in the Fedora branding (I think it went from the background color to the foreground text color). All in beautiful soft blues on the tty's standard black background.
Oh goodness, that keyboard looks gorgeous.
And as Chyrosran22 would say, "Those Cherry MX switches are as bad as wiping my arse against sandpaper"
@@dan3a Chrysosran22 does not appreciate how good he has it - he's still not tried a Spectrum or zx81 keyboard yet. I've got a couple of real C64's and the keyboards are utter mush. Give me cherry MX beige any time over the dreadful switches in a C64. My BBC has a better keyboard - but it's really suffered with age, alas.
Hopefully it’s not a dust magnet though! All that plastic.Still extremely early days.
@@DaveF. Yeah a modern mechanical keyboard is definitely the way to go,Nostalgia is not always matched with reality.
Got mine. The keyboard is gorgeous.
Double shot Cherry MX keycaps with all that PETSCII goodness? They could sell those separately to raise funds..
Depends if they are cherry profile and not OEM and fill in a lot of layouts then it has a good chance to sell a lot and raise funds.
Absolutely, id grab a set of those in a heartbeat
Did the C65 have Cherry Keys... The C64 didn't, only computers that did is the Acorn Electron/BBC B/Master and Atari 800XL, ATARI 65XE had a membrane so you can see when membranes in computers where started to be used, no other 8bit computers had them. they had a circuit board in them with key caps that were connected to a connector under them(I don't know what you call that part), a carbon connector so when you pressed on a key it would touch the circuit board and that key would appear on the screen, abit like how membranes work now, it was the beginning of them, it used a circuit board instead of a membrane and it was mapped the same.
One problem with Cherry keys is if one key stops working then you have to replace it and solder a new one in its place, I don't like them cause you have to unsolder them and it can mess up the circuit board, they are not easy to replace.
@@RETRONuts I'm not an expert, but I think the C65's keyboard would have probably had a similar mechanism to what you described. A "flex PCB" with the familiar carbon pads and the bottom of the key shorting the pads. Like the Amiga keyboards made by Mitsumi.
About the Cherrys: Nowadays there are also hot swap sockets available, which allow you to swap the switches without soldering. Keyboards using those tend to be expensive, though :)
What color keys would this most be closest to? I'll venture a guess at browns?
Even though I was fully invested in the Amiga ecosystem at the time, I would have eagerly bought a C65 if Commodore had brought it to market. Yes, I was, and still am a hopeless nerd.
Thing should have a line in/out cassette interface for masochist retro nerds.
I remember that, first LOAD then RUN.
@@smitdirkj: You have to type "run" with a lot of disk-based things in those machines too. It's not just a tape thing.
@@HelloKittyFanMan. I have a box of those blank cassettes, still factory sealed. I apparently didn't have the patience for, or desire to continue after the 3rd tape in the 1st box full.
@@Nipplator99999999999: I'm surprised that you didn't use those blanks back in the day to record music from the radio onto. I almost never used tapes for the computer either.
@@HelloKittyFanMan. I know; I was merely talking about the extra step of the computer and tape drive having to find each other first.
If you go onto Amazon you can get Plastic Epoxy, it will repair that crack to almost as good as new. It doesn't glue the plastic, it chemically melts both surfaces so they end up as one single piece again.
When I worked for a Plastics factory, we would use a paint stripper gun gently back a forward to hear Acrylics to bend them to fit together. It takes practice, so don't try on your case the first time you try it. Don't forget to wear heat resistant gloves.
Aren't there low viscosity liquids for hiding plastic cracks? I would think a clear liquid of slow enough viscosity would flow into the crack and wet the two faces together. Something like that stuff that car windshield repair companies use but for plastic
Very interesting. I love all these retro computers that are making themselves into reality. This, the ZX Next, The C64 Maxi, Commander X16... I love them all. Like Pokemon, I want to catch them all!
anyone else notice the Commando theme song playing on the mega maze game...
Yeah for a second I was dreaming of a commando fan made sequel of some sort
Yea well Rob Hubbard was the greatest at writing C64 music so why not use his classic work.
Yeah, I was like, "How did they get the license for that? Or by now, would they have even thought they'd need to bother?"
Yep, my favourite C64 game music, Rob Hubbard at his best. Theme music in the title screen of Mega Maze and high score screen music in the game. I loved this so much back in the day that I recorded it onto a cassette so I could listen to it whenever I liked! Oh, and Commando itself was a pretty good game as well XD
@@duckcurious3801 I always thought that the Commando high score theme sounded like early Smashing Pumpkins. I wonder if Billy Corgan owned a C64 in the early 80s.
Can't wait to see what the demo scene comes up with
The ESC-T Window stuff was part of the C-128, too. I don't know why everyone ignores that machine. :)
The C128 is getting a lot of love on my channel through all of December. Last week I did an unboxing of some great new stuff, this weekend I am virtually presenting C128 productivity software at World of Commodore in Canada, and after that an entire show dedicated to the C128D!
Even the 264 line had it. It used it all the time on the Plus/4.
I never did I did a ton of work on the 128 after yrs of specialized "helpful coding" for gamers on the 64,,, and well before that way back to the original pet
@@10MARC You have a 128 in canuckistan
i dont know anyone near me anymore that has such (GTA sorta)
@ The C128 only had two CPUs; the 8502 was backward-compatible with the 6510 (and 6502) and ran both C-128 and C-64 modes. Problems with the VDC development cycle meant that the 128's version of CP/M was written to go through the 8502 for some of its BIOS stuff, which effectively halved the speed of the Z-80, making CP/M pretty slow compared to how it ran on other micros. As long as you had a 1571 or 1581 it was usable, but only just.
Since it's the same CPU, the difference between C-128 and C-64 modes is all about the memory map; there's a copy of the C-64 ROMs, which C-64 mode puts in their C-64 locations, and swaps out the I/O chips that the C-64 didn't have like the VDC. I think the MMU still pokes through at $FF00, which can cause incompatibilities with some C-64 software.
I'm really looking forward to the consumer release version of this machine.
Hardware with limited abilities is just fun. It breeds a different type of creativity from software designers, and software ends up with distinct visuals and audio.
Have you tried Pico-8?
100% correct. In one sense what is shown here is what happens when you keep most of those original OS constraints in place but remove one crucial one (processing speed). So pixel resolution is still rudimentary, colours are still firmly limited etc, but otherwise the thing runs like a high performance PC made for today’s gamers. Pretty incredible, really.
I think that's why I have more fun with my C64 since I reactivated it than with my modern PCs in the years before. Plus the control over the machine down to bit-level in Assembler and even in the high-level languange (PEEK, POKE, SYS, bitwise logical operators in BASIC) is fascinating.
I am tempted... Learning to code again, coding some demos, maybe a game.
It will be like the 80's reloaded.
1982 2: The Bitcrunching Sequel
@@digistealth How about 2021 : A Cyberspace Odyssey
Finally a new product that actually seems like a lot of fun!
So, we've got the Mega 65 and the upcoming Commander X16.
with the x16 they got problems that could not be solved
@@Cino2424 Probably because the guy that dremels off PSU screws shouldn't be making a whole computer. In all seriousness, the partially religious views on some issues makes it really hard. If David had a less strong view on some aspects of the computer, they'd already have a development board selling in their shop, although one that would implement half the computer in an FPGA or at least some sort of programmable gate-array, which many production machines of the time did anyway, and also without a proper case, but at least at a $99 price point and people could actually buy something. Right now it's basically a software emulator project, and a pretty dead one, if the download numbers are any indication.
@@Cino2424 Interesting. Do you have a link or direction for me?
@@dieSpinnt www.commanderx16.com/forum/files/
I fully expect to see the M65 hit production. They've put a lot of time, effort, and careful consideration into making the product shine. I don't think the CX16 will ever be production viable. The guy in charge seems to shoo off every bit of good advice that comes his way for this extremely monotonic pitch of a computer.
That image you had to censor was one of the original test images back in the day. It's a bit confronting when you see it pop up in 64'er magazine
Man, these FPGA systems are becoming more and more impressive. This and Analouge's Pocket are really exciting to me.
I love the impact the c64 continues to have.
U talk shit. Today's computers are a million times more sophisticated! Retro = primitive.
@@bobbobson4069 Then what are you doing here? Go watch Linus or Jay. Shoo!
@@bobbobson4069 Today's computers don't have great graphical characters and a keyboard to make use of them, a command screen (instead of mere CLI) using a full blown programming language in freaking direct mode giving access to bare memory cells and chip registers, or a characteristic sounding, programmable synthesizer. You can't go down to the lowest level of a modern machine (without fetching mental illness) as you can on an 8-bit, which is a more interesting way to learn about basics of computing than just reading books.
@@NuntiusLegis exactly this. When I started my career people would always ask if I was worried about the people coming up behind me, because they are growing up with more sophisticated machines than I had. I always told them no, because they only know how to use the programs on the machines, they don't really know how it works, which us retro people understand intrinsically. This has proven to be true over the years as I continue, even to this day, to have conversations about how things work and why it works that way with the under 40 crowd coming up and it is a lot of stuff that never occurred to them. Stuff is so much easier to figure out when you understand the underlying hardware and its evolution.
8 bit guy has 2 new games for them
SRAM is not serial RAM. The S stands for static i.e. it doesn’t have to be refreshed.
I stopped right there to comment. You got here first :)
Serial ram does exist. When he compares fast ram with serial ram, I believe he's talking about the 8M of expansion memory, which is not yet documented on the Mega65 specs page. It's probably an i2c chip, though, which is a serial connection. But don't worry, it's a very fast serial connection. Not like the floppy drive "serial" you're used to if you're a C64 fan. It probably swaps banks of memory into the working ram. Many nvram chips also provide both parallel and serial access for applications like USB sticks.
Static ram was the first modern semiconductor memory type to be used in computers. But for its simplicity and speed, it wasn't practical due to the cost and complexity of the devices, so DRAM took over a few years later for commercial-scale memory, with SRAM used for caches and display memory where speed was crucial.
@@stickyfox I2C is by no means fast. It runs at 100 or 400kHz (I think there are “proprietary” expansions up to 1MHz). SPI would be better but still slower than SRAM which you can easily get with >50MHz (and that’s for a single access, no need to serially transmit dozens of bits for device addresses, memory address and data).
@@Mike-oz4cv No, it sure ain't DDR3, but the C64's disk interface clock is only 3.2kHz. It's probably 500-2000 times as fast as a 1541. That's why I called it "very fast." I tried to go to the Moulds website to check into this, but it's just huge animations and artful photographs, and there's no technical information (that I could find). A lot of links go back to the kickstarter and are now dead so I didn't have much luck. Their wiki hints at a someday upgrade of 8MB "expansion RAM." And like you pointed out, there are faster serial buses out there. PCIexpress is another example.
The Trenz page linked above has a tech specs section that actually says "8 MB serial RAM," not "SRAM." I just wanted to chime in that Nostalgia Nerd probably knows what SRAM is and said "serial" for a reason.
That is usually what SRAM stands for, but 8 MB of static RAM in the late 1980s? I don't think so! Not even 10 years after that.
Some days I miss my Commodore 64 and Amiga 1200, miss those of making and listening to Sid music:)
You can get emulators for both if you want them. However, I think you just miss the days, not the machines themselves. I remember seeing new developments in technology and being impressed and excited with it. Now I'm an electrical engineer, NOTHING impresses me in technology. There's not even anything left to invent I think.
You had my interest with this video...then you had me completely at "amgia core coming later"
It could do an A500 speed wise - but the catch is it'd be with 380kb RAM by default... as the 8MB serial RAM is... uhhh... tricky to say the least. I'm guessing someone might make a MIST board to slot in this machine which would be pretty ace. (This is really a C65 project and ideal for 8bit systems unless they get an upgraded FPGA in it.) That said - some miracle FPGA coding could feasibly prefetch from 8mb serial RAM almost fast enough to keep up with an A500. But it'd be jittering / clumping the CPU timing around a bit which introduces it's own fun I'd imagine!
It's amazing that Commodore actually made a sound business decision at one time.
Everyone makes mistakes...
@Rooflesoft Games I think it had something to do with Jack leaving the company.
So amazing to see this project finally come to life! Thanks for the video, I reeeeeally hope to get my hands on one when the regular production units are released. :D
Music from Kraftwerk is always a good idea. "Boing bumm tschack", I love it!
Commodore 64 to Mega65: "You are late, my son."
The protigal son returns...
@@hillaryclinton2415: "Protigal"? What? I don't think there's even such thing.
The delivery had to be hard on the mother.
Or the other way around, Mega65 to C64 _"Kept you waiting, huh"
Charly Brown No that's not true. That's impossible.
5:06 "Oh would ya look at that? Just look at it!"
- Ed Bassmaster
Near the end of the video, I had weird conflicting notions mixed together. One was "Are you going to be developing for this? If not, you need to get this into the hands of a developer!". Another one was "Just buying this provides support for the project, and making a CZcams video review about it gets the message out, neither of which should be denigrated!"
Whether you develop for this or not, I hope you maximize your enjoyment of this! And I hope this project prospers. While I don't expect to buy this myself (not even the commercialized version), I *really* appreciate nostalgia efforts!
It's like y'all forgot the commodore 128 existed. that was the successor.
It sure was. Better processor, video chip, keyboard and drive, more RAM and able to run CP/M software. It was leaps ahead. Most of the changes to the C65 were just pandering to the market.
I have a C128 since 1985 it was the Last 8 bit computer for Commodore the C65 was actually a hybrid a C64 and some Amiga 500 coding ( when in c65 mode ) in the Mix and had stereo sound .. the guys that created were also involved with Amiga the let down on the c128 was the 80 column video chip in C128 80 column mode ... the major fail was software companies did not want to bother with the c128 mode format seeing it the C128 had C64 Mode same thing Happen too the commodore Plus 4 as in Europe the commodore C16 was more popular and software companies created more software for the C16 as the Plus 4 can run C16 programs .. speaking of which the c128 has borrowed Plus 4 Commands ..
I remembered it, but CBM initially expected the C65 to be a successor to the C64. The C128 had compatability problems and several deficiencies that stopped it selling well.
Rather the opposite really - it was *too compatible. Having a fully c64 compliant mode meant that developers had little incentive to develop software for the C128 specifically when they knew that the 64 code would run just fine.
Still have my C128D, and it still works! It was my first computer.
The music heard when the computer starts is from the C64 version of Commando.
Thought I recognised it, thanks for sharing and stopping me from scratching my brain.
Straight into a Rob Hubbard Classic - nice.
This looks awesome. The thought that I'll be able to reproduce my 80's childhood where I had both the Speccy(Next) and the Commodore64(65) instead of bitching about which one's better and can just take them both on their own merits is exciting :)
This is good news. Hope this one delivers like the Next has. Also hoping more 80's micros like Acorn machines get this treatment.
We just sold my childhood home, since my father is moving. I had to get all my old stuff, including my C64 and two Amiga500 (with copious amount of tapes, 5.25" and 3.5" disks). Sadly, I had to let go of my trusted Seikosha 9-needle matrix printer (still working since 1987 with that old ink ribbon and tabulated paper with tractor border) and the old CRTs. I bet some of the media are corrupted by now, but ATM I have no time to back them up.
Ah, thinking of all the fun I had with those computers... slaying that pesky red dragon in front of Kylearan's Tower in Bard's Tale 1 took sooo long, but felt sooo good. Or flying under the Golden Gate bridge in F/A-18 Interceptor. Waiting ages for Movie Monster Game to load and only playing it for a few minutes before dying...still worth it. Doing the double-handed turn head-slicing move in Barbarian...over and over again, because it looked awesome. Listening to the soundtracks of Chris Huelsbeck instead of playing the game. Spending month playing Elite to finally getting that maxed out laser and shield to fight those Thargons...and then doing it all over again with the much nicer Amiga version.
Some day, I thought, I will show this to my kids...then I did and they were not impressed at all. ;-) And I have to agree. Compared to what I play now, this looks worse than an ingame-game. It's like playing soccer with a dead hedgehog barefoot compared to doing it FIFA style.
Had to check when I saw "Flinders Uni", and yes, it's the Aussie one!
It is indeed ;-) We had the proto at Syntax Demoparty 2019 and we also took it to SIGGRAPH oldskool graphics area to confuse a bunch of people.
@@CTRIX64 When I saw "Flinders Uni", I immediately assumed this has something to do with Paul Gardner-Stephen, who was doing crazy stuff on C-64 when I was there. Now I have to find out... Ah yes!
A lot of the C65's features, including the windowing support, also appears on the Commodore 128.
(12:59) Simulated disk drive sounds: that would have to be my favorite part. More flash drives need this.
Really? They drive me nuts.
@@10MARC: This is the first time I've head that opinion, and entirely new to me. What is your experience with disk drives? I would like to know, as you have a perspective I'm unfamiliar with.
@@Christopher-N I own about 10 real drives for my 8 bits and multiple for my Amiga's, too. I have never had any nostalgic feelings of listening to them boot, and when I hear the fake sounds coming from a small speaker from a device, or the sounds from VICE or WinUAE, it just seems silly to me.
@@10MARC: With older hardware, having audible disk sounds can provide a helpful warning of pending HDD drive failure, though this benefit wasn't intentional. Of course, SSD operate entirely differently, so it would be a nice option, to have a jumper or a software switch so the user could decide for themselves to turn on/off drive sounds.
From what it looked like, it was not the flash drive itself simulting the sound using a speaker or something but instead the unit triggering the physical floppy to do a seek here and there.
One of the creators of the MEGA65 was the lecturer of my Operating Systems class at Flinders University last year. We used an emulated version of it to program basic operating system features in 6502 assembly and C.
Paul Gardner Stephen?
I think he is the brain behind this project.
The main developer!
@@manni1998 That's the guy!
The C65 has always been a mystery to me and probably most others.
I'd be happy to see this thing getting finalized.
I got the Commodore 64 successor in 1985. It even had joystick ports, power cord, and switch on the right side!
With 2 processors! A z80 and an 8502, amirite?
@@AllenKll Yep! A pity though ... it could have been a whole lot more powerful if it weren't for the Amiga acquisition. Like, with a 4Mhz CPU it could have been like a cheaper faster Apple IIGS with 320x200 256 color mode (1 byte per pixel). And still backwards compatible with the C64.
@@IsaacKuo Would you seriously have given up the Amiga platform for the C128? No, neither would CBM.
@@another3997 Well, I honestly would have at the time. I had a ton of stuff on the C64 which I couldn't transfer to my Amiga at all. Still can't, actually. The historical C128 actually sold about as many units as all Amigas combined. If it had a 4Mhz 6502 type CPU, it would have been as powerful as an Amiga 500, but perhaps with chunky mode graphics more suitable for Wing Commander and Wolf3D. Sure it wouldn't have had the awesome Amiga OS ... probably more like the Atari ST. But that's not such a bad thing, really.
LOVE that they used the COMMANDO music. That has always been my favorite C64 SID song
Wow. That is a *GIGANTIC* slab of silicon making up that Xilinx chip. It's practically the area of a GPU!
A trip down memory lane, hearing the in-game theme tune from Commando and the high score theme from Monty On The Run. Both by the SID legend, Rocking Rob Hubbard...
👊🏽😉👊🏽
same here... especially that Commando track - it was only a couple notes in when I knew what it was... :D
16:48 I'm pretty sure that picture was part of the original C65 demo stuff from CBM. ;)
The washer fitting is a side-effect of the acrylic laser cutting process. The material is too thick for the laser, and you get the bottom of the medium wider than the top. They need to cut slower or use mutliple layers of thinner material, OR increase diameter of the inner cut.
Back in the day, I was exposed to my first "real" desktop computer. A Commodore PET owned by a friend. This was miles beyond what I was running which was an RCA COSMAC Elf using Nixie tubes for output and a hex pad for input with 4 bits of memory.
I sent an inquiry to Commodore about the PET and they sent me back documentation for their new VIC-20! They were introducing it at $300, but would offer early adopters a $250 price. I really wanted one, but didn't even have that much money to spare! What's crazy is that a year later, they came out with the C64! This was becoming a crowded home computer market! The TI-99, Atari 800XL, C64 and the RS CoCo! Being a Radio Shack oriented person, I went with the original silver case Color Computer. This thing served me well! But I still have a soft spot for the Commodore series because they were the first computer that led me to believe that I could afford a home computer for personal use!
Clear acrylic is always cool if done right. I'd be curious how it holds up over time. Old clear acrylic panels on gaming PCs from the 00s come to mind - scratch city lol
They tend to orange quicker than beige boxes that's my only concern, has to be temper glass really rather than plastic. I like plastic but seethrough your asking for a muddy orange case in ten years time.
It ... doesn't
Acrylic is a horrible material. Ugly from start to finish, and brittle as anything
13:00 Some glitching with Chase HQ too it seems?
15:00 Those smooth FPS on original games just look surreal, impressive
Chase HQ had a lot of glitching, but again, I think that's due to NTSC mode.
@@Nostalgianerd It is! You of course know that already, but for those who might read this and don't: Since the C64 was so popular in Europe most software was originally written with the PAL video standard in mind and glitches out when running in NTSC without adjustments to the code (which many cracking groups provided. ^^). So the opposite of the contemporary consoles where us poor PAL-people had to live with slow sound, squashed images and slower gameplay.
The Mega65 looks so cool. Can't wait to get one when the finished product will be released in the future! Thanks for the video!
I'd love to see sentinal in a decent frame rate
Rewatched this in spring of 2022 with the delivery of the Mega65 coming closer. Hopefully in May I'll get mine. Can't wait!
Thank you for sharing this video. What a fantastic project.
Love the sounds the disk drive makes whilst playing a game!
But horribly destructive of no longer made hardware. Definitely turn that off by default and only use the drive to access real floppy disks in the historic format.
You can weld the acrylic crack chemically with the appropriate solvent.
I love these types of projects, I hope they keep improving.
The keyboard, my god... this entire thing looks so damn good
I loved the little “hello cave dwellers” moment in the keyboard test utility. ^_^
Ripping the film off the plastic with the PCB in place is a potential ESD disaster
At this pricepoint, I would have expected a better quality case. ...well, thicker plastic at least.
The avatar tells me you really know ESD.
Yep. @3m00s, I was expecting to see puffs of smoke from the PCB, LOL (exaggeration alert). I'd take the plastic into the next room, peel off the film, and then rinse the plastic under water to make sure it was not carrying any surface charge. I do take ESD very seriously.
Nerds!!!!
I usually handle electronics while connected to a Van Der Graaf generator. If they don't survive, they aren't worthy.
I started building my kit today and noticed that I too, have a low number for some reason (203, one above yours). Excellent video, by the way! 👍
Gotta say, I'm jealous. I've been following the Mega65 for a while and I can't wait for the final product to be available. I actually love the idea of assembling the kit myself, but they probably won't ship it that way for the full release. Still, this thing is awesome, and that keyboard is sublime. I do wish it wasn't FPGA-based, but I'm not really surprised. In this case, it's not a deal-breaker for me, though it often would be.
Milllenium Nerd: Dafuq is this?
Old Skool Nerd: Move over, nerd.
(me) Owner of >85 ORYGINAL Commodores: It's blasphemy! You committed an act of utter barbarity!
Well done:)
@@drwho8052 I got 3 SX64s I'm trying to get rid of.. if you know anyone... :)
@@stickyfox Please do contact me on aaawaw27b@interia.pl I will show you what I am doing for the Commodore community and we will talk about them:)
The 8 bit show and tell guy should have a look at this.
"Smooth as the Devils arse". ..couldn't have put it better myself.
This system ticks pretty much all of the boxes and it'll be interesting to see where it goes. If they also make an amiga core for it, I'm completely in.
Thanks for posting man! Great stuff :)
Truly superb build, and an immense amount of tools. The see through case and 4 SID chips are pure perfecto. I'd love one of these :)
Ooh, would love a combination of c-64,Amiga and ST in one of those boxes.
You're making me want to dust off my Executive 64 with it's single floppy and 5" color CRT goodness.
Give it a recap first! It'll probably be ok with a days work on the caps, some reseating of the chips and a quick callibration of the floppy - maybe a cheeky degaus ;-)
13:00 Very nice feature. It's the little things that really adds value to a product, and for a couple oh hours of dev time, you get something that adds to the emulation experience.
"I had a friend who legitimately believed that Mario 65 would be made. He ate glue"
- Vinny Vinesauce
15:06 I really hope they will add an option for letterboxing so that it will looks correctly on widescreen monitors (which probably is what most people have).
Yeah, seems like something you'd want to address before adding fluff like floppy drive sounds. Someone is just cherry-picking the easy tasks from the list :)
The problem with the letter box here is in the monitor: The MEGA65 produces HDMI1.4a compliant signal, complete with 4:3 indication. But we have seen many monitors and TVs ignore this hint.
@@PaulGardnerStephen Ah that's good to hear. I'd rather the Mega65 be compliant, and we just use a decent monitor (or set it up properly) than have some software workaround adding black bars.
@@PaulGardnerStephen Then produce widescreen signal on HDMI with software letter boxing - any 4:3 screens are old enough to still have VGA connector and are too old to have HDMI of any kind.
@@UltimatePerfection that's not actually possible on an 8-bit machine, where there is no frame buffer to do these sorts of things: The MEGA65 races the beam, and that has to be cycle accurate for software to work properly. The easy solution is to go into your HDMI monitor and disable the "force 16:9" or similar option.
1:10 - wow, Commodore execs not shooting themselves in the foot for once.
they should have ditched the C128 for the C65. Seriously >_
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 no
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 They should have done (something like) the C65 way before the C128 and the Amiga - a 16-bit computer compatible with the C64 early enough could have killed even the IBM PCs (and clones). A compatible 16-bit-CPU by WDC had been available since 1983.
What a cool thing for MEGA to do. That's dedication to preservation.
Acrylic is really not suitable for electronics housing. Sure laser cutting it is easy but you truly want something like ABS which is flexible and firm without bring brittle.
Most modern recreations of vintage machines, especially ones that just run on FPGA don't interest me, but this one with its wedge form-factor and clear plastic actually looks pretty awesome! And it sounds like that keyboard is pretty amazing too, definitely looks the part with the special characters printed on the fronts of they keys. Hopefully they can work out the bugs and get the price down a little, because I'm very interested!
Is that an original Quickshot joystick? If so, it's a pretty amazing feat keeping it in one piece for this long.
I have that electric cafe demo on a 5 1/4 disk somewhere. A classic back in the day.
Cracking vid as always Mr Nerd sir. Good to see that they've documented the new features, something I feel was lacking with the 128K Spectrum.
Damn, I'm early. Well, more Commodore content is never a bad thing :D
My wallet:
My bank account:
All the systems I already have:
Me: *I need this in the worst way*
This is a product that makes me really hope that the final version will include the option to connect it to my normal PC to use as a keyboard.
Why? Well, with the ZX Next, it's mostly just the cool look, with this, well... That keyboard is probably a really solid keyboard and one I would happily use with my laptop as well as with any Mega 65 stuff I did.
It's going to be missing some pretty critical keys on a PC maybe?! I'm just imagining ... Windows key.... alt key... I suppose you have the Mega key that could remap to ALT and you'd get used to it eventually! Swapping keyboards would be interesting.
@@CTRIX64 Look, sometimes, form over function can actually be worth it, and the sheer style factor of using a classic style computer as a keyboard (at least case wise) is one of them.
Also, you could either provide schematics for or sell separately some kind of add-on box for the device specifically for adding the extra keys needed for using it properly with modern OSes, sorta like how when apple stopped supplying people with keyboards with numpads on them, they also started selling a Bluetooth numpad to people, except this actually adds functionality to the keyboard instead of restoring lost functionality. (IDK if Apple still sells it or if they realized that people who want a numpad will probably just buy a different keyboard)
As for all in one solution, maybe using the Mega key as the OS key would make the most sense, at least graphically. (In my head, for modding a C64 or something to use on a modern computer, the Windows Key has always been the Commodore key, and I'm guessing that the Mega key is mapped as the Commodore key on the Mega 65.)
@@DeisFortuna True! I guess it's no different to adapting to any keyboard (like going between laptop and desktop). It would be a pretty amazing keyboard for a desktop - especially if the floppy drive made it's loading sounds while the OS was doing updates :-P
Cool. Nice to see the classic machine can live on.
The original C65 ran at 3.5Mhz, not 40, that's just the MEGA65.
The option to run it at 3.5mhz is clearly mentioned in the video at 9:13, in fact you have several options.
For that amount of money you paid for it, and not supplying you with a good quality case... I'd be really pissed off.
@Mr Guru Wrong. tooling is already paid for. The DevKit case was only a 100 machine run.... for Devs.
This kit was intended to allow developers to work on real hardware, the acrylic case is really just there to stop it falling to pieces as this is not intended to be a finished product. In terms of prototype costing, this is really cheap. You only get cheap hardware once production gets into the tens of thousands of units, this was a run of 100.
When the production machines are available, you’d hope the Dev machine buyers would be offered a final production case to migrate their dev system into (assuming the PCB is the finalised layout).
This is actually not a bad price for a dev kit, they are usually expensive.
I want one!! Thanks for another great video!
Nice. When they come out it will be a nice addition to my collection.
I wish people loved the CPC as much as C64 a new Mini or CPC would be amazing.
Completely agree. I'd buy one.
@@wiggysmith7977 Me too. I used to have a CPC 6128 back then.
I'd buy one instantly, but only if they called it a CPC 46MORE.
@@Lenmaer I had a colour 464, then sold it after a year to buy a 664. Luckily the 6128 came out just as I was buying, otherwise I would have bought the 664. The Sugar Lemon. I feel sorry for those that did! A bit.
@@Nostalgianerd How about the CPC Sexy128?
8:13 “mission: Beat Octav1us high, score!” Bit concerning? 😄
Lovely pun, "Bit" concerning.
Congratulations on 400K subs. Peace!
Am I the only person who spotted a Sinclair QL on the desk below the lamp, fingers crossed for another video about this coming soon, I had one of these back in the day
Didn't you say you were going to show us the motherboard more? seem to have forgot that TT
Hooray,,, A new video from everyones favorite (well one of them anyway, there are so many these days) retro tech youtuber.. :)
The successor was in 1985 and was called the C128 ;)
I just received mine Friday and put it together. Don't feel bad. My top acrylic/plexi didn't survive shipping (several cracks). I also had issues with those washers.. Also, FYI, the latest firmware broke the floppy read/write but they are already in the process of fixing it.
That's wonderful news, thanks. Do we know its price already?
The final product? I honestly have no idea. But I *imagine* it will be around the £400 mark.
@@Nostalgianerd Ouch, that's expensive. Thanks.
@@Lenmaer You'd expect it to be that though. Custom keyboard, custom main board w/ FPGA, custom case (not shown here), manual assembly, small-ish production numbers. It's about the same build-time / parts cost as a cheapish laptop. Except likely to last you more than 2 years!
Hey Nerd. I thought something better than a Commodore 64.
Some reply: Lemme hear it.
Commodore 65.
(nerd joke)
Mayhap, ComMEGAdore 65?
haha spong bob joke go brrrrrrr
Finally a use for the RESTORE key😁
I had to program an operating system for this thing for a topic in university, was great fun
Would've loved this ~32 years ago.
Not going to lie, I'm a little sad. I wanted the boot cycle to look just like Sega's Genesis era boot with the "Segaaaaaa" line. Except it says Megaaaa!
Be the change you want
@@allahdoesnotexist3823 I don't exactly have the money to buy a dev-kit that aren't for sale anymore. That said, it's a great idea.
The expansion port is where you plug in your 300Baud MODEM! (That's where mine went on my C64)
And at the same time Jan Beta posts a video on how to assemble a Commodore 64.. Great day for a geek!
When a kit with a "C65 case" becomes avaible my money will disappear very quickly 😁
This will be the final MEGA65 it will have a C65 case (with adjustments for the new pcb)
It shall be our great honour to assist you in that disappearing trick as soon as we are ready with the final machines ;)
@@PaulGardnerStephen ✔👍😁
@@PaulGardnerStephen Ditch the failure that was the 64dx and just get a nice full Amiga core on it, you have twice the logic elements the misterFPGA has!
@@akkudakkupl it will be totally possible to have an Amiga core, and we have already started porting one. But our goal from the outset was to recreate the MEGA65, which we have pretty much done.
Hey Nostalgia Nerd, you have the same blue toolkit I do. I got my toolkit from amazon, you?
Very nice! Love the keyboard!!!
I've messed with the artix-7 before for a few classes at college. It's an awesome product just for prototyping chips but seeing it used like this is amazing.
Does this mean, you know VHDL ? aren't you interested joining ? we are looking for VHDL coders.