I tried to bring back that "magic" for my kids also, but then I came to the conclusion that that ship has sailed my friend. We were mesmerised by computers back in the 80s because they were new and magical. Kids today will never get that feeling that we had back in the 80s.
I agree. Sadly, times has changed and moved on. Heck, I think I "lost" the magic when Amiga and Atari failed to move into PowerPC and when BeOS, GEOS and OS/2 also died.
I wish I had this when I was little, my main computer was a bit too important (and not mine) to mess with like this. My first laptop ran Minecraft at less than 10fps, and I loved it, but it didn't give the suggestion to "play" with it...This would've been great to encourage me.
Congrats on the launch of your dream computer. A lot shown here is seriously impressive! Don’t worry I’m sure you’ll get plenty of support for Phase 1. Because as we all know PCB stands for Perfect Computer Buyers. Doesn’t it?
I'll be honest, as a niche product that caters to retro enthusiasts, I think this has a bright future. In much the same way that the market for vinyl and cassette continues to exist. It's pretty cool, I'd like to buy one. However, as a mass market education tool: no. I don't think it stands a chance. Parents of young children are in their 20s or early 30s; they probably don't actually know how to use it as they grew up with Windows or Macs. Moreover, the Raspberry Pi kind of fills that niche, assuming you can actually get one! Cheap, well-documented, the 400 is pretty close in form factor to something like a Spectrum, and if your kid bricks a Pi Zero, you're not going to lose any sleep. That's just my 2c. As I said, I think this is a cool project, and I would actually like to buy one.
Totally agree, Raspberry Pi already have the educational market using open software and delivers at 1/10 of the price. This has its place but at this price, it’s not going to be mainstream.
Totally agree. Better not to justify its existence with a use case like “avoid social media pressures”. A parent isn’t going to spend the money on this for a kid unless they are fully aware of the niche. A Pi or similar is a smarter move to learn programming skills for the future.
@@familiehermsen-ouwendijk3805 Then they must be supervised or that modern computer has to be content filtered. With a machine like the Commander X there is no need for supervision or filtering.
I agree it's a good toy for kids, but for kids from the 80s, not 2010s and younger. Just as fathers bought their sons model trains and played with them themselves, now grandparents will buy CommanderX16 for their grandchildren.
I very much doubt that. We live in a completely different world. Today's children are more interested in their I Phones, PS5, online gaming, Tiktok account etc... You go to most people's homes and the children are in their bedrooms, rather than sitting with their parents or grand parents. A young guy at work, doesn't understand my fascination with a Commodore 64 I brought from eBay. He's sees it as old tech that should be in a landfill. Kids are more advanced these days and have access to an array of entertainment, so their expectations and tastes are very high. When I grew up, my first tech was a cassette radio, and black and white portable TV. At the time, I was over the moon. The X16 is for us middle aged oldies to relive the past. I wish him all the very best, but I see it struggling in the educational market, BASIC isn't going to cut nowadays. There are far too many modern software platforms and resources you can access via a PC, phone or tablet that can teach you coding from beginner to advanced.
You're right about kids not wanting toys. That always drove me nuts too. I didn't want to play pretend computer; I wanted to learn. Kids don't want to be Wesley Crusher; they want to be Riker. Same deal.
@@jonathaningram8157I have to agree. It's much easier for kids to learn programming on a regular modern computer. Scratch seems to be great at capturing children's attention as it gives instant visual feedback and allows them to easily develop games. I simply do not believe that many of them would find developing some bouncing line program in BASIC very interesting. I am sure there are some who would enjoy it but for the vast majority it would be too abstract. Also, if they wanted to work closer to the hardware, a basic microcontroller could be a much cheaper alternative which would also allow them to build projects with a physical aspect (blinking LEDs, etc.)
I can't imagine many kids enjoying programming on a retro machine. With all the things modern machines can do- it would probably be hard to sell a kid on programming hangman in text mode. But I could be wrong
This is a very cool project and im sure they will sell well to hobbyists but this will have no traction in the education sector. Raspberry pies, microbits and commodity pc`s have that market sewn up. Every child has access to these cheap machines at home, the software is standardised and readily available and skills can be directly transferred to the workplace when the time comes. Schools get thousands of these things very cheaply and parts are off the shelf and available everywhere. there is no way the x16 can scale up to make it worthwhile to educators. Worrying about violent games and porn is pointless at this point as every kid has a smartphone and console or pc where accessing this stuff is trivial. Having said that, I wish the project well, any new hobbyist machine coming to market is a joyous occasion.
I've been a huge fan of the channel for years, and am super excited to see you get to build and market your dream computer. I hope it does well, but I don't know if a computer like this can succeed in education market today. The fundamental issue is software. Using a modern Mac/PC or even smartphone offers so much more, and with emulation, can even offer X16 Software. As for in-home I think the main thing holding it back right now is the lack of HDMI port. Non-retro consumers likely don't have VGA/Composite monitors anymore, and the inability to just plug it in may be an issue. I do hope you can overcome these challenges, because a device which has great software and that doesn't have the problems you mentioned with modern machines would be great!
You can get a Raspberry Pi for a fraction of the price, and a very small fraction at that. For a kid, a Raspberry with Python is a far more useful and far more interesting learning environment than any retro clone computer. In my opinion, all the talk about kids and education is a fool's errand, just parents wanting their kids to like the same kids they liked when they were their age, despite that making no sense.
A Raspberry Pi can emulate the BBC Micro, a computer that was designed for education and would eventually lead to to development of the ARM processor (for the BBC Micros successor).
The nano editor is nice, but I think it's a long shot to ask kids to write code without the benefits of a mouse for cursor placement, select and move, copy/paste/cut, and even more helpful things like linting and autofill/suggestions. I get that i'm talking to people who grew up without those things in the 80's, but when the alternative exists, and is obviously available to anyone with a modern computer, it just feels unlikely. I hope we get to see a more powerful IDE come to the x16 that can actually be "fun" to write in, rather than "less of a chore." But that's not to say the nano editor isn't a huge step up, it's really awesome and actually encouraging to someone like me. I just don't think it's enough to "cross the gap" that would encourage a 6-12 year old to write programs on it when they could be writing programs on a locked down linux box with an actual IDE or even notepad++ and python.
Also programs like MIT scratch bring kids up to speed very quickly in programming, with drag and drop commands, etc. I helped my son write an atari berzerk clone and also a mario type game with scratch and it only took a day or two. The problem is the commander(or any 8 bit computer) is going to be much harder to program, and won't be much better than something made with Scratch. I now have turned my son on to linux and C programming, with the SDL library, you can blow away any 8 bit computer, and it's just as easy to program, as long as you stay with classic C and stay away from the modern "fad" languages.
I don't know if you'll see this comment, but I just wanted to let you know how inspiring I find the commander x16 project. I'm not much of a retro computing enthusiast beyond consuming videos about it, but just seeing your dream and all the hard work and creative pivots you've had to make long the way-it's so incredible to see that level of dedication. I'm working on several projects with massively long timelines (years long) and watching this series has given me a lot of energy I need to keep working.
OMG! @badinkstudios! I'm a subscriber to your channel and love your videos! (especially the shorts) didn't expect to see a cool comic youtuber hanging out here in a retro computing channel
@@TheTitaniumBunker that’s awesome! I’m a big fan of retro tech channels in general. Stuff like this or Techmoan. I just enjoy deep dives into technology, engineering, product design, and audio visual mediums. Those kinds of content creators are good examples of how to break something down and tell a clear story while highlighting nuances. It helped me learn how to make better content that broke complex ideas down in a fun way!
The more this machine would do is to ping on a server and maybe write a tweet that you can't actually see, I don't expect any HTML5 red player running on it, but he already set the challenge, so who knows?
7:28 "The Commander X16 literally cannot do those things." I am now picturing the ears of every coder, coders who loves a challenge, becoming red hot. They may choose to create either code or hardware or both which will allow the Commander X16 to do all of those things. I am not saying that they ought to. But, the challenge flag, a flag which was indirectly raised by that aforementioned statement, has been raised. 😇
Basically, if old, Fortran-powered IBM mainframes from 1960's could run "Edith" program, Commandor X16 will do it without problems xD I can see situation, where computer downloads firstly the resolution of picture, then, part by part, downloads small segments of image at one time, downsizes them by creating the mean value of bunch of pixels and converts it into ASCII characters to be displayed on the screen XD
@@johndododoe1411Commodore Basic, in any of it's variations, was never as good as QBasic. They wanted compatability with old CBM v2, which was just a bare bones and particularly version of standard MS 8 bit Basic, and yet they've added their own, incompatible commands. Which begs the question... why bother with CBM BASIC in the first place?
@@another3997 All the MS 8 bit basics were customized per computer . Adding extension commands were standard with C=128 having the most CBM extensions and other computers having their own extensions . It seems the new extensions are above and beyond C=128, with as much backwards compatibility as they could get . QBASIC, while 16 bits, was the most evolved of the old style MS BASIC versions, succeeding IBM ROM BASIC and GWBASIC for those machines .
Congratulations to reaching this milestone! I will definitely keep a look out for availability later on! Right now I'm awaiting the Spectrum Next from their 2nd KS, and hope to start introducing my kid to how I grew up with tech! The Commander looks freakin awesome, and if it ends up as a full kit with something like that case and a keyboard I'll most certainly be interested to order from the EU, if possible, even with the added import costs! love it, looks so great - and I'm so happy initiatives like this both keeps poppin up and successfully completes!
Great news 8 bit guy and the others that made this come to life. Also stumbling on your youtube channel a few years ago, made me get into the Retro Market. I now have a working C64 and Amiga 500.
Don't get me wrong I love this project, but I think you might be a little optimistic about the prospects of ever evolving this into an educational tool. You went through the pain of learning basic as a kid because computers were new and exciting, but kids these days have ipads with retina screens and an effective endless stream of content on the internet. A pixelated terminal just doesn't impress anymore, (except for a few especially nerdy ones, but if we're honest a Raspberry Pi running a modern Linux kernel is probably a more fitting learning tool for the next generation of nerds-not to mention already a very popular one that will be hard to compete with).
I mean, kids can like pixelated stuff just fine, it's still a widely used artstyle on those retina display ipads. The Commander'as prospects are the *simplicity* of it, where getting into Linux and higher-level code would probably require having... someone to help, who already understands it. As someone who cut her programming teeth in Qbasic and 6502 assembly in year of our lord 2015, there *is* an appeal to simple as dirt systems, for those starting to understand computers without help. Maybe not a *marketable* appeal, but, an appeal.
Před 6 měsíci+12
Nowadays not even Raspberry PI is a good fit. Kids will soon tinker with IA stuff. 😊
Not to mention that BASIC's only modern usage is in the hobbyist realm. It's irrelevant in the professional world. Learning modern programming and scripting languages is going to serve them much better in life.
@@MustardMan7321Python is just basic without line numbers, CMV ... Doesn't matter if basic or scratch or TIS-100 or C or Go or Rust .. You learn how to program, and then you can learn whatever language... Unless you learn Lisp...
Excellent, Dave! My pre-order is already in, and I can't wait. My retro-computing to date has been exclusively on the Color Maximite 2, but I have a lot of other experience with other computers, many different languages including assembler languages, so I hope to get up the X16 learning curve pretty fast and produce some decent software.
Nice work, Dave, and to all those involved. This looks, quite impressive, tbh. Best wishes with it moving forward. I have a good feeling, this is going to be very, very well received.
Fascinating! I've been watching this since it all started. I learned on the C64 at 13 or so, but it's been soooo long ago, and I'm so busy I'm fully aware I don't have a realistic prospect of learning all this all over again. I sat down at an old C128 and I literally didn't even remember how to get the alternate characters etc. I love the computer. I love the work you've done. I wish I had the time and energy to invest into re-learning it. In my defense, I also write and create music on Linux home studio systems, do astrophotography and somehow work full-time at the same time as living with a wife who works full time, my step-son and his daughter AND my two granddaughters both under three. So...yeah. Amazing work though!
Have been following this since the beginning and looking forward to it. I have a 15-year-old son who is into retro computing. Had him watch your video, and he is super excited about the X16! Waiting for the cheaper version did not seem to make sense to me, seeing that in two years, he will be 17, and it may be too late for him at that point. Keep up the great work and thanks!
Fantastic! Here in Brazil we also used a version of BASIC in the form of an editor with paragraph names (without numbers). It was Turbo BASIC and QBASIC. They offered the option to compile as well. Congratulations to everyone on the new computer production team, Mr David and other 8-BIT GUY collaborators. Thank you very much!
That was so satisfying when the IO perfectly fit in the rear ports haha. Also I had no idea why this product was a thing, or who it was for, but when I grew up with a BBC Micro in our maths classroom, and was so obsessed with making it play silly noises and screen colours, I completely support this product. Awesome stuff tbh!
Congrats on finally releasing it! I am following the project since its start and honestly it and your review of projects alike made me pursue electronic engineering. I was in last year of middle school when I discovered you and now I am second year bachelor. Thank you!
I too have followed from the start . Some concerns and ideas: 1. Add a tokenized Basic token to store indent and another for label so BASLOAD becomes reversible and these things can be input in line number mode (I assume you already have the old RENUM command). 2. Maybe reach out to 3D Realms new owners, maybe they can do something . 3. Look at other educational programmable systems like microBit, Pi400 and Arduino for further ideas . 4. Beware that the network/modem card can bring in all the baddies in text mode, especially the ones that currently roam on X and in chatrooms . 5. Try to get peek, poke and other simpler operations closer to blitz and assembler speeds . 6. Add graphics commands to ease sideways scrolling like in Ti Parsec and Super Mario . Perhaps draw off screen to the side then execute "HSCROLL count" where count is positive or negative for different directions .
if you are concerned about basic's line number issue... smilebasic for the Nintendo DSi/3DS and Switch has labels that you can define, which means you can basically name any point in the code as a jump point for a very easily human-readable program, calculator BASIC is nearly identical in this fashion
At last! This is superb. Amazing work all around, really fantastic from the first day to launch day. I cannot congratulate and compliment you enough David and your team also. I shall be ordering one at the weekend!
Congratulations on the launch of your dream computer. I learnt to program on a ZX81, 1K of memory and then an Amstrad CPC 464 using the thick manuals that came with the computer.
I'm always impressed with the updates in the development of this project! I'd love to see some music software in the future! (Hopefully will a piano roll instead of a tracker style timeline.)
Congrats on the launch of computer. You driving with phenomenal attitude and energy. 2 thumbs UP! from a fellow hobbyist who grew up playing and engineering on 8-bit computers.
A neighbor sold me two raspberry pi 3’s For $15. Another neighbor sold me a MacBook Air for $60. The world is awash in hardware. And no one, young or old, has ever asked me if I could teach him to develop anything.
Yeah but it's those simplified computers/game consoles without any online account necessary!, without any wireless keyboard/game controllers! and without any dying lithion ion batteries!, those simplified devices which will still work in 40 years, others you will be knocked by any of those listed circumstances.
David is delutional and stuck in his own self importance. no kid in 2023 wants to program in basic. Sorry David.. once you sell to the 50+ year old nerds who still want to dabble, this project is over... to think he thinks there is a bigger educational market for dead programming language just exposes Davids hubris.
Three decades ago, I learned programming using QBasic in DOS! An editor with a run command and built-in help and api reference was all it took to teach me as a kid programming from scratch. It was amazingly fun. So kudos on building a proper code editor into the thing!
I'm really happy to see that your dream is coming true. Congratulations. I follow your channel since 2016. During the pandemics I stopped watching videos as i did in the past. Today I came back here and what a surprise!! Congratulations! Hugs from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. - Sincerely, Felipe Lima
Congratulations David on such a big milestone! I’ve been following since the beginning and preordered my X16 and accessories last week. So exciting!!! I’m grateful for all of the hard work you’ve done and can’t wait to set the physical system up when it arrives! This is one of those rare things I’ll be happy to lose sleep over. 😊
Hah! Looks like the website went down due to the sheer number of requests. I might not be able to get one in the first batch, but I've been waiting for this for YEARS. Excited to see that your dream has finally come to fruition!
Indeed, I just tried it and it doesn't work. I was busy when the video came out, I should have watched the video first. Well, the good news is that the newer units will get better.
Is it weird that I know for a fact that I will never program on the X16 but I get so excited when there is a video or update about it? The entire history from first video announcement to this one. I can't get enough 😅😅😅
Very interesting study of design choices, implementation realities, and the reactions of the fans. Hopefully some enthusiasts who are also parents will be willing to ante up for the gen 1 machines, because they want to see it be made available to a larger audience. I have been a fan and observer of the personal computer world since high school from '79 to '82. I do have a collection of old systems of my own I want to get up and going some day soon.
Congrats on distributing your newly built computer! I would so get this computer if I can add a cassette drive, since I got old school programs that are saved on tapes from C64, it’s hard to find a C64 computer online, not counting that C64 mini which is mostly a retro game console, and not a legacy computer for retro computer enthusiasts!
I suggest having a yellow light if the disk can be read, but not written to. If it cannot be read, then have the light turn red. And also, if the disk can be both read and written to, then have a green light to indicate that.
The biggest problems here for me is going to be the price (I was 100% sure this wasn't going to be 50$ and that's ok). Although the parts in the computer aren't expensive compared to the parts today, I bet that a big part of the price is due to your manufacturing capabilities at home. If all of the computers we use now were produced by two people in a shop, the price would be at least 10 fold the same way that yours is. Congrats btw it looks awesome! In short: If u want a better price and more profit, create a business or licence the product to a manufacturer.
Have you checked in with educators about the concept? It seems like kids would be better served learning modern languages like Python. Yesterday I did a Basic tutorial on and Apple II machine and asked myself if I would want my kid starting out with coding on that. Maybe they could for a very brief amount of time, but I feel like it would be better to have them get on to a more relevant language to have it be more useful in the long run.
I don't see the appeal in this product but i guess if your dream computer has snes ports in the back and not in the front where you would expect them to be then, sure, living the dream the way you want.
Good luck i hope they sell well. Out of my price range right now but i understand the costs. Once again good luck! Its looking absolutely awesome so far! And i genuinely hope it gets to the educational stage.
Such a sweet project! Congratulations on the release and really just want to say thank you for you all's vision and perseverance in getting it to where it is. Really incredible!
Your competition isn't V-Tech, its the various Raspberry Pi educational packages that offer much more for less than half the price. You absolutely know those exist.
I think when we were kids we started programming because we wanted to make our games, modeled after the games we played on the computers themselves. I think the Commander X16 would have many more chances to succeed in this respect if it had an easy way to export to mobile, so that kids would be motivated to create games for the platform where they and their friends actually play on! of course they wouldn't be the same as commercial games (nor were ours) but they'd have a way to show and play their creations with others (as we did). good luck in any case!
My first computer was a zx81 with 16k ram. I got it for Xmas along with a book that had the basic code for about 50 simple games. I had to painfully type in the code and then save it to my tape cassette. Very quickly I was modifying these games to make them more interesting and then onward to writing my own basic games. Next was the zx spectrum which had a great basic programming manual. I learnt practical applications for math and basic physics to create my own games. This all set me up for a lifelong career in the IT field. So glad I grew up in the 80s!
I love this! Hilariously, the first game I programmed, on an apple 2, was an "ultra violent game" 😂 my teacher was impressed, but wouldn't let me share it 😢.
The educational angle brings back memories. My path was a bit different but I can resonate with the idea. I got my first computer at the age of about 6. It was during the early Pentium era - but what I got was a 386SX with Hercules graphics. At first I was very disappointed with the amber monitor and not being able to play any contemporary games - but I ended up spending a ton of time learning to code in QBasic, then Turbo Pascal, writing batch scripts, advanced CONFIG.SYS techniques (DOS 6 boot menus, anyone?), examining every file of the MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 installs that were on there - all that before I was even a teen. My parents happily let me break things, so it had to be reformatted just days after I originally got it... but the next time I knew how to do it myself. So yeah, a computer that's obsolete but not a toy, can be a really good idea for a kid indeed. Although I'm still a bit worried that modern kids might be put off by just how far behind modern hardware the X16 is, especially in terms of graphics.
Still feel like this might end up with the same trajectory the Amiga went, but we'll see. I do heavily agree with the software call-out at the end. I've been thinking about making either a webzine, magazine, webshow or all of the above to just showcase software wherein one could send in their programs to showcase. I'd kinda go for a Nintendo Power vibe or something similar, but eh. I'm not sure if it'd be best to do a call-out to other developers out there who have done their own stuff on other platforms, I'd rather try to give the X16 its own identity with its own pantheon of devs as time goes on. Either way, I do give kudos for this coming along this far, and hope it does the best it can.
I tried to bring back that "magic" for my kids also, but then I came to the conclusion that that ship has sailed my friend. We were mesmerised by computers back in the 80s because they were new and magical. Kids today will never get that feeling that we had back in the 80s.
yeah it looked ok then and shit now.
@@andymouse doesn't look like "shit", it is just primitive.
I agree. Sadly, times has changed and moved on.
Heck, I think I "lost" the magic when Amiga and Atari failed to move into PowerPC and when BeOS, GEOS and OS/2 also died.
Same, my kids think old NES games are boring. 🤷
All Roblox and Minecraft now
I wish I had this when I was little, my main computer was a bit too important (and not mine) to mess with like this. My first laptop ran Minecraft at less than 10fps, and I loved it, but it didn't give the suggestion to "play" with it...This would've been great to encourage me.
Congrats on the launch of your dream computer. A lot shown here is seriously impressive! Don’t worry I’m sure you’ll get plenty of support for Phase 1. Because as we all know PCB stands for Perfect Computer Buyers. Doesn’t it?
Yes it does!
Well actually 🤓 it stands for Peri's baby is crying 😉
😂😂😂
5 screen Ghostbusters! Let's go😅
Nope! It means Prickly Corn Buns.
I'll be honest, as a niche product that caters to retro enthusiasts, I think this has a bright future. In much the same way that the market for vinyl and cassette continues to exist. It's pretty cool, I'd like to buy one. However, as a mass market education tool: no. I don't think it stands a chance. Parents of young children are in their 20s or early 30s; they probably don't actually know how to use it as they grew up with Windows or Macs. Moreover, the Raspberry Pi kind of fills that niche, assuming you can actually get one! Cheap, well-documented, the 400 is pretty close in form factor to something like a Spectrum, and if your kid bricks a Pi Zero, you're not going to lose any sleep. That's just my 2c. As I said, I think this is a cool project, and I would actually like to buy one.
Totally agree, Raspberry Pi already have the educational market using open software and delivers at 1/10 of the price. This has its place but at this price, it’s not going to be mainstream.
Totally agree. Better not to justify its existence with a use case like “avoid social media pressures”. A parent isn’t going to spend the money on this for a kid unless they are fully aware of the niche. A Pi or similar is a smarter move to learn programming skills for the future.
Back in the day, parents had no clue how to program/work with a Commodore 64.
@@BobischEBMbut then again, nowadays they do on current gen machines.
@@familiehermsen-ouwendijk3805 Then they must be supervised or that modern computer has to be content filtered. With a machine like the Commander X there is no need for supervision or filtering.
I agree it's a good toy for kids, but for kids from the 80s, not 2010s and younger. Just as fathers bought their sons model trains and played with them themselves, now grandparents will buy CommanderX16 for their grandchildren.
WRONG: They won't.
Exactly.
I very much doubt that. We live in a completely different world. Today's children are more interested in their I Phones, PS5, online gaming, Tiktok account etc... You go to most people's homes and the children are in their bedrooms, rather than sitting with their parents or grand parents. A young guy at work, doesn't understand my fascination with a Commodore 64 I brought from eBay. He's sees it as old tech that should be in a landfill. Kids are more advanced these days and have access to an array of entertainment, so their expectations and tastes are very high. When I grew up, my first tech was a cassette radio, and black and white portable TV. At the time, I was over the moon. The X16 is for us middle aged oldies to relive the past. I wish him all the very best, but I see it struggling in the educational market, BASIC isn't going to cut nowadays. There are far too many modern software platforms and resources you can access via a PC, phone or tablet that can teach you coding from beginner to advanced.
You're right about kids not wanting toys. That always drove me nuts too. I didn't want to play pretend computer; I wanted to learn. Kids don't want to be Wesley Crusher; they want to be Riker. Same deal.
Yeah but between kids back then and kids now, there is a huge difference. They may not want toy computer, but the X16 is way to austere I think.
I remember when I had a leapfrog laptop in my early toddler days
Kids will be way less excited than retro parents about this. Unless they live in the woods and have never seen a computer before.
@@jonathaningram8157I have to agree. It's much easier for kids to learn programming on a regular modern computer. Scratch seems to be great at capturing children's attention as it gives instant visual feedback and allows them to easily develop games. I simply do not believe that many of them would find developing some bouncing line program in BASIC very interesting. I am sure there are some who would enjoy it but for the vast majority it would be too abstract.
Also, if they wanted to work closer to the hardware, a basic microcontroller could be a much cheaper alternative which would also allow them to build projects with a physical aspect (blinking LEDs, etc.)
I can't imagine many kids enjoying programming on a retro machine. With all the things modern machines can do- it would probably be hard to sell a kid on programming hangman in text mode. But I could be wrong
This is a very cool project and im sure they will sell well to hobbyists but this will have no traction in the education sector. Raspberry pies, microbits and commodity pc`s have that market sewn up. Every child has access to these cheap machines at home, the software is standardised and readily available and skills can be directly transferred to the workplace when the time comes. Schools get thousands of these things very cheaply and parts are off the shelf and available everywhere. there is no way the x16 can scale up to make it worthwhile to educators.
Worrying about violent games and porn is pointless at this point as every kid has a smartphone and console or pc where accessing this stuff is trivial.
Having said that, I wish the project well, any new hobbyist machine coming to market is a joyous occasion.
sshh your ruining the dream
Super awesome! Congrats. Good luck! Always keeping an eye out on this project. We appreciate it so much
I've been a huge fan of the channel for years, and am super excited to see you get to build and market your dream computer. I hope it does well, but I don't know if a computer like this can succeed in education market today. The fundamental issue is software. Using a modern Mac/PC or even smartphone offers so much more, and with emulation, can even offer X16 Software. As for in-home I think the main thing holding it back right now is the lack of HDMI port. Non-retro consumers likely don't have VGA/Composite monitors anymore, and the inability to just plug it in may be an issue. I do hope you can overcome these challenges, because a device which has great software and that doesn't have the problems you mentioned with modern machines would be great!
You can get a Raspberry Pi for a fraction of the price, and a very small fraction at that. For a kid, a Raspberry with Python is a far more useful and far more interesting learning environment than any retro clone computer. In my opinion, all the talk about kids and education is a fool's errand, just parents wanting their kids to like the same kids they liked when they were their age, despite that making no sense.
@@darak2 Not sure why people keep mentioning the Pi - since pre-school my kids have been given school-issued iPad's or Chromebooks.
@@looneyburgmusic because it’s cheap (as in rrp like a pi 3 is about £33 and can do much more
A Raspberry Pi can emulate the BBC Micro, a computer that was designed for education and would eventually lead to to development of the ARM processor (for the BBC Micros successor).
@@MrDuncl yes
But schools want inexpensive complete systems - a role the Chromebook fits perfectly
The nano editor is nice, but I think it's a long shot to ask kids to write code without the benefits of a mouse for cursor placement, select and move, copy/paste/cut, and even more helpful things like linting and autofill/suggestions.
I get that i'm talking to people who grew up without those things in the 80's, but when the alternative exists, and is obviously available to anyone with a modern computer, it just feels unlikely. I hope we get to see a more powerful IDE come to the x16 that can actually be "fun" to write in, rather than "less of a chore."
But that's not to say the nano editor isn't a huge step up, it's really awesome and actually encouraging to someone like me. I just don't think it's enough to "cross the gap" that would encourage a 6-12 year old to write programs on it when they could be writing programs on a locked down linux box with an actual IDE or even notepad++ and python.
Agreed 😊
Also programs like MIT scratch bring kids up to speed very quickly in programming, with drag and drop commands, etc. I helped my son write an atari berzerk clone and also a mario type game with scratch and it only took a day or two. The problem is the commander(or any 8 bit computer) is going to be much harder to program, and won't be much better than something made with Scratch.
I now have turned my son on to linux and C programming, with the SDL library, you can blow away any 8 bit computer, and it's just as easy to program, as long as you stay with classic C and stay away from the modern "fad" languages.
I saw nano and thought, it needs vi/vim/neovim.
@@user-qd9pg8xt2k you read my mind, Sir… now some dude on the interwebs is coding Emacs for the X16 right as we speak :)
@@user-qd9pg8xt2kOr even something like Norton commander
I don't know if you'll see this comment, but I just wanted to let you know how inspiring I find the commander x16 project. I'm not much of a retro computing enthusiast beyond consuming videos about it, but just seeing your dream and all the hard work and creative pivots you've had to make long the way-it's so incredible to see that level of dedication. I'm working on several projects with massively long timelines (years long) and watching this series has given me a lot of energy I need to keep working.
OMG! @badinkstudios! I'm a subscriber to your channel and love your videos! (especially the shorts) didn't expect to see a cool comic youtuber hanging out here in a retro computing channel
@@TheTitaniumBunker that’s awesome! I’m a big fan of retro tech channels in general. Stuff like this or Techmoan. I just enjoy deep dives into technology, engineering, product design, and audio visual mediums. Those kinds of content creators are good examples of how to break something down and tell a clear story while highlighting nuances. It helped me learn how to make better content that broke complex ideas down in a fun way!
Congratulations! This is an amazing accomplishment for you and the team.
congratz releasing a computer must be a unreal feeling for you and your team.
Looks incredibly professional for a product made privately.
125th like
It's made in China and making crap look nice is what they do.
Too be fair, it looks like any design would look, when manufactured by a company which makes these kinds of boards.
ok! it would be incredibly when benchmark i9-14900K vs Commanderx16
I almost bought some of the existing FPGA clones of older computers but none of them grabbed me like the CX16. I'm hyped!
Him: kids can use this without parents worrying about the horrors of the internet
Me: *furiously writes web browser*
The more this machine would do is to ping on a server and maybe write a tweet that you can't actually see, I don't expect any HTML5 red player running on it, but he already set the challenge, so who knows?
@@MrLind87 👍
Could write an X16 version of something like Lynx perhaps?
@@SnakebitSTI I think you meant "bloated" rather than "advanced" 😉
@@another3997 no, it's definitely "advanced"
Yesss! I've been following this Odissey step by step, I'm so happy to see you finally did it!
This is such an amazing result. Been watching you for YEARS and to see this dream of yours come to market is just so bad ass!! Congratulations! ❤
Buying a Commander X16 to develop ultra violent video games, viruses, and the pressures of social media.
Congratulations to the whole team!
Looks amazing! Thank you for the demo. I hope it inspires some people to pickup and tinker with computers.
Seems like you're truly living your dream! It's cool watching your channel/business evolve over all these years.
7:28 "The Commander X16 literally cannot do those things."
I am now picturing the ears of every coder, coders who loves a challenge, becoming red hot. They may choose to create either code or hardware or both which will allow the Commander X16 to do all of those things. I am not saying that they ought to. But, the challenge flag, a flag which was indirectly raised by that aforementioned statement, has been raised. 😇
I mean, he literally demonstrated a WIP wifi card in this video...
I used to get porn on my coco 3 from local BBSs in my early teens. Don't judge me!
Let's not forget that hornography comes in the form of classic novels too.
@@gluttonousmaximus9048 Someone's gonna port Fifty Shades of Grey to the X16 💀
Basically, if old, Fortran-powered IBM mainframes from 1960's could run "Edith" program, Commandor X16 will do it without problems xD I can see situation, where computer downloads firstly the resolution of picture, then, part by part, downloads small segments of image at one time, downsizes them by creating the mean value of bunch of pixels and converts it into ASCII characters to be displayed on the screen XD
Haven’t seen the BASLOAD combined with x16edit in action before this. This is a game changer for basic programming.
Reminds me of QBASIC from 30 years ago .
Or the open-source FreeBASIC that is still going, up-to-date, and very fast.
lol is basic programming still an active scene in 2023
@@johndododoe1411Commodore Basic, in any of it's variations, was never as good as QBasic. They wanted compatability with old CBM v2, which was just a bare bones and particularly version of standard MS 8 bit Basic, and yet they've added their own, incompatible commands. Which begs the question... why bother with CBM BASIC in the first place?
@@another3997 All the MS 8 bit basics were customized per computer . Adding extension commands were standard with C=128 having the most CBM extensions and other computers having their own extensions . It seems the new extensions are above and beyond C=128, with as much backwards compatibility as they could get . QBASIC, while 16 bits, was the most evolved of the old style MS BASIC versions, succeeding IBM ROM BASIC and GWBASIC for those machines .
Congratulations on getting the X16 to market. Incredible. I hope I'll be able to buy one soon. Wishing you all the best.
Congratulations to reaching this milestone! I will definitely keep a look out for availability later on! Right now I'm awaiting the Spectrum Next from their 2nd KS, and hope to start introducing my kid to how I grew up with tech! The Commander looks freakin awesome, and if it ends up as a full kit with something like that case and a keyboard I'll most certainly be interested to order from the EU, if possible, even with the added import costs! love it, looks so great - and I'm so happy initiatives like this both keeps poppin up and successfully completes!
Congratulations David! The computer looks great!
What a ride!
Congrats to all people who worked in the project. You have my sincere respect!
Great news 8 bit guy and the others that made this come to life. Also stumbling on your youtube channel a few years ago, made me get into the Retro Market. I now have a working C64 and Amiga 500.
Looks like a great product with lots of great improvements on the way! Can't wait to get my hands on one.
Don't get me wrong I love this project, but I think you might be a little optimistic about the prospects of ever evolving this into an educational tool. You went through the pain of learning basic as a kid because computers were new and exciting, but kids these days have ipads with retina screens and an effective endless stream of content on the internet. A pixelated terminal just doesn't impress anymore, (except for a few especially nerdy ones, but if we're honest a Raspberry Pi running a modern Linux kernel is probably a more fitting learning tool for the next generation of nerds-not to mention already a very popular one that will be hard to compete with).
I mean, kids can like pixelated stuff just fine, it's still a widely used artstyle on those retina display ipads. The Commander'as prospects are the *simplicity* of it, where getting into Linux and higher-level code would probably require having... someone to help, who already understands it. As someone who cut her programming teeth in Qbasic and 6502 assembly in year of our lord 2015, there *is* an appeal to simple as dirt systems, for those starting to understand computers without help.
Maybe not a *marketable* appeal, but, an appeal.
Nowadays not even Raspberry PI is a good fit. Kids will soon tinker with IA stuff. 😊
Not to mention that BASIC's only modern usage is in the hobbyist realm. It's irrelevant in the professional world. Learning modern programming and scripting languages is going to serve them much better in life.
@@MustardMan7321Python is just basic without line numbers, CMV ...
Doesn't matter if basic or scratch or TIS-100 or C or Go or Rust .. You learn how to program, and then you can learn whatever language...
Unless you learn Lisp...
what about minecraft , how do you explain that
Excellent, Dave! My pre-order is already in, and I can't wait. My retro-computing to date has been exclusively on the Color Maximite 2, but I have a lot of other experience with other computers, many different languages including assembler languages, so I hope to get up the X16 learning curve pretty fast and produce some decent software.
Nice work, Dave, and to all those involved. This looks, quite impressive, tbh.
Best wishes with it moving forward. I have a good feeling, this is going to be very, very well received.
Fascinating!
I've been watching this since it all started.
I learned on the C64 at 13 or so, but it's been soooo long ago, and I'm so busy I'm fully aware I don't have a realistic prospect of learning all this all over again. I sat down at an old C128 and I literally didn't even remember how to get the alternate characters etc.
I love the computer. I love the work you've done. I wish I had the time and energy to invest into re-learning it.
In my defense, I also write and create music on Linux home studio systems, do astrophotography and somehow work full-time at the same time as living with a wife who works full time, my step-son and his daughter AND my two granddaughters both under three.
So...yeah.
Amazing work though!
Congratulations. This has been a labor of love and each posting of your progress has been great.
Have been following this since the beginning and looking forward to it. I have a 15-year-old son who is into retro computing. Had him watch your video, and he is super excited about the X16! Waiting for the cheaper version did not seem to make sense to me, seeing that in two years, he will be 17, and it may be too late for him at that point. Keep up the great work and thanks!
Smart kid to be interested in retro computing!
@@jackilynpyzocha662Smart parent to make smart kid.
Congrats, gang! I'm happy to have been able to help with this project, even if it was only financially through the donation drive.
Fantastic!
Here in Brazil we also used a version of BASIC in the form of an editor with paragraph names (without numbers). It was Turbo BASIC and QBASIC. They offered the option to compile as well.
Congratulations to everyone on the new computer production team, Mr David and other 8-BIT GUY collaborators. Thank you very much!
Great news. Well done on getting it into production.
That was so satisfying when the IO perfectly fit in the rear ports haha.
Also I had no idea why this product was a thing, or who it was for, but when I grew up with a BBC Micro in our maths classroom, and was so obsessed with making it play silly noises and screen colours, I completely support this product. Awesome stuff tbh!
Nice work, its good to see a retro project take off like this.
Glad to see the continued success of your retro PC. I know your heart really has been in this for decades.
Congrats on finally releasing it! I am following the project since its start and honestly it and your review of projects alike made me pursue electronic engineering. I was in last year of middle school when I discovered you and now I am second year bachelor. Thank you!
I too have followed from the start .
Some concerns and ideas:
1. Add a tokenized Basic token to store indent and another for label so BASLOAD becomes reversible and these things can be input in line number mode (I assume you already have the old RENUM command).
2. Maybe reach out to 3D Realms new owners, maybe they can do something .
3. Look at other educational programmable systems like microBit, Pi400 and Arduino for further ideas .
4. Beware that the network/modem card can bring in all the baddies in text mode, especially the ones that currently roam on X and in chatrooms .
5. Try to get peek, poke and other simpler operations closer to blitz and assembler speeds .
6. Add graphics commands to ease sideways scrolling like in Ti Parsec and Super Mario . Perhaps draw off screen to the side then execute "HSCROLL count" where count is positive or negative for different directions .
Nice to hear!!
Well done! I can almost FEEL someone out there planning a lemmings port.
The Commodore platform is EXCELLENT as an intro to computing for kids/starters. Kudos on your vision and perserverance!
if you are concerned about basic's line number issue...
smilebasic for the Nintendo DSi/3DS and Switch has labels that you can define, which means you can basically name any point in the code as a jump point for a very easily human-readable program, calculator BASIC is nearly identical in this fashion
Congratulations on this huge milestone! I can't imagine the amount of work that was required to get here.
At last! This is superb.
Amazing work all around, really fantastic from the first day to launch day. I cannot congratulate and compliment you enough David and your team also. I shall be ordering one at the weekend!
Exciting to see the progress! Thanks for the update
Congratulations on the launch of your dream computer. I learnt to program on a ZX81, 1K of memory and then an Amstrad CPC 464 using the thick manuals that came with the computer.
Well done to you and all of those who contributed in some way. This is impressive!
a huge thanks goes out to pcb-way yay
@@SaraMorgan-ym6ue Indeed! 🙂
I'm always impressed with the updates in the development of this project!
I'd love to see some music software in the future!
(Hopefully will a piano roll instead of a tracker style timeline.)
Great work! I still remember the first videos on this machine.
My humble congratulations David. Awesome 👍
I am 56 and I appreciate all that your doing for the Computer Hobbyist , 8 Bit Guy , Thank you . Liked and Shared :) QC
Congrats on the launch of computer. You driving with phenomenal attitude and energy. 2 thumbs UP! from a fellow hobbyist who grew up playing and engineering on 8-bit computers.
Awesome work and what a fascinating project. Reliving the 80's too with a modern take 😊
The 8 Bit Guy, my man, strikes again! Well done, and good luck. Amazing you finally did it, I cant believe it.
An 8 bit computer…….something I wanted back in 1982.
A neighbor sold me two raspberry pi 3’s For $15. Another neighbor sold me a MacBook Air for $60. The world is awash in hardware. And no one, young or old, has ever asked me if I could teach him to develop anything.
development is now days die
Yeah but it's those simplified computers/game consoles without any online account necessary!, without any wireless keyboard/game controllers! and without any dying lithion ion batteries!, those simplified devices which will still work in 40 years, others you will be knocked by any of those listed circumstances.
David is delutional and stuck in his own self importance. no kid in 2023 wants to program in basic. Sorry David.. once you sell to the 50+ year old nerds who still want to dabble, this project is over... to think he thinks there is a bigger educational market for dead programming language just exposes Davids hubris.
This is an incredible machine that you have built. I hope you sell a lot of them. I am amazed.
I'm so happy for you! Congratulations!
I would love to see the case have brackets for the slots with the proper holes for whatever application.
7:18 - Those ultra-violet video games can be BLINDING!!!!
Three decades ago, I learned programming using QBasic in DOS! An editor with a run command and built-in help and api reference was all it took to teach me as a kid programming from scratch. It was amazingly fun. So kudos on building a proper code editor into the thing!
I'm really happy to see that your dream is coming true. Congratulations. I follow your channel since 2016. During the pandemics I stopped watching videos as i did in the past. Today I came back here and what a surprise!! Congratulations! Hugs from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. - Sincerely, Felipe Lima
Congratulations David on such a big milestone! I’ve been following since the beginning and preordered my X16 and accessories last week. So exciting!!! I’m grateful for all of the hard work you’ve done and can’t wait to set the physical system up when it arrives! This is one of those rare things I’ll be happy to lose sleep over. 😊
Hah! Looks like the website went down due to the sheer number of requests. I might not be able to get one in the first batch, but I've been waiting for this for YEARS. Excited to see that your dream has finally come to fruition!
Indeed, I just tried it and it doesn't work. I was busy when the video came out, I should have watched the video first. Well, the good news is that the newer units will get better.
Wow. Congrats man! Incredible to see this.
You guys are incredible! Keep it up!
Is it weird that I know for a fact that I will never program on the X16 but I get so excited when there is a video or update about it?
The entire history from first video announcement to this one. I can't get enough 😅😅😅
Very interesting study of design choices, implementation realities, and the reactions of the fans. Hopefully some enthusiasts who are also parents will be willing to ante up for the gen 1 machines, because they want to see it be made available to a larger audience. I have been a fan and observer of the personal computer world since high school from '79 to '82. I do have a collection of old systems of my own I want to get up and going some day soon.
That case is absolutely gorgeous! Congratulations.
Great stuff. Good luck with the first run...
Congrats on distributing your newly built computer! I would so get this computer if I can add a cassette drive, since I got old school programs that are saved on tapes from C64, it’s hard to find a C64 computer online, not counting that C64 mini which is mostly a retro game console, and not a legacy computer for retro computer enthusiasts!
I suggest having a yellow light if the disk can be read, but not written to. If it cannot be read, then have the light turn red. And also, if the disk can be both read and written to, then have a green light to indicate that.
Amazing. Congratulations for the achievement 🎉🎉🎉🎉
Great job! Thank you for the update.
The biggest problems here for me is going to be the price (I was 100% sure this wasn't going to be 50$ and that's ok). Although the parts in the computer aren't expensive compared to the parts today, I bet that a big part of the price is due to your manufacturing capabilities at home. If all of the computers we use now were produced by two people in a shop, the price would be at least 10 fold the same way that yours is. Congrats btw it looks awesome!
In short: If u want a better price and more profit, create a business or licence the product to a manufacturer.
Congrats, David! You deserve all success on this project!
Fantastic job!, I do love watching your videos no matter what they are.
your project looks so beautyfull, congrats
Have you checked in with educators about the concept? It seems like kids would be better served learning modern languages like Python. Yesterday I did a Basic tutorial on and Apple II machine and asked myself if I would want my kid starting out with coding on that. Maybe they could for a very brief amount of time, but I feel like it would be better to have them get on to a more relevant language to have it be more useful in the long run.
I don't see the appeal in this product but i guess if your dream computer has snes ports in the back and not in the front where you would expect them to be then, sure, living the dream the way you want.
Commodore got me into games, then onto PC games, which is where I learned the basic DOS skills that formed the basis of a career in IT.
Good luck i hope they sell well. Out of my price range right now but i understand the costs. Once again good luck! Its looking absolutely awesome so far! And i genuinely hope it gets to the educational stage.
Such a sweet project! Congratulations on the release and really just want to say thank you for you all's vision and perseverance in getting it to where it is. Really incredible!
Your competition isn't V-Tech, its the various Raspberry Pi educational packages that offer much more for less than half the price. You absolutely know those exist.
This couldn't be more different from a Raspberry Pi if it tried lmao
Congratulations on getting the X16 in production!
🎉so cool 🎉 congrats on the PC David the case looks so awesome😊
I think when we were kids we started programming because we wanted to make our games, modeled after the games we played on the computers themselves. I think the Commander X16 would have many more chances to succeed in this respect if it had an easy way to export to mobile, so that kids would be motivated to create games for the platform where they and their friends actually play on! of course they wouldn't be the same as commercial games (nor were ours) but they'd have a way to show and play their creations with others (as we did). good luck in any case!
My first computer was a zx81 with 16k ram. I got it for Xmas along with a book that had the basic code for about 50 simple games. I had to painfully type in the code and then save it to my tape cassette. Very quickly I was modifying these games to make them more interesting and then onward to writing my own basic games. Next was the zx spectrum which had a great basic programming manual. I learnt practical applications for math and basic physics to create my own games. This all set me up for a lifelong career in the IT field. So glad I grew up in the 80s!
Congrats on kicking off sales! I hope it sells well ^^
It won't
Congrats! What a milestone!!!
Incredible amount of work, but the result is amazing !!
what an awesome journey!
I love this! Hilariously, the first game I programmed, on an apple 2, was an "ultra violent game" 😂 my teacher was impressed, but wouldn't let me share it 😢.
The educational angle brings back memories. My path was a bit different but I can resonate with the idea. I got my first computer at the age of about 6. It was during the early Pentium era - but what I got was a 386SX with Hercules graphics. At first I was very disappointed with the amber monitor and not being able to play any contemporary games - but I ended up spending a ton of time learning to code in QBasic, then Turbo Pascal, writing batch scripts, advanced CONFIG.SYS techniques (DOS 6 boot menus, anyone?), examining every file of the MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 installs that were on there - all that before I was even a teen. My parents happily let me break things, so it had to be reformatted just days after I originally got it... but the next time I knew how to do it myself.
So yeah, a computer that's obsolete but not a toy, can be a really good idea for a kid indeed. Although I'm still a bit worried that modern kids might be put off by just how far behind modern hardware the X16 is, especially in terms of graphics.
Good luck on the development!
If "ultra violent" video games are a no-go for the CX16, I guess that rules out my idea: Sandwich Shop Simulator.
Still feel like this might end up with the same trajectory the Amiga went, but we'll see.
I do heavily agree with the software call-out at the end. I've been thinking about making either a webzine, magazine, webshow or all of the above to just showcase software wherein one could send in their programs to showcase. I'd kinda go for a Nintendo Power vibe or something similar, but eh.
I'm not sure if it'd be best to do a call-out to other developers out there who have done their own stuff on other platforms, I'd rather try to give the X16 its own identity with its own pantheon of devs as time goes on.
Either way, I do give kudos for this coming along this far, and hope it does the best it can.
This is insane man. Awesome work! :D
A great pleasure every time to watch your videos