[HN Gopher] My Mega65 has arrived
___________________________________________________________________
My Mega65 has arrived
Author : ibobev
Score : 168 points
Date : 2022-06-01 08:57 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.epsilonsworld.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.epsilonsworld.com)
| the_af wrote:
| I'm really enjoying the current retrocomputer craze. I bought the
| "TheC64" myself (full size with working keyboard, wouldn't have
| it any other way), which is just a C64 lookalike case with a tiny
| ARM computer running VICE inside. I know it's not a real C64, but
| it sure looks like one!
|
| The Mega65 in particular is not for me though: it's way too
| expensive and it's not an actual computer I owned as a kid, so
| the nostalgia factor is lower. It does look extremely nice,
| though.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Agreed. TheC64 has hit the sweet spot for what this type of
| gizmo should be and it really does deliver. They are great for
| vendor support too.
| FullyFunctional wrote:
| My only interest in this is as an FPGA dev kit. It was
| surprisingly hard to find details on the actual hardware but it
| appears to be a Xilinx(tm) Artix A7 200T according to
| https://shop.trenz-electronic.de/en/TE0765-03-S001-MEGA65-hi...
| That page curiously doesn't specify the amount of external DRAM,
| but various hints suggests it might be 8 MiB of HyperRAM (that's
| DRAM with a simpler protocol). Cute.
| bpye wrote:
| Is a high performance HyperRAM controller really simpler than a
| normal DRAM controller? It's serial rather than parallel so you
| need higher frequency signals for the same bandwidth.
| hedora wrote:
| I was wondering the same thing. I wonder if they could produce
| a "lite" version without some of the physical components (like
| the floppy disk and "expansion port"), and maybe some of the
| retro stuff swapped for cheap modern bits, like USB.
|
| Does anyone know if the FPGA code that makes this thing work is
| open source? It might be a nice starting point for some other
| hobby project / processor architecture experiments / etc.
| Keyframe wrote:
| Nexys 100T was recommended as a stand-in until you get the
| real mega65, that it's pretty much the same thing once set
| up. So, one could view it as a lite version:
| https://shop.trenz-
| electronic.de/en/29376-Nexys-A7-100T-FPGA...
| everslick wrote:
| It's on GitHub.
| Linda703 wrote:
| Arrath wrote:
| I'd never heard of the Mega 65 before, I love the aesthetic of it
| fully contained in the keyboard and for some reason the floppy
| drive being molded right into it just tickles my fancy in all the
| right ways.
| mindcrime wrote:
| The first question that comes to my mind is, "where did they get
| the floppy drives?" Surely the original manufacturer of those
| drives isn't still making them??? And having a batch manufactured
| as a one-off seems like it would be prohibitively expensive. So
| I'd be really curious to know how they managed that part of the
| whole thing.
|
| Anyway, looks like a great project. I wasn't a C64 fanboy as a
| kid or anything, but I'm still tempted to look into getting one
| of these. OTOH, I still have an Atari 800 I bought last year that
| I haven't touched yet, a half-started Z80 retrocomputer project
| to finish, and a desire to get an Atari 1040 "one of these days".
| So maybe I don't need yet another retrocomputer "thing" to play
| with... :p
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _So I 'd be really curious to know how they managed that part
| of the whole thing._
|
| Searching the linked development blog yields this:
| https://c65gs.blogspot.com/2019/03/floppys-floppys-everywher...
|
| _After some searching, we found what we were after: A local
| supplier here in Germany who has some quantity of different
| models, including a large number of ALPS 3.5 " 1.44MB drives._
| mindcrime wrote:
| Wow, so it sounds like they actually had to go with used
| drives. I was thinking maybe they got lucky and found some
| unsold NOS ones in an old warehouse or something. No such
| luck. But at least they found something to let them move
| forward with the project.
|
| It does lead me to wonder though: How many floppy drives
| would one have to commit to ordering, and how much would it
| cost, to get a company to manufacture a run of such devices?
| salgernon wrote:
| There's some interesting reading from the creator of a Mac
| Floppy emulator on sourcing the obscure (DB19) connector it
| uses - and his setting out I do a new production run. This
| [1] is kind of in the middle of the thread - but still
| interesting reading:
|
| [1] https://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/03/20/finding-a-
| db-19-ang...
|
| Better[2] link:
|
| [2] https://www.bigmessowires.com/2016/06/04/db-19-resurrec
| ting-...
| [deleted]
| forinti wrote:
| The last time I bought a real brand new floppy drive at a shop
| was in 2010 and they were really cheap (about US$5). They must
| have been trying to get rid of old inventory already.
| mlindner wrote:
| There's numerous types of floppy drive and disks and the
| Commodore ones aren't compatible with modern drives or disks.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Since the CPU is emulated by an FPGA, FDD is emulated, then why
| not save all the money and just use a software emulator?
| jason-phillips wrote:
| Because the journey is more rewarding than the destination?
|
| Extending your thought, what if the journey of
| building/acquiring/configuring the meatspace thing was also
| emulated?
| antiverse wrote:
| Wouldn't use this analogy - it might be an emulation of some
| sort.
| tom_ wrote:
| The I/O latency is typically much closer to the original
| hardware. OSs have become a bit careless about latency, and LCD
| screens add some more delay on top. It all adds up, and the
| result is a slightly inauthentic-feeling experience.
| bebop wrote:
| Hardware emulation can make the timings between multiple chips
| more accurate as processes actually can be done in parallel and
| in sync with a shared clock. This is harder to get perfect with
| software emulation. In theory.
| klodolph wrote:
| Hardware emulation cannot actually make the emulation more
| accurate than software emulation. That doesn't make any
| logical sense. If you know what the correct timing is, you
| can emulate it in hardware or software.
|
| It's not harder to do in software. It's just hard to get the
| timing correct, regardless of whether you are using software
| or hardware. There are certain cases where it's hard to get
| good performance out of a software emulator, that's really
| the main difference.
| bitwize wrote:
| It should be easier to do in software. What's hard is,
| modelling the hardware accurately, getting the timing
| correct, AND getting everything performant enough to run at
| the original hardware speeds. It takes a beefy system to
| accurately emulate even SNES hardware at full speed. An
| FPGA can be programmed with accurate hardware models and
| run them all in parallel at the same speeds the original
| hardware ran at (up to a limit, I believe today it's
| somewhere in the low hundreds of MHz for a CPU). This
| allows for a closer approximation of the original hardware
| running at usable speeds.
| klodolph wrote:
| It used to take a beefy system to emulate the SNES at
| full speed. Emulator performance has improved, CPU
| performance has improved, and nowadays, an outdated and
| low-spec x86 laptop will run BSNES.
|
| You will have problems running BSNES on a Raspberry Pi,
| though, although I've heard the RPi 4 can do it.
| [deleted]
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Maybe holding some real hardware gives much joy? I'm thinking
| about maybe emulating it using a Pi and buy some peripherals
| such as external floppy. Not sure if it's doable though.
| Koshkin wrote:
| The _real_ real hardware - sure, but emulated on a FPGA...
| not so much. But that's just me.
|
| Emulation in software (and the virtual space in general), on
| the other hand, is close to perfect these days. In fact,
| material things get boring pretty fast (and tend to end up in
| the attic) whereas virtual reality (like games) remain a
| source of perpetual joy.
| timbit42 wrote:
| FPGA is a simulation, not an emulation. Emulation does
| everything serially while simulation does everything in
| parallel, just like the real hardware.
|
| Also, software emulation on a non-real-time OS such as Windows,
| macOS or Linux can result in lag when the OS is busy with other
| things. You never get that on FPGA simulation.
| klodolph wrote:
| I've never heard that distinction before.
|
| It's all emulation--either in hardware or software, in
| parallel or in series.
|
| I used to work on simulation software professionally. The
| idea that simulation is parallel while emulation is serial is
| completely foreign to me, and I suspect foreign to others as
| well.
| FullyFunctional wrote:
| I have worked on simulators for most of my life and the GPs
| definition is not true.
|
| There's no formal distinction between the two, but
| conventionally emulation is more faithful whereas
| simulation is more high-level. Still, the two are used
| fairly interchangeably.
| icedchai wrote:
| It is foreign to me, for sure. I have been experimenting
| with FPGA-based retro systems for years (started with a
| MIST.) I still consider them "emulators."
| mlindner wrote:
| I really don't understand the love people have for the commodore
| 64. It wasn't especially advanced for it's time nor was it
| especially good. Finally it basically required the use of a
| horrible language like Basic to use. There's like zero reason to
| re-create it as a retro computer.
|
| Then you compare it to things like the Amiga which was incredibly
| advanced for it's time with amazing graphics and sound that even
| today are very playable modern-feeling experiences. For an
| example of what I'm talking about here's two clips (the whole
| video is good): https://youtu.be/kjapiUQOi2s?t=834
| https://youtu.be/kjapiUQOi2s?t=1502
| pvg wrote:
| It's heartwarming to see some people still enjoy the old
| breadbox and others still enjoy telling everyone everything was
| better on the Amiga.
| ZetaZero wrote:
| The Amiga launched at $1300, while the C64 was going for $200.
| By the time I could afford an Amiga, I got a PC instead.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| The SID chip in the c64 is very unique, it's specifically
| designed for music versus the PSG-like square wave generators
| in other systems at the time. (I will say the Atari POKEY is
| magical though.)
|
| Comparing c64 to Amiga isn't fair, the Amiga was a generation
| later. What the c64 should be compared with is the Atari 8-bit
| systems (400, 800, 65XE, 130XE), Apple II, Colecovision.
|
| Having the 64k RAM, plus sprites, plus a sound chip that
| implemented ADSR and different waveforms other than square did
| introduce a lot of possibilities and excitement in 1982 though,
| even if you tried your best to use them from the absolutely
| shitty BASIC and/or had to wait minutes for things to load from
| disk or cassette.
| mrandish wrote:
| I'm not going to judge other people's retro-crushes but as an
| old-timer who used several of these 80s computers in the 80s,
| you're correct about the Amiga being especially notable from an
| historical perspective.
|
| I would even say that the Amiga, at the time it shipped, was
| the single largest step-up in capabilities of any widely
| available computer that's ever occurred. Compared to all the
| other computers available to consumers at the time, the Amiga's
| graphics, sound, operating system and processing were best of
| breed. From today's perspective it's hard to appreciate just
| how stunning the Amiga was versus status quo. It literally drew
| crowds of people at local computer stores just to watch someone
| run through all the demos.
|
| While today's PCs are many orders of magnitude more powerful
| and capable, I can't recall any single increment over the
| decades being nearly as significant across so many different
| dimensions (visuals, sound, speed, OS, UX, I/O, etc).
| guyzero wrote:
| I really don't understand the love people have for ${literally
| anything}.
|
| Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
| egypturnash wrote:
| The c64 was cheap, easily available, and dominated the market.
| The Amiga was not cheap, was not made in anything like the
| quantities of the c64, and was fighting with the ST for third
| place behind the Mac and IBM PCs.
|
| The Amiga 1000 was a decade ahead of it's time, but Commodore
| sat on its ass for longer than that, with very little
| investment in upgrading the thing.
|
| I say this as someone who went from a c64 in her teens to the
| Amiga in her twenties, and held on to the Amiga well past the
| time when it was obviously dead in terms of technological
| prowess and software availability.
|
| The c64 was also a lot of people's first taste of programming
| in a time when C compilers cost hundreds of dollars.
|
| And if you don't understand c64 nostalgia, I bet you must be
| even more befuddled by Spectrum nostalgia. Which was even
| cheaper and shittier than the c64, but completely ruled the UK
| for a while.
| yakz wrote:
| My family couldn't afford an Amiga when I was a kid, but we
| could afford a C64 so that's what we had.
| [deleted]
| the_af wrote:
| > _I really don 't understand the love people have for the
| commodore 64. It wasn't especially advanced for it's time nor
| was it especially good. Finally it basically required the use
| of a horrible language like Basic to use. There's like zero
| reason to re-create it as a retro computer._
|
| Happy to help you understand:
|
| Like a lot of people, I owned a C64 and not an Amiga, which was
| very expensive and uncommon in my country.
|
| Agreed the included Basic was horrible, but I also started my
| programming journey with it. One upside, unlike with current
| computers, is that the C64 had an "instant on" appliance feel
| to it -- you plugged it in, and it booted up almost instantly,
| greeting you with the READY prompt, ready to go at your
| command. Turning it off was likewise instant.
|
| You could also write assembly with it.
|
| The C64 had a vast library of games, many very good, and the
| SID music from those games was simply amazing. It still is. I
| still listen to C64 music from time to time, and I love it.
|
| The demoscene around the C64 was amazing and -- get this -- it
| still exists!
|
| Finally, though less importantly, the C64 was a massive success
| and sold lots of units, and helped kickstart an era in
| computing, so it has great historical importance.
|
| Hopefully this helped you understand the widespread love for
| the C64.
| dansanderson wrote:
| I would add that the popularity of the original machine and
| the vast library of games built off of each other, and the
| result is a large community with love and nostalgia for the
| C64. That in turn perpetuates modern projects, newcomers to
| the scene, and new generations of community here for their
| own reasons.
|
| "Retro" exists independently of "nostalgia:" it's a broad
| cultural category that encompasses fashion, technology, and
| new reasons to appreciate old things. I would recommend
| Commodore-adjacent stuff--VICE, TheC64, Ultimate 64 in a new
| case, MEGA65, refurbished machines with new accessories and
| adapters--to people with a variety of interests that have
| never seen an original Commodore.
| jansan wrote:
| Just the other day I ran into this video of a recent C64
| demo. It just blew my mind (5:02 is my favorite part). THere
| were demos at the time I played on the C64, but this is just
| pushing the limits so far, it is pure art.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q56-23D7omY
| SeanLuke wrote:
| > Back in the 1980's, Commodore released the famous Commodore 64
| (8 bit computer), and then followed it up with the Commodore 128,
| and Amiga (16 bit computers).
|
| ??? Pretty sure the 128 was an 8-bit computer.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, the added memory was managed with an 8722 MMU.
| [deleted]
| bitwize wrote:
| He Did The Math, Atari Jaguar style. (Two 8-bit CPUs = 16 bits)
| wang_li wrote:
| And the amiga was Motorola 68000 based which is a 32 bit
| processor by any coherent definition.
| [deleted]
| glonq wrote:
| Does the mega65 shipping put a nail in the coffin of the
| commander x16, which seems to be stumbling?
| the_af wrote:
| How is it stumbling? Do you mean "slow going"? Because
| according to Wikipedia, the MEGA65 project was started in 2015,
| so Mega itself was slow.
|
| These are essentially hobbyist projects, I don't think there's
| any nails to be placed on any coffins. They get done when they
| get done, and are not expected to become huge commercial
| successes.
| glonq wrote:
| By stumbling I mean 'founders and influencers abandoning the
| project'.
|
| Well hopefully by scaling back ambitions they'll be able to
| get something out.
| 300bps wrote:
| I have quite a number of Commodore 64s lying around by virtue of
| developing a hobby of learning component level repair on them.
|
| I'm tempted to buy one of these Mega65s to play around with it
| but at $832.50 including shipping to the US, it's a bit much. The
| main reason I am interested in old computers is because I used
| those old computers back in the day!
|
| Really have to hand it to them on the engineering of it though -
| looks like an amazing machine.
| technothrasher wrote:
| > I have quite a number of Commodore 64s lying around
|
| I've got a bunch as well, some new in box, some completely
| ratty and worn out, most somewhere in between. Have you
| registered them with the C64 registry?
| (https://c64preservation.com/dp.php?pg=registry) What's your
| lowest serial number? I've got one with a pretty low serial,
| which I was lucky enough to find and purchase at the Dayton
| Hamvention back in the 1993 for $5.
|
| > The main reason I am interested in old computers is because I
| used those old computers back in the day!
|
| Right there with you!
| technofiend wrote:
| Things I'm nostalgic for are slightly older like the VT100 and
| PDP 11 series. There was something just amazing about the soft
| blip when turning on the VT100, and something very powerful
| about clacking away on that keyboard, writing code to do
| whatever you could think of. But even if someone made a brand
| new VT 100 with a proper CRT and embedded a PDP 11 equivalent,
| would I pay $832.50 for it? Nah, probably not.
|
| Still, kudos to the team for successfully recreating the C64 in
| FGPA. Preserving digital heritage is important even if it's
| time consuming and expensive.
| russellendicott wrote:
| I've always wanted a PDP11 but having never used one I'm
| overwhelmed when looking for them. I have no way of knowing
| if I'm buying the right parts or how to tell if they
| function.
|
| Are there any retro recreations of PDP machines? All I've
| ever been able to find are emulators.
| watmough wrote:
| Enjoy ...
| https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11
|
| The 8 and 11 have been made. There was a PiDP-10 in progress,
| but not sure what the status is on it currently.
| everslick wrote:
| Actually it is a recreation of the C65. (Which happened to
| have a C64 mode) Running 3rd party cores is possible though.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Consider checking out the mister project. The Mister is one
| FPGA board that lets you emulate many old computers, like the
| C64, Atari ST, Amiga 500, Macintosh plus, 486 based systems,
| even Japanese computers like the Sharp x68k, PC-88, MSX, etc.
| It's a great piece of kit, with some level of floppy support
| and more affordable (although you have to bring your own fancy
| case!).
| glonq wrote:
| If they had a no-floppy option and an assemble-it-yourself
| option, I wonder how much the cost might come down? Heck, some
| people might even want to DIY the case and keyboard.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Most of the cost seems likely to come from the costs of
| producing a very small run of a large presumably-injection-
| molded case and a custom keyboard.
|
| Can't imagine the machine will ever have much of a community
| with its combination of high price, relatively low nostalgia,
| and a bulky/unsexy design, but it's cool that they actually
| managed to finish and ship the product.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| You might be interested in my good friend Randy's labour of
| love:
|
| https://accentual.com/vicii-kawari/
|
| FPGA replacement for the VIC-II.
| 300bps wrote:
| Considering I just bought 10 NOS NTSC VIC-II chips, yes I'm
| interested.
|
| I've been following that project for some time but it seems
| to be On hold for months and counting due to chip shortage.
| Is it being resumed at some point soon?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| He's constantly working on it. We both quit our Google jobs
| back in January (on the same day) and frankly, the VIC is
| how he seems to be spending most of his time since.
|
| The problem remains chip shortages. He had to rework the
| board a couple times because of lack of FPGA supply.
|
| I've seen his latest boards and they are impressive.
| com2kid wrote:
| > In my view the ongoing race to the bottom of slave labour to
| make cheaper systems is not sustainable.
|
| As someone who has worked in consumer electronics, and worked
| closely with the people who were on the factory line, employees
| on electronics manufacturing lines are not slave labor. They are
| often times well paid, with pay that would make for a good living
| in more rural parts of the US. After having worked on a
| production line for a year, they are in a good bargaining
| position to up their pay for the next year[1], sometime I got to
| witness as my team had to basically pay a bonus to get people to
| come back to work after the spring festival.
|
| Do some employers suck? Of course[2]. It is important for the
| companies placing these orders to ensure workers are treated
| well, I know when I was at MSFT we had guidelines in place for
| worker treatment, including an increase minimum age for workers
| vs what the local law allowed.
|
| I also don't think a lot of people realize that for any
| production line in China making complicated American designed
| electronics, that there are likely Americans also on the factory
| floor helping things out! Especially at the beginning of the
| production run. None of the people I know who were on the factory
| floor would have been silent if they had seen abuses, abuses of
| the people they worked day in and day out with for weeks and
| sometimes months.
|
| I'm not saying horrible abuses don't happen, but I am saying that
| it is possible, and not some insanely difficult task, to
| responsibly manufacture goods in China, or any other country for
| that matter.
|
| BTW, everything is made in China because China has a ton of local
| expertise, engineering talent, and ease of sourcing parts. For
| complicated to make products, the labor savings really isn't the
| big driver.
|
| [1] Yield rates go up significantly with experienced employees.
| [2] There is a lot of pressure to make release dates for consumer
| electronics, missing certain holidays for release means an entire
| product may not sell enough units to be profitable anymore. Does
| this mean crap tons of stress for everyone involved?
| Unfortunately yes, if you work in higher end consumer electronics
| you will see people fall apart all around you, it is a very high
| stress environment. It sucks that the stress is also put on the
| lowest paid workers in the chain, and more needs to be done to
| stop that from happening.
| [deleted]
| miguel_cordeiro wrote:
| Maybe it's nostalgia but for me it makes computing look fun
| again. Amazing attention to detail... kudos to the makers.
| kloch wrote:
| I love that the box and form factor are retro 80's but the
| keyboard is fully modern. Very good design decisions.
| layer8 wrote:
| It's based on the C65 prototypes
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_65) from 1990/1991.
| Not sure about "modern", the modern keyboard layout was
| arguably established by the IBM Enhanced Keyboard
| (https://deskthority.net/wiki/IBM_Enhanced_Keyboard) introduced
| in 1985/1986, so roughly at the same time the now-retro C128
| and the Amiga were introduced (who had vaguely similar
| keyboards).
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