Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Hardware

The Mega65: A Modernization of the Canceled Commodore 65 Computer From 1991 113

Posted by BeauHD from the blast-from-the-past dept.
Slashdot reader TommyROM writes: The Commodore 65 was a never-released computer slated to follow the fabled Commodore 64 from 1982. Developed between 1990 and 1991, it would have been the most powerful 8-bit computer on the market with 128K RAM, high-resolution graphics (up to 1280x400), and stereo sound. A few prototypes were made before Commodore canceled the project in 1991.

Now an updated version of the Commodore 65 has been realized. Project founder Paul Gardner-Stephen began working on recreating the C65 in 2014, and eventually teamed up with the non-profit Museum of Electronic Games & Art to create the FPGA-based Mega65, a modernization of the original Commodore 65 featuring a custom main board, mechanical keyboard, and injection molded case. It uses the original C65 ROMs but improves on the design with SD card support, Ethernet, and HDMI output. It is about 40 times faster than a C64 and backwards compatible, including cartridge and joystick ports. The design is open-sourced for long-term compatibility. Additionally, there is a hand-held version in the works that is also a cellphone. They are currently taking pre-orders for the Mega65 at a price of 666.66 euros ($742 plus shipping).

The Retro Hour podcast has an interview with founder Paul Gardner-Stephen where he discusses the impetus of the project and goes into more details of the design.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

The Mega65: A Modernization of the Canceled Commodore 65 Computer From 1991 More

The Mega65: A Modernization of the Canceled Commodore 65 Computer From 1991

Comments Filter:

  • Link to Pauls blog (Score:5, Informative)

    by richy freeway ( 623503 ) on Thursday October 14, 2021 @05:13AM (#61890763)

    https://c65gs.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]

    Goes right back to the start of the project in 2014. Interesting reading.

  • Wasn't that the successor to the C64?

    • I came here to say more or less the same thing. It seems few understand the 64 was a representation of memory size and not a linear sequential number. Those who grew up in the era of the Ti99/4a, TRS-80s, and Atari 800 remember CBM touting their product as the first to have a base model of 64k of ram. While all of its competitors started out with 16k of RAM and required upgrading. Hence why it was labeled the C64 and not the VIC-40 as originally intended. If they were going to brand a sequel, it would have

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dculp ( 669961 )
        Yes, the C128 was a successor to the C64 but it didnt really do that great and only a limited amount of (mainly business/productivity) software was made specifically for it. The massive success of the C64 was also a drawback. Because of the massive installed base of users and the C128 could "dual-boot" no one made software for the 128 side. The C65 WAS a backwards compatible machine being worked on by Commodore in the 91/92 time frame. It was called the C65 and was essentially a faster, better C64. It

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by e3m4n ( 947977 )
          91/92 would have been utter suicide. In 91/92 the entire market exploded with ibm clones based on the i386 platforms. By 1993 the i486 was on the market. Every damn store was selling Packard Bells, 40 and 60MB HDD were pretty standard. 4MB ram not terribly uncommon. Most machines had both 5.25 and 3.5 Floppy drives. 1x and maybe 2x CDRoms were hitting the market. 128kb would have been way too little way too late in 1992. Every town had at least one store selling white-box ibm clones. For $20 you got a 2400
    • That was my understanding as well. Commodore was all over the map with hardware in education aka the PET line. Have used pretty much the entire series and still have couple hundred square feet of old Commodore equipment in storage Biggest issue is the cables are getting aged and casings get cracked etc. The machines should just fire up after a good cleaning. Even have working monitors.

      • Those Commadore monitors were FANTASTIC. Right size, could double as a TV, went on forever, just awesome.

        -Yo Grark

        • Been awhile but I was selling them for $100CDN when most people were paying money to get rid of CRT devices. I have two and will likely keep them for my Amiga 500.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by PCM2 ( 4486 )

          I don't remember anybody of that era manufacturing a monitor capable of doing 1280x400, though.

    • No, it wasn't actually a successor. The 128 was an upgrade in processing speed and memory, aimed at a more professional market. It was however, in all other aspects identical to the C64.

      However, the C65 was supposed to be both bigger and faster AND have an upgrade in sound and graphics too. The reason the C65 wasn't released, was the development of the Amiga 500, which came out earlier and with better specs. Ironically, Amiga was also released by Commodore, so they were outcompeting themselves.

      Fun fact: Com

      • It was absolutely marketed as a successor, and sold alongside the Commodore 64. All of the Commodore magazines of the time (Compute's Gazette, Ahoy!, Run) treated it as a successor. The 8502 was able to run at twice the speed as the 6510, but the VIC-II chip couldn't keep up. The 8563 could keep up, however. This meant having a monitor instead of connecting to an RF modulator and TV, but it was by no means largely a professional market buying monitors. In addition to the 8502 instead of the 6510, the additi

      • C128 (Score:2)

        by JBMcB ( 73720 )

        The 128 had a better video chip capable of 80 column text and high-res graphics, but it used a dumb method to access it making it almost useless for video games.

        Otherwise it was a pretty neat machine. Almost perfectly compatible with the C64, as it had the actual hardware inside. Also backwards compatible with CP/M. An improved disk system, dedicated video memory (that almost nobody took advantage of)

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by hattig ( 47930 )

        Dumping the C65 in favour of the A600 was absolutely the correct choice - unless they could mass-produce the C65 and sell it at $150 or less. The A600 rapidly dropped to £199 in the UK after release as well, so the C65 would have had little room at the bottom of the market.

        Quite why they were wasting their time on 8-bit successors in 1990/91 is beyond me. If those resources had been focused on Amiga things may have worked out better there.

      • So right my Amiga 500 was so much more machine than the 128.

    • I had a C128. Most of the hardware upgrades didn't do much, because the vast majority of software available was written for the C64.

      Sold it after a couple of years and bought an Amiga 500, which I still own.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday October 14, 2021 @07:52AM (#61891079)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by wv5k ( 771543 )
        Just as I remember the whole mess unfolding. Sorry I don't have mod points today. Great read...

    • Attempts at successor could be the CBM-2 models: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      I think i recall reading in one of Brian Bagnall books the C of C64 wasn't for "commodore" but "consumer". B for Business, P for Personnal and C for Consumer. But i am not sure.

      I find that nostalgia touching. You can still buy recent games and periphericals for the C64.

      Zeta Wing was published in 2020: https://sarahjaneavory.itch.io... [sarahjaneavory.itch.io]

      Planet X2 in 2018: https://www.the8bitguy.com/149... [the8bitguy.com]

      Karen and the tangled tentacles (free) in

  • The future of the past (Score:3)

    by Koen Lefever ( 2543028 ) on Thursday October 14, 2021 @05:21AM (#61890777)
    We are entering a golden age of retro computing: apart from the Mega65 there are also other interesting hardware emulation projects using FPGAs such as the MiSTer [github.com] and the Spectrum Next [github.com].
    • My favorite is using RetroPie. The cost is cheap and emulation of everything besides N64 has done well. PS1 games, albeit large, are pre-rendered seem to work flawlessly. Theres even an Atari 800 emulation available.

      • You really need a Pi4 to run the more hardware intensive emulators on RetroPie, and the mythical Pi5 would be better still.

        • For arcade roms like MAME, FBNeo, etc even a pi3 worked well. Ive been tempted to build a cabinet but Id have nowhere to put it and the wife would kill me. The challenge often is the controllers. Spyhunter is a rather complex layout of mapped buttons, pedals, shifters, and steering. So was Discs of TRON. Galaxian/Galaga, on the other hand, works with any joystick fire button. And while many home consoles came up with their own versions of Space Invaders, Galaga, and PAC-MAN, they were redesigned around a 35

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dculp ( 669961 )
        I love RetroPie and have decided to sell off most of my retro collection except a few machines that I have the most nostalgia for because of it. I used to be a "original hardware only" guy. However, I dont really have the time or the space to keep all the machines and games I want so RetroPie is a great thing,

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I'm of two minds about these kinds of things.

      On the one hand part of the experience with older machines is the limitations, so having a (relatively) fast CPU, expanded graphics modes and SD card support for unlimited storage means you aren't getting what people used back in the day.

      How much that matters is up to you. It's nice to have improved debug and cross development features, but if you aren't coding to the limits of the original hardware then it seems kinda pointless to do it. The difference between t

    • We are entering a golden age of retro computing: apart from the Mega65 there are also other interesting hardware emulation projects using FPGAs such as the MiSTer [github.com] and the Spectrum Next [github.com].

      You are correct, except for the timing, We are already well into the golden age of retro computing. Disk emulation is cheap and easy for most machines, all the old software is available for download online. I do worry what will happen in a few years when the people making all this happen begin to die off. I am glad I have my collection.

  • Meanwhile in the UK (Score:5, Informative)

    by blowdog ( 993153 ) on Thursday October 14, 2021 @05:26AM (#61890791)

    Most powerful 8 bit is highly debatable.

    The UK had 2 powerful 8 bits that were actually released, although didn't last long.

    Sam Coupe came with 256K as standard with 6 channels of stereo sound
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    Amstrad CPC plus was like an 8 bit Amiga with stereo sound and hardware blitter.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Resuna ( 6191186 )

      The actual claim on the website seems to be that the Mega-65 is the most powerful 8 bit of all time.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Entrope ( 68843 )

        I'm sorry, we can only accept answers in the form of a worn-out Kanye paraphrase.

        "Yo blowdog, I'm really happy for you, Imma let you finish but the actual claim is that the Mega65 is the most powerful 8 bit of all time... the most powerful of all time!"

    • In the US Amiga was hitting the market in the late 80s. The C64 was at the onset. The Amiga eventually was beating out the C64 and Atari 800, but the IBM PCjr and subsequent models were really taking hold, just before the clone wars. When the clone wars hit around the time of the i386, it was all over for everything else.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by KlomDark ( 6370 )

        You fought in the clone wars? Were you a Jedi knight like Luke's father?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        In the US Amiga was hitting the market in the late 80s. The C64 was at the onset. The Amiga eventually was beating out the C64 and Atari 800, but the IBM PCjr and subsequent models were really taking hold, just before the clone wars. When the clone wars hit around the time of the i386, it was all over for everything else.

        No, the Amiga held its own during the clone wars.

        The problem with the Amiga was well, Commodore. To say Commodore management was inept is putting it mildly - poor support from management me

    • MSX (Score:2)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 )

      In Japan, the MSX 2 platform was fairly powerful, given it was being driven by the lowly Z80. It supported bank-switching up to 4MB of RAM, and had dedicated Yamaha audio and video processors with their own memory. In general, Japanese computers had a bit more horsepower than their English/American counterparts, as they had to contend with a double-byte character set that was comparatively huge, and ate up memory and clock cycles.

      The BBC Master was a good machine, too. 128K of regular RAM, 128K of ROM, and

      • They did some pretty impressive things with Tandy's Color Computer 3. Officially it could be upgraded to 512k, and used an overclocked 6809 at, as I recall, about 4mhz. Modders have bumped that up to 4mb or more, and patches to Microware OS/9 allowed that to be useful RAM. As I recall, the COCO3 bank switched in 8k segments. With the Hitachi 6309, which was a drop in replacement for the 6809, you could get a lot faster clock rate.

        I had a COCO3 back in the day, and had a terminal plugged into it so I could r

      • You know I remember those days well. You really got quite familiar with your hardware and really pushed it to the limits. I loved the 4k demo scene.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by hattig ( 47930 )

      To be fair, the C65 was going to have a massively faster CPU.

      The CPC Plus was good, but too late (i.e., middling by the time it was released, but some impressive things have been done since), and didn't improve the CPU speed.

    • Most powerful 8 bit is highly debatable.

      In more ways than one. The Commodore 65 Wikipedia article that was linked says that the C65 used a version of the 65816 processor which is a 16-bit version of the 6502. It's not clear what the modern version uses but it seems that this is not really an 8-bit machine at all but an early 16-bit.

      There was also the BBC Master in the UK but, like the others, it did not last long or become very popular.

      • The wikipedia article actually says it is an 8502 (yes: eight five zero two) processor.
        With is indeed an upgraded 6502 and has not much to do with an 65816.

      • Commodore thought the 65816 was too expensive (which is was), so they purchased the design rights for the 6502 core and made their own all-new design, called the 65EC02. It had some built-in bank registers, a few of the GTE extensions, and could clock up to 7MHz, but otherwise wasn't much of an upgrade. The C65 implemented the 65EC02 core as an SOC package to reduce the chip count.

        The real catch is that the C65 also had a DMA controller and blitter, which was pretty close in power to the Amiga's design.

    • > Most powerful 8 bit is highly debatable.

      Indeed. Some pre-existing products where the C65 would still lag behind are:

      CPU: There were Apple II accelerators [wikipedia.org] that could run at 3.58 MHz and even 7.16 MHz. Heck, even the Apple //c+, released in 1988, stock could run at 4 MHz, but it can be overclocked to run between 8 - 10 MHz. (Apple licensed the overclocking technology from Zip.)

      RAM: In 1985 you could expand an Apple //e to 1 MB. In 1987 Apple made an official The Apple II Memory Expansion card which

  • Was deciding between that and skis. Then I met my wife, and decided to use the money on an engagement ring. 38 years later, we're still married, so I think it was definitely the right call.

    Does she now count as vintage as well? :-)

  • A bit offtopic, but since we are talking retro-computing, I remember seeing a video adapter that could take input from all those old 80's early PCs and consoles (such as 'composite') and convert them for modern DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort monitors. I haven't been able to find it, anybody knows a reference ?

  • But I don't see the point in any of these projects. Our desktops and laptops are so ridiculously powerful you can just emulate any fantasy 8 bit setup in software.
    The fun is in collecting actual hardware from the era. The mindset of possibilities and youthful fun I had back then is simply not captured in modern hardware.

    • It's the equivalent of rebuilding an old dragster using a modern engine. Trying to see what you can do with old hardware if you didn't have the limitations at the time.

      Nearly all of the old machines were hobbled in one way or another. The '64 had a poor implementation of BASIC, a somewhat drab color pallet, a slow disk system, etc...

      The 128 was much improved, but hobbled by a brain-damaged video chip (polled instead of interrupt driven, slowing the system down every time you need to feed it data.)

      The Color

      • To my mind, the 6809 was probably the most impressive of the 8 bit chips of the era. It was easy to write relocatable position independent code, which was very important if you want to write a multitasking OS.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Dadoo ( 899435 )

          The assembly language was great; the performance was not, even for its day.

          • The Hitachi 6309 variant did a lot to tighten up instructions per cycle, and also could be overclocked a lot more than the 6809.

        • To my mind, the 6809 was probably the most impressive of the 8 bit chips of the era. It was easy to write relocatable position independent code, which was very important if you want to write a multitasking OS.

          I'm with you on that!

          It was like someone from outer space dropped into the Motorola Labs and dropped off the plans for the 6809, then Just flew away again.

          It never was upgraded, never made into an HC version, no microcontrollers used it as a core, opting for the far-inferior 6801 core.

          But with a nearly orthagonal instruction set, 2 16-bit index registers, 2 Accumulators that could be concatenated, an 8x8 10 cycle hardware multiply, and, most interestingly, a unique, "User Stack" pointer, which is perfect no

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dadoo ( 899435 )

        Yeah, that might be cool if I could get a complete Commodore 64/128/whatever on a single IC, running at 2-3Ghz, with all possible original peripherals and USB, but that's not really what this is, is it? As much as I like retrocomputing, even I have to admit that just emulating it in software is better.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dadoo ( 899435 )

        And holy crap, can you image what it would be like to have an Amiga running at 2-3Ghz, with a 32- or 64-bit data bus, and HD video? That would be amazing.

    • Even worse: the 16-biit WDC 65C816 had already shipped in two other systems - what were they still targeting dead performance targets in the 1990s?

      If anything, this is all you need to know tio understand why Commodore folded so quickly - so many dead-ed pet projects like this!

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Actually it was because Jack Tramiel went nuclear against TI, and it backfired when TI dumped all their low-cost systems for $89. Then Jack got fired, and Commodore immediately dropped most of the more interesting (but still 8-bit) things that were in development, and kept the dumber ones. It was the race to the bottom (chasing naive parents who would buy "a computer" for the kids) that blew everything up, not the "pet projects".

        Check out the two presentations starting at (I think) 4h30m in the Saturday pr

        • No, most of these strange systems all came to light because of Jack Attacks where He (mostly useless consumer crap like the MAX and 4/Plus), Peddle (CBM direction) and the board (the VIC-20 is our god and savior, and don't you forget it!), all combined into one gigantic mess of infighting.

          Even if Gould had ever put his foot down earlier, the Jack Attack Management culture had already been permanently installed in the 1970s (when Gould spent more time Jetsetting around the world than actually managing)!

          T

  • Competitor to the Commander X16? (Score:3)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Thursday October 14, 2021 @07:04AM (#61890973)
    I know the 8-bit guy and friends are working on a new 8-bit computer. I don't think it is directly Commodore compatible, but a modern computer built to the same idea to allow people to write modern-retro software for it.
    • The both target the same market, but there are some significant differences.

      The Mega65 is completely open source, the Commander X16 is not: the Commander X16 VERA FPGA contains proprietary HDL and the firmware (kernal) is licensed from Cloanto.

      The Mega65 has an 8-bit GS4510 CPU at 48MHz, the Commander X16 has a WDC 65C02S CPU at 8 MHz.

      The Commander X16 aims to remain below $99, the Mega65 costs €666.66 ($742 plus shipping).

      • They're not exactly targeting the same market there, given the price disparity. There's definitely low-end and high-end retro emu markets. I like buying cheap fun gadgets for nostalgia's sake but would "never" (barring a lotto win etc) buy the expensive ones. The cheap ones can collect dust just as well as they can.

        • The Mega65 has a lot of pricy bespoke parts, but since it is Open Source there will probably soon be cheap clones such as for the Spectrum Next [wikipedia.org].

          If the X16 can indeed remain below $99, they will price-wise be competing with TheC64 and TheVIC20 (both are the same machine: software emulation on a tiny ARM board in a bread-bin case), although it is a far more original and interesting machine aimed at programmers (like the Mega65).

    • It has a real 6502 style CPU, and can run the Commodore "Kernal" and Basic 2.0 but it has different video and audio hardware, so C64 software isn't directly compatible from what I understand.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It seems to be a VIC-20 with different graphics and sound chips. Both are very powerful compared to the original machine.

  • They need the release the damn thing already so I can give them some $$$!

  • That doesn't seem like the correct resolution. It's over a 3:1 aspect ratio.

    • The non-interlaced modes on the Amiga are similarish. Seems reasonable. Rectangular pixels suck though.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by hattig ( 47930 )

      Narrow pixels were a side-effect of the time.

      Amiga 1200 for example had a 1280x200 (NTSC) mode, pointless, but it was doable by the hardware on a 15kHz signal. Not that most monitors could resolve that and show it crisply either.

    • Ever seen the pixels on a TRS-80? 128x48. Back when I was a boy, we weren't spoiled with your modern "square pixels". Everything was rectangular and we _liked it!_ ;)

  • Timeline (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Thursday October 14, 2021 @08:38AM (#61891177) Journal

    Just researched a quick timeline because I was curious about where the C65 fit in. These are the release dates:

    1980: VIC-20
    1982: C64
    1985: Amiga 1000
    1987: Amiga 500, Amiga 2000
    1990-1991 (development): C65
    1992: Amiga 600, Amiga 1200

    I couldn't find info on the anticipated retail cost of the C65. I can only assume it was intended to be very inexpensive compared to contemporaries (like the Amiga 500) and allow people to play their existing C64 games, etc. To step back technologically so much from the Amigas only makes sense if it was very low cost, or to market to an entrenched user base that needed C64 compatibility.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JASegler ( 2913 )

      Missed a couple

      1984: Commodore 16 / Commodore Plus 4

      Way back when I actually had a Plus 4 (Asked for a C64 and my parents not knowing any better got a Plus 4).
      Wasn't compatible with much. But as someone who was interested in programming it did have a better version of basic.
      Unfortunately they both bombed in the US mainly because of the incompatibility.
      I did eventually get my C64 a year or 2 later :)

      • I remember wishing for a C-16 because the Basic on it seemed much more powerful.
        I probably didn't understand that it was incompatible with everything else.

    • 1984: Commodore SX-64 "Executive"

      Wikipedia: SX-64 [wikipedia.org]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by KlomDark ( 6370 )

        Weirdly, last time I saw an SX-64 was one on display at Pioneer Village (http://www.pioneervillage.com/) in southcentral Nebraska.

        Even cooler, you drive on a road called "Warp Drive" to get there. (Technically "Harold Warp Memorial Drive")

    • According to ex-Commodore engineers, the target price for the C65 was $300, the same as the Commodore 128. It had been in development far earlier than 1990, but didn't get much support inside the company and was being designed by a skeleton crew, resulting it in being finished far too late to be released. There was also an attempt to make a cartridge-based Amiga 250 (also targeting a $300 price point), but that never got to the prototype stage.

  • Old computers aren't remembered because people stared at the specifications and wondered "what would this be like if it was 40 times faster but still 8 bit". Old computers are remembered because of the software that big game companies wrote for them for sale to the general public. Putting out a better C64 40 years after game companies have stopped supporting the C64 will be useless.

    At best, people are going to use it to run standard Commodore 64 software 99% of the time, and you'll get one or two geeks pu

    • Re:This is stupid (Score:5, Informative)

      by Misagon ( 1135 ) on Thursday October 14, 2021 @10:30AM (#61891615)

      Except ... that new games are still coming out for the C64.

      14 releases [psytronik.net] from one software house alone. And there are more out there.
      Check out also Sam's Journey [www.protovision.games] from a couple years ago.

      That's definitely more than "one or two geeks" ...

    • I was thinking along those lines too. They had a whole bunch of properties that seem to have gotten lost along the way.

      The hardware was simple enough to do things with peek and poke rather than having to figure out a complex API. They pretty much started up in programming mode immediately, almost zero boot time. There was a community around them (magazines etc. other kids trying them out).

      Rpi seems to come closest, maybe a bare metal OS with some kind of simplifying hardware abstraction would be good. Or pe

  • The commodore 128 had twice the ram of a C64, had hot-plugging cartridges, and no internal drives. It was passively cooled, with external 5 1/4 Flolppy drive that were notoriously bad because of long loading times, and misaligned heads. They never canceled, It Was Released. I know, because my Dad bought one at the PX in Fort Knox, Kentucky. Swear to god, you guys are NuTs. They came out with the Amiga 500 after their production run ended with the C128, and sold the Amiga 500 as Video Toasters for the m

    • The commodore 128 had twice the ram of a C64, had hot-plugging cartridges, and no internal drives. It was passively cooled, with external 5 1/4 Flolppy drive that were notoriously bad because of long loading times,

      The 128 did not have hot plug cartridges.
      The 128 came in two form factors, 128 and 128D. The 128D had an internal drive.
      The 128 only had slow loading times in 64 mode.
      The C65 and the C128 are very different computers.

  • 8 is better than 16 (Score:3)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Thursday October 14, 2021 @10:13AM (#61891529) Journal

    It's funny how 8-bit computing seemed better than 16 somehow. It was probably just the way they were built, how close to the hardware you were. You were very limited, and you knew it. Yet somehow it didn't bother you. The 16-bit PC though? I couldn't wait for that to end. COM ports. TSRs. segment:offset. What an annoying festerclack nightmare. 32-bit "flat address space" was such a relief. Even today, 64-bit is overkill for a lot of things. 32-bit was the sweet spot. 16-bit was the sour spot. 8-bit was the new and exciting frontier.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by KlomDark ( 6370 )

      When do we get 128 bit CPUs? This is taking forever...

      • In places where we need them (vector ops) we already have 128 bit CPUs.

      • It will be a Windows 12 requirement, along with TID (Trusted IDentity) which will require you to leave your camera and microphone on all the time in order for anything to work. Don't worry though. Notepad will start in less than a minute after you open it, and the lag between key presses will barely be noticeable.

    • 16 bits was not that much a sour spot. There are a lot of people nostalgic of 16 bits computers like the Amiga and the Atari ST.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dadoo ( 899435 )

      That wasn't a problem because the architecture was 16 bits, it was a problem because Intel's x86 architecture sucks. 16-bit Motorola CPUs (680x0s) had none of those problems.

    • I hated the 8-bit computers, and couldn't wait to replace my C64. The usability of those machines was terrible, you could only take your pick between BASIC and assembly, and every time a new computer came out, it was completely incompatible with the previous model. All computers were universally awful in the late 70's and early 80's.

      Being an Amiga fan, I loved that fact it was essentially a 32-bit computer with a UNIX-ish multitasking OS that just happened to run on a 16-bit bus. It also allowed you to s

  • I keep reading about these failed opportunities that Atari, Commodore and Tandy/Radio Shack had back in the day.

    Really interesting hardware, but zero direction or long term planning.

    I think Atari had the right idea in pushing the ST line with their high res monochrome monitors as a serious computer against the Mac, but they simply couldnt shake the gaming only image.

    As the Marvel show tag line, I often ponder the "What If" question and instead of what we have now, we still had Atari, Commodore and Tandy aro

    • As the Marvel show tag line, I often ponder the "What If" question and instead of what we have now, we still had Atari, Commodore and Tandy around, besides maybe Windows and Linux and Apple.

      I prefer that world. Unfortunately it would likely turn out to be similar to the search engine market, where there is one that everyone uses, and several that few people use.

  • The claim is that the C65 would have been the most powerful 8-bit, Commodore's own Amiga being a 16-bit, with even a base of 512k RAM in the A500 of 1987. I had a whopping 1MB mine in around 1988. But then what's the point of being the most powerful 8-bit in 1991? It's like saying that your army has the best bows and arrows when everyone else has rifles.

  • 128K RAM (Score:3)

    by Malays2 bowman ( 6656916 ) on Thursday October 14, 2021 @03:36PM (#61892871)

    This was what the Commodor 128 was, but it still didn't do as well as the 64 despite being mostly compatable with the machine.

    Seems like they were aiming for a middle market between the 64 and the Amiga line, but in 1991 the PC was starting to gain serious ground in the home market.

      If they made a Tandy-esque PC compatible with built in C64 hardware emulation, and a way to easily transfer content between the C64 and MS-DOS enviroments, and be able to switch between the two on the fly, they may have had a slam dunk.

      I know what I proposed would've been a tall order for the time, but good and creative engineers could've made it low cost without any major reliability boo-boos.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bgarcia ( 33222 )

      Yep, they messed up by giving the Commodore 128 a CP/M mode instead of a PC mode. If it had been PC-compatible, Commodore may have survived.

      • CPM was "the" OS back in the day. When the 128 was released, CPM was fading out fast in favor of MS-DOS, and to a lesser extent, *nix.

          They were a few years too late to expect CPM compatability to be a big seller for the 128.

Slashdot Top Deals

Hackers are just a migratory lifeform with a tropism for computers.

Close