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The C256 Phoenix Project aka What Commodore 256 could have been like

c256foenix.com

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Re: The C256 Phoenix Project aka What Commodore 256 could have been like

#51

Post by mmjaa »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #45
digi_owl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there are two reasons: 1. there is a generation coming to age now that never got to know these computers first hand. 2. More and more "computers" are getting locked down, supposedly for our own good. Even FOSS is bitten by this bug.

I’m old enough to have used everything from a ZX81 onwards. The appeal used to be the sheer excirement of having a relatively simple machine do clever thinga in a way that felt open and which promoted imagination - a bit like Lego, but in code. They encouraged you to get involved, learn, and have a go. Modern systems can do a lot more, but the cost of entry in money and especially time is so much higher. They’re more…

>It might be more interesting to design new software that has more of that just-for-fun feel to it - although it’s not obvious what that would look like today.

PICO-8: https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

Re: The C256 Phoenix Project aka What Commodore 256 could have been like

#52

Post by TaylorAlexander »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #40
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always bothers me how common it is for people to gender everything male.

English doesn't have a third-person gender-neutral pronoun and traditionally uses "he" when the gender is unknown, so it isn't really surprising that people, at least English speaking people, assume "male" until they know otherwise.

You’re describing a historical norm, but it’s one I feel is rooted in a historical bias. Men ran the world and defined the word “man” to mean a person of any gender, but that was always an act by men. I’d like to see this kind of bias removed from our language, and it takes individual choice to make that so.

Re: The C256 Phoenix Project aka What Commodore 256 could have been like

#53

Post by boomlinde »

narrator wrote: post #29

How about building a machine to run TempleOS natively? The crazy guy who wrote it says explicitly that the OS was meant to implement the commodore 64 ideal of one big flat address space and no memory protection, everything is rung 0, no protected io, etc.

Doesn't TempleOS already run natively on a rather bare x86-64 PC?

Re: The C256 Phoenix Project aka What Commodore 256 could have been like

#54

Post by jacquesm »

Annatar wrote: post #48
jacquesm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting quite tired of comments like these. The web was made for computers, not for tablets. If tablets are dumbed down and handicapped to the point that they can no longer partake in the web your beef is with the tablet manufacturer or the browser vendor. Either one or both has all the tools at their disposal to fix these issues. All the webserver does is serve up a bunch of data, the interpretation of that data is…

The web was made on a NeXT workstation for any device, on any operating system. Sir Tim Berners-Lee would likely be extremely grumpy if he read your comment.

Phones are computers these days, so are tablets. I'm not aware of any mechanical interpreters for web pages but I'm open to being surprised.

Re: The C256 Phoenix Project aka What Commodore 256 could have been like

#55

Post by ttldude »

C256_Stef wrote: post #36
_pRwn_ wrote: post #12

is this guy aware of the Mega65 Project ( http://mega65.org/ ) which actually already has working machines, a case and is on the brink to begin mass production?

Yes, I am actually a girl! ;o) Yes, I am aware of the Mega65. Like I wrote before. 2 different computer with 2 different approaches... I don't know why people come back with this comment... Like one 8bit music creator will stop creating music because someone else is doing it too? What's up with that?

Great to see a follow-up to our Gigatron computer!

I wonder what you will use for video generation in the C256, because the greatness in 8-bit gaming came from these chips. So you'ld have to differentiate there or run the danger of becoming yet another retro knock-off (well, the merits of compatibility should not be underestimated. Most of the effort will be in software otherwise). For the Gigatron it was ok to have limited video effects, because its insanely low chip count was its primary objective: so we have no tiling, no hardware sprites and no color indirection. But we do have indirection per scanline and you can do neat things with that, such as the bending road in the Racer game.

One thought is to design your own video circuit and put it in an FPGA. ASIC is also an option if you go with a 0.18um/0.25um foundry (X-FAB). You can also do it with discrete logic, but it will become big. There is the Vulcan-74 guy doing TTL (well, CMOS) video circuits: http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3329 and http://sleepingelephant.com/ipw-web/bulletin/bb/viewtopic.ph... (video: https://youtu.be/EIghk1BUG98)

Another idea is to do a hardware version of the PICO-8 platform: https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

For sound you should really consider the awesome SAA1099 chip.

Re: The C256 Phoenix Project aka What Commodore 256 could have been like

#56

Post by rusk »

vidarh wrote: post #43
colomon wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The C128 came standard with a Z80 as a secondary processor. (Would have been more useful for me if they'd also had an 8" floppy drive so I could have easily gotten stuff to my parents' CP/M machine at work.)

The C128 is a really bizarre beast - it actually "boots" with the Z-80 in control initially, and uses that to check for a CP/M disk in the drive, a C-64 cartridge in the cartridge port, or if you hold down the Commodore key, and uses that to determine whether to go into CP/M mode, C128 mode or C64 mode on startup... During CP/M operation, some BIOS functionality actually causes a context switch from the Z-80 to the 8…

The C128 is a really bizarre beast

It really is. It's a fantastic looking machine but the internals are just bonkers.

The reason for the internal Z80 was that Commodore had sold all these CP/M plugin cartridges that actually had a Z80 in them, but they drew too much power and the C128 engineers pretty much unilaterally decided it was cheaper to just build in the second chip than sort out the power issue [0].

The story of how this machine was designed and built is quite hair-raising and the likes of which I doubt we'll ever see again!

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/c128/comments/682da4/c128_ama_from_...

Re: The C256 Phoenix Project aka What Commodore 256 could have been like

#57

Post by rusk »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #40
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always bothers me how common it is for people to gender everything male.

English doesn't have a third-person gender-neutral pronoun and traditionally uses "he" when the gender is unknown, so it isn't really surprising that people, at least English speaking people, assume "male" until they know otherwise.

"They" and "Their" are perfectly acceptable as gender neutral pronouns. A stickler might object, but also bear in mind that in English there's no "proper" second person plural ...

Re: The C256 Phoenix Project aka What Commodore 256 could have been like

#58

Post by rusk »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #26
f_allwein wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this guy girl, actually.

Always bothers me how common it is for people to gender everything male.

It's an easy trap to fall into. I'm looking around my office here and I can count about 20 men and 5 women. When I was in university the ratio far more male dominated. It's unfortunate that such an imbalance can make things uncomfortable for women (e.g. oafishly gendering things as male) in the industry sometimes.

Re: The C256 Phoenix Project aka What Commodore 256 could have been like

#59

Post by rusk »

Aardwolf wrote: post #28

Is making a good sid chip clone something within reach of hobbyists today?

There are issues with the analogue aspects of the SID.

No problem with the digital, but the oscillators, filters etc rely on imperfections of the silicon manufacturing process back in the day. I'm given to understanding that they weren't so much designed as were just "there" and exploited to make sounds.

This is evident in how different generations of SID sound slightly different.

Re: The C256 Phoenix Project aka What Commodore 256 could have been like

#60

Post by _lbaq »

C256_Stef wrote: post #36
_pRwn_ wrote: post #12

is this guy aware of the Mega65 Project ( http://mega65.org/ ) which actually already has working machines, a case and is on the brink to begin mass production?

Yes, I am actually a girl! ;o) Yes, I am aware of the Mega65. Like I wrote before. 2 different computer with 2 different approaches... I don't know why people come back with this comment... Like one 8bit music creator will stop creating music because someone else is doing it too? What's up with that?

> I don't know why people come back with this comment... Like one 8bit music creator will stop creating music because someone else is doing it too? What's up with that?

Yea, I have a similar project, I've heard this so many times...

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