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Commander X16

commanderx16.com

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Re: Commander X16

#41

Post by alenmilk »

chalcolithic wrote: post #18

While I love, love, love retrocomputing I don't understand why 99% of it is "retro-next" computing - instead of designing computer from some era people like to design much beefier next-gen machines. 2MB of RAM? 640x480? Why not use Amiga instead? Designing a machine that would beat c64 is insanely appealing to me. Designing a machine that would beat c64 because it came out a decade later and had larger ram chips and…

The Commander X16 is a computer that you should be able to understand how it works. You should be able to start the computer and poke away at the hardware and see results immediately. The Amiga is better and more usable, but it is a lot of complicated hardware.

Re: Commander X16

#42

Post by cmrdporcupine »

crb wrote: post #39
aniou wrote: post #13

Speaking of "modern retro computing" there is already a player in the town: C256 Foenix [1]. Based on 65c816, affordable, powerful and - most important - already available and well tested. It definitively deserve for user interest. For curious - there is an emulator available [2] (even one-and-half, because mine [3] is rather limited and created mostly for Forth [6, 7] development). 320x240 (double-pixel), 640x480, 8…

David "The 8-Bit Guy" Murray, the initiator of the Commander X16, has a blog post about why he wasn't satisfied with the C256 Foenix: http://www.the8bitguy.com/3543/my-dream-computer-part-2/ > Stefany and I disagree over some of the design at the moment. For example she has an integrated floppy drive, MIDI ports, SID chips, and a whole host of other things that I don’t feel are necessary and will inflate the cost of…

His machine will probably end up costing pretty much as much and be less interesting.

Stefany is a hyper-competent hardware engineer and her machine is excellent. It is an interesting machine -- and it exists. But I personally cancelled my order after a personality conflict with her.

I personally am excited about the Mega65.

Re: Commander X16

#43

Post by kwanbix »

mattowen_uk wrote: post #37
kwanbix wrote: post #26

What I would love is an affordable Amiga 500 clone. Extra points if it can also work as an Atari ST. Anyone knows if such thing exists? By affordable I mean 100~200 USD. HDMI and SATA for SSD/HDD. Thanks1

The MiST does all of that: https://amigastore.eu/en/358-mist-midi-fpga-computer-with-mi... 221,95 Euro (Approx 271 USD)

Close enough. Do I need to buy the "Full Amiga Configuration" or can I build that myself since I had an Amiga?

EDIT: some other sellers: https://www.amedia-computer.com/en/accueil/275-mist-midi-13-... https://www.dragonbox.de/en/consoles/other-consoles/mist-fpg...

Re: Commander X16

#44

Post by feffe »

jhbadger wrote: post #24
user-the-name wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

32-bit, megabyte-order-of-magnitude is a much more interesting place to be than C64-equivalent hardware. You can actually make things that look and feel good, but you still need to be clever about it. Nintendo GBA and DS are very much in this space, and are great fun to work with.

Maybe it is a feature of how old you are? To me at 50, GBA/DS just doesn't seem very retro. It's just a slightly worse version of modern gaming with no real charm of its own. But I suppose if you are 30, it has nostalgia value because it was what you grew up with.

I think so. Although I had a C64, I cut my teeth on programming the Atari ST in assembler. The 68k is so much nicer to program than the 6502. The graphics and sound capabilities of the x16 is more in line with a turbo charged Atari ST or Amiga 500. That would be my dream retro station. Still I'll buy a x16 if it ever materializes, could be fun to play with some raster effects and sprites again.

Re: Commander X16

#45

Post by user-the-name »

codeflo wrote: post #28
jhbadger wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it is a feature of how old you are? To me at 50, GBA/DS just doesn't seem very retro. It's just a slightly worse version of modern gaming with no real charm of its own. But I suppose if you are 30, it has nostalgia value because it was what you grew up with.

Well I'm 37. We might split hairs here about what is and isn't retro. The GBA came out in 2001, which admittedly isn't that long ago, but in many ways, it was simply a modernized, mobile variant of the SNES. Indeed, many of its most successful titles were simply ports of SNES games from the 90s, like Super Mario World. So in my mind, it's a mobile 16-bit console in spirit (I know it actually has a 32-bit ARM CPU). Th…

The DS is really just a GBA where you added a bit more every single thing there was in the GBA, and a really weird 3D chip. A bit more RAM, a bit more memory, a bit faster ARM, a few more graphics plane modes, and so on.

Re: Commander X16

#46

Post by gecko »

aniou wrote: post #13

Speaking of "modern retro computing" there is already a player in the town: C256 Foenix [1]. Based on 65c816, affordable, powerful and - most important - already available and well tested. It definitively deserve for user interest. For curious - there is an emulator available [2] (even one-and-half, because mine [3] is rather limited and created mostly for Forth [6, 7] development). 320x240 (double-pixel), 640x480, 8…

I thought the Foenix was canceled. We had a discussion about it the last time the Commander X16 came up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23801266

Re: Commander X16

#47

Post by ChrisRR »

chalcolithic wrote: post #18

While I love, love, love retrocomputing I don't understand why 99% of it is "retro-next" computing - instead of designing computer from some era people like to design much beefier next-gen machines. 2MB of RAM? 640x480? Why not use Amiga instead? Designing a machine that would beat c64 is insanely appealing to me. Designing a machine that would beat c64 because it came out a decade later and had larger ram chips and…

Part of the appeal of old school computing was always lusting after the next computer in magazines that was way out of your price range. It's not like nowadays where an unnafordable PC plays games at a better framerate than what you have now. New computers were a huge leap in power.

So people want to evoke the spirit of their dream computers. Hardware that they always wanted but could never afford (or often never even existed)

Re: Commander X16

#48

Post by cmrdporcupine »

gecko wrote: post #46
aniou wrote: post #13

Speaking of "modern retro computing" there is already a player in the town: C256 Foenix [1]. Based on 65c816, affordable, powerful and - most important - already available and well tested. It definitively deserve for user interest. For curious - there is an emulator available [2] (even one-and-half, because mine [3] is rather limited and created mostly for Forth [6, 7] development). 320x240 (double-pixel), 640x480, 8…

I thought the Foenix was canceled. We had a discussion about it the last time the Commander X16 came up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23801266

She had a change of heart, it seems like.

Re: Commander X16

#49

Post by cmrdporcupine »

All these machines end up involving one or more FPGAs -- to varying degrees -- simply because of the requirements and logistics. There's varying types of purism involved ("FPGA only where we would have used a custom chip" or "FPGA but not for the CPU" etc) but once you start down that path the whole thing starts to seem silly as with many of these machines the entire functionality could be done on a single relatively inexpensive FPGA but isn't for purist reasons. And then you start realizing how arbitrary many of these projects are. They're admittedly nostalgia projects, but everyone's definition of what nostalgia is for them differs. Attempts to make it more "canonical" are made by locking down the FPGA use, or keep the source to it closed, but again... arbitrary.

In a way this is why I'm personally more interested in the MEGA65 project because it's all-in on the FPGA angle, all open source, and has focused more on the stuff that makes these projects actually logistically tricky: cases, keyboards, packaging, distribution, toolchains, OS, etc. And backwards compatible with the C64/C128, which is something the X16 and the C256 can't be.

It's taking a long time to finish, but I think it's really neat. And I feel like the developers are taking themselves a little less seriously/dogmatically and seem fun.

https://mega65.org/

Re: Commander X16

#50

Post by sparcpile »

bartread wrote: post #25
bluescrn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s now quite a few of these ‘new retro’ projects around, but right now you can’t actually buy any of them from stock (Foenix, Commander X16, Mega65, ZX Spectum Next) These projects often seem to get bogged down in the costs and practicalities of creating the plastic parts rather than the electronics/software. Large injection-molded enclosures aren’t cheap (for lowing-volume products) and custom keyboards/key cap…

I have pissed and moaned at length about the ZX Spectrum Next so I'm not about to recapitulate all of that here. OTOH David Murray (The 8-bit Guy on YouTue), who is leading the Commander X16 project, does have a strong history of executing well and shipping. I haven't been that interested in other "new retro" computers, apart from the ZX Spectrum Next (which at least retains 100% compatibility, and for which I have s…

His previous work has been software games, which make up a fair share of his income along with YouTube ads. He quit his real job to be a YouTube personality and sell software on the side.

The design goal of the X16 was to try to make a 8bit computer out of modern stock for close to $100. The concept was to have an easily fixable computer with no bespoke parts.

That goal got blown out of the water due to the realities of custom system design. The costs shot up in order to fulfill other requirements like the graphics and sound. Originally, David didn't want any FPGAs at all, but had to do that to get a viable graphics port.

From what I remember others says, even the 2MB RAM might get knocked down to 1MB or less.

The entire project itself is the nostalgia of a 8bit home computer, but the need to have it connected to modern parts like mice, keyboard, and displays.

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