> 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.
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My Mega65 has arrived
11–20 of 111 posts
Re: My Mega65 has arrived
#12The 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'…
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.
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?
Re: My Mega65 has arrived
#13Since the CPU is emulated by an FPGA, FDD is emulated, then why not save all the money and just use a software emulator?
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.
Re: My Mega65 has arrived
#14> 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.
Yes, the added memory was managed with an 8722 MMU.
Re: My Mega65 has arrived
#15Since the CPU is emulated by an FPGA, FDD is emulated, then why not save all the money and just use a software emulator?
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?
Re: My Mega65 has arrived
#16I 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…
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!).
Re: My Mega65 has arrived
#17Since the CPU is emulated by an FPGA, FDD is emulated, then why not save all the money and just use a software emulator?
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?
Wouldn't use this analogy - it might be an emulation of some sort.
Re: My Mega65 has arrived
#18Since the CPU is emulated by an FPGA, FDD is emulated, then why not save all the money and just use a software emulator?
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.
Re: My Mega65 has arrived
#19Since the CPU is emulated by an FPGA, FDD is emulated, then why not save all the money and just use a software emulator?
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Re: My Mega65 has arrived
#20Since the CPU is emulated by an FPGA, FDD is emulated, then why not save all the money and just use a software emulator?
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.