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My Mega65 has arrived

epsilonsworld.com

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Re: My Mega65 has arrived

#21

Post by [deleted] »

mindcrime wrote: post #12
dfxm12 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

Re: My Mega65 has arrived

#22

Post by klodolph »

timbit42 wrote: post #20
DeathArrow wrote: post #7

Since 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.

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.

Re: My Mega65 has arrived

#23

Post by [deleted] »

SeanLuke wrote: post #9

> 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.

[deleted]

Re: My Mega65 has arrived

#24

Post by bitwize »

SeanLuke wrote: post #9

> 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.

He Did The Math, Atari Jaguar style. (Two 8-bit CPUs = 16 bits)

Re: My Mega65 has arrived

#25

Post by klodolph »

bebop wrote: post #18
DeathArrow wrote: post #7

Since 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.

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.

Re: My Mega65 has arrived

#27

Post by glonq »

300bps wrote: post #4

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…

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.

Re: My Mega65 has arrived

#28

Post by forinti »

mindcrime wrote: post #3

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'…

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.

Re: My Mega65 has arrived

#29

Post by icedchai »

klodolph wrote: post #22
timbit42 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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."

Re: My Mega65 has arrived

#30

Post by bitwize »

klodolph wrote: post #25
bebop wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.
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