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My Mega65 has arrived

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Re: My Mega65 has arrived

#91

Post by ddingus »

the_af wrote: post #33

I'm really enjoying the current retrocomputer craze. I bought the "TheC64" myself (full size with working keyboard, wouldn't have it any other way), which is just a C64 lookalike case with a tiny ARM computer running VICE inside. I know it's not a real C64, but it sure looks like one! The Mega65 in particular is not for me though: it's way too expensive and it's not an actual computer I owned as a kid, so the nostalg…

Me too. I really love the tech from this early era.

8 bits is enough.

Re: My Mega65 has arrived

#92

Post by klodolph »

anyfoo wrote: post #76
klodolph wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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's not that simple. Yes, from the point of view of the emulated system, it does not matter if the emulation is software or "hardware" (i.e. an FPGA), as it will always observe correct relative timings. But if you want actually correct timings in the real world, i.e. to wall clock, a modern software environment will make it harder for you in practice. If you don't have an OS with any real-time capabilities, that's y…

It sounds like you've rephrased and elaborated exactly what I just said, but the way you've phrased it makes it sound like you're disagreeing with me. So I'm unsure what, exactly, you disagree with.

Re: My Mega65 has arrived

#93

Post by anyfoo »

klodolph wrote: post #92
anyfoo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that simple. Yes, from the point of view of the emulated system, it does not matter if the emulation is software or "hardware" (i.e. an FPGA), as it will always observe correct relative timings. But if you want actually correct timings in the real world, i.e. to wall clock, a modern software environment will make it harder for you in practice. If you don't have an OS with any real-time capabilities, that's y…

It sounds like you've rephrased and elaborated exactly what I just said, but the way you've phrased it makes it sound like you're disagreeing with me. So I'm unsure what, exactly, you disagree with.

I'm not sure. I'm saying it's easier to get accurate wall clock timing via hardware than via software. You said they are the same.

Re: My Mega65 has arrived

#94

Post by klodolph »

anyfoo wrote: post #77
bitwize wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Moreover, it can actually be at least "more straightforward" to reach accurate wall clock timings with an FPGA, than by trying to meet deadlines in a common OS environment, as the FPGA is "just" loaded with a bitstream that will it do more or less exactly what the original chip did and nothing else, spoken strictly in the digital domain. I'd also like to think that it's more efficient, since at least in theory it cou…

In general, the hardware emulations are much less efficient because the cost of manufacture usually won't be recouped over the lifetime of the device.

Re: My Mega65 has arrived

#95

Post by klodolph »

anyfoo wrote: post #93
klodolph wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you've rephrased and elaborated exactly what I just said, but the way you've phrased it makes it sound like you're disagreeing with me. So I'm unsure what, exactly, you disagree with.

I'm not sure. I'm saying it's easier to get accurate wall clock timing via hardware than via software. You said they are the same.

It sounds like you just rephrased & elaborated on part of what I originally said, again. I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with.

Re: My Mega65 has arrived

#96

Post by anyfoo »

klodolph wrote: post #95
anyfoo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure. I'm saying it's easier to get accurate wall clock timing via hardware than via software. You said they are the same.

It sounds like you just rephrased & elaborated on part of what I originally said, again. I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with.

> 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.

I am disagreeing with this.

Re: My Mega65 has arrived

#97

Post by imiric »

com2kid wrote: post #89
imiric wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are often times well paid, with pay that would make for a good living in more rural parts of the US. That might be the case now, but manufacturing moved to China decades ago partly because of cheap labor and as a cost saving measure for companies building elsewhere. > BTW, everything is made in China because China has a ton of local expertise, engineering talent, and ease of sourcing parts. Everything is made…

> The issue is that in the race to the bottom to build everything cheaply, quickly and in large quantities, is that you get a ton of low quality products that become junk soon after purchase. You'll get from China factories what you order, and then verify the quality of, from Chinese factories. Same as US factories. Apple products are made in China. Some of the finest engineered and assembled consumer electronics eve…

> You'll get from China factories what you order, and then verify the quality of, from Chinese factories.

Agreed. I mentioned that in my last point about IP, which you conveniently ignored.

Apple is an outlier. For every such company, there are thousands of others abroad and local to China that are making absolute trash that only serves to scam consumers and/or end up in landfills shortly after purchase.

I can't count how many Chinese-made things I've bought that ended up in the trash a few days/weeks/months after purchase. I also own a lot of poorly made Chinese electronics that have survived for years, so technically they pass QA, but are cheap feeling and annoying to use despite being expensive. Lenovo laptops come to mind.

Have you seen how rampant this is on Amazon, Wish.com, et al, let alone on Chinese owned retailers? There are entire product categories where you can't avoid buying a shoddy product simply because no alternative exists. I spend hours scouring Amazon to find brand names and sellers I can trust in an attempt to avoid this, dodging page after page of knockoff garbage. It's absolutely exhausting, and often impossible to avoid. A lot of people have given up entirely on purchasing from Amazon, but the convenience is a big factor for me.

So, yes, there are some products made in China with strict quality control that are worthwhile owning. But most are just quick waste making some shady CEOs rich. In either case, they'll most likely be copied and eventually made as cheaply as possible.[1][2]

[1]: https://www.scmp.com/tech/gear/article/3035376/chinese-facto...

[2]: https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-fake-chinese-apple-st...

Re: My Mega65 has arrived

#98

Post by [deleted] »

anyfoo wrote: post #96
klodolph wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you just rephrased & elaborated on part of what I originally said, again. I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with.

> 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. I am disagreeing with this.

[deleted]

Re: My Mega65 has arrived

#99

Post by klodolph »

anyfoo wrote: post #96
klodolph wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you just rephrased & elaborated on part of what I originally said, again. I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with.

> 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. I am disagreeing with this.

The statement is about relative timings, to be clear, and you agreed with that.

I'm not trying to be clever here to win an argument, I really just think that good relative timing is implied by "accuracy", and good wall-clock timing is not--that's "performance". It makes sense to me that these terms are separate, so I can say something like "I have a cycle-accurate emulator that runs at 25x realtime".

For stuff like game systems, you generally don't need a ton of wall-clock accuracy anyway. You're going to be plugged into some kind of LCD panel, and you just need to make sure that it gets fed with the correct data every 16 ms or whatever the correct update rate is. The fact that your input controller isn't getting probed at the exact right time relative to the screen update is kind of a non-issue.

Re: My Mega65 has arrived

#100

Post by wvenable »

charles_f wrote: post #86

The fact that it has a manual proves that it's poor UI. Also the setup for sd card is way too complex, and it does not support Bluetooth. I doubt it will have any success. Note that they're building this in Germany, no way they'll manage to recover their cost of manufacturing.

The Commodore 64 manual literally taught people how to program -- it was as important as the machine itself.
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