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Posted By
siz
on 2020-08-24
13:53:48
|  Re: Am I the only one in the retro universe to have missed this?
I just saw it yesterday on a different site so probably it's not that old. But I'm not sure.
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Posted By
Chronos
on 2020-08-24
14:16:53
 | Re: Am I the only one in the retro universe to have missed this?
No. me too. interesting...
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Posted By
Mad
on 2020-08-24
15:02:47
| Re: Am I the only one in the retro universe to have missed this?
Yeah interessting indeed..
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Posted By
MMS
on 2020-08-24
19:15:42
 | Re: Am I the only one in the retro universe to have missed this?
OK, it looks great on paper. Especially it is called X16 
Though usually I prefer the simple and elegant designs, like C128D, A3000 or Apple LC475, this design also looks cool. Expandability by the 5 ports is a great idea, like Apple II or BBC Micro.
But WHY BASIC 2.0? BASIC 7.0 has gfx, music and sprite commands, even bank switching...
Anyhow we will see, how much they extended that v2.0.
(update: I see they added a lot of new features and commands into the KERNAL. It may make sense, could be faster than a BASIC command, but little more complex to call)
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Posted By
Mad
on 2020-08-24
22:56:39
| Re: Am I the only one in the retro universe to have missed this?
The look is totally great!  Really very very nice design!
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Posted By
retroscener
on 2020-08-25
07:06:41
 | Re: Am I the only one in the retro universe to have missed this?
mmm...It only has Basic 2.0 so far and says that it is technically Microsoft Basic. So it still seems like emulation, and only for the C64, and that their aim isn’t about full compatibility of even that. It only has snes controller ports. The keyboard etc whilst nice just doesn’t give it enough of that retro feel for me. I don’t think right now even with future 264 series compatibility that it is enough to replace my 64k C16.
The Mega65 holds my interest more. Those guys ought to do a kickstarter for it.
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Posted By
Doug
on 2020-08-25
10:16:13
| Re: Am I the only one in the retro universe to have missed this?
Hi Baz,
It's definitely not emulation, and it's not trying to be a C64 in anyway either. It's real machine in it's own right. The hardware is quite unique. They appear to have taken BASIC 2.0 as a starting point, but have significantly enhanced it from what I can tell. Seems to be on a par with much later versions of CBM BASIC, but it is it's own thing.
My only reservations about the machine are the VERA FPGA. There are scant details, and from what I've read it seems very capable, but appears to be lacking some key features IMHO. Unless it's just not documented yet, there's no support for split screens, raster interrupts etc. I also really dislike the 'ported' access to VRAM. That seems like a real Achilles heel to me. I understand completely why they've done it like that, and its probably a win terms of speed for big sequential accesses, but from a programming point of view it sucks. As a hardware solution it's a cheap way to handle clock domain crossing (put a big FIFO in the way), but it makes random access to VRAM extremely cumbersome.
We'll have to see how it evolves, but for now I'm left feeling a little underwhelmed by it (look past all the colours and sprites and layers and ask yourself how the CPU is going to interact with it - it'll be like key-hole surgery). Managing atomic access to it will also be a pain if you need to access VRAM from the main code and interrupts.
Having an 8x faster 6502 will take some of the pain away, but not enough I feel. Fingers crossed that it's just a case of not all the details being published yet.
UPDATE - it looks like line specific IRQs are supported (or will be in the final thing, so that's good) :-)
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Posted By
Stinaris
on 2020-08-26
06:38:22
 | Re: Am I the only one in the retro universe to have missed this?
It's an interesting concept but the cost, for me, was too prohibitive.
I like the idea of the RAM layout. But for some reason I'm no longer subscribed on YouTube so not sure i've missed anything new.
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Posted By
George
on 2020-08-26
10:40:41
 | Re: Am I the only one in the retro universe to have missed this?
I know about this since January 2020.
I tried to port one of my BASIC-programs (3D-Engine) to it, but the emulator doesn't allow to read sequential files yet (coming in the next release).
A modernized 8-bit computer is a great idea.
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