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Re:MEGA65 – highly advanced C64 and C65 compatible 8-bit com... by rbanffy on Thursday September 30, 2021 @03:47PM (#28710489)
> because it means no one outside of hardcore enthusiasts will buy one

I can imagine a version based on an emulation using a small ARM with the same physical keyboard and box, minus (or maybe not) floppy. The board is costly, and they expect to sell a finite number of units, so they need to recover the cost of the plastic injection tooling within that batch.

Having future versions based on emulated hardware would open up a market and drive down unit costs to more THEC64 Maxi levels, which would be extremely beneficial.

I'm looking forward to more retro machines, even if based on emulators, but with accurate physical reproductions of vintage hardware.

For lots of platforms, the physical object is not that important - We have 102/104-key with layouts that replicate most post PC-AT Unix workstations - it's the same layout we use, that the Archimedes and its descendants used, that most SGI's, most HP's and most other post-AT computers used. For those, the most important physical aspects are easy to replicate. If you really want, even a Trinitron tube can be replicated with a flexible OLED display and some bent plastic.

For computers like the C-64, 128, 65, Amigas, 8-bit Ataris, ST's, Apple II's, ///s, and earlier Macs, Sun workstations, Lisp machines, Alto's, Lilith's, DECs and others, the illusion will break if you use a PC keyboard and mouse. It'll feel strange.

Re:MEGA65 – highly advanced C64 and C65 compatible 8-bit com... by the_af on Thursday September 30, 2021 @10:54PM (#28713962)
> I can imagine a version based on an emulation using a small ARM with the same physical keyboard and box, minus (or maybe not) floppy.

For the C64 at least what you describe exists: TheC64 remake by RetroGames. It's exactly that, an ARM chip running VICE inside a case that looks and acts like a C64, complete with working keyboard. I own one and it's pretty cool.

Why not a real C64 I hear you ask? Well, real C64 are brittle, require swapping components, and outputting to modern TVs and pen drives requires expensive specialized hardware gadgets and addons anyway. Some hardcore fans do it, but it's not for me -- I just wanted it to work out of the box.

Re:MEGA65 – highly advanced C64 and C65 compatible 8-bit com... by rbanffy on Friday October 01, 2021 @12:22AM (#28714509)
I am the happy owner of a Maxi. This is what made me realize that so much of the experience was the physical artifact. While an FPGA-based board may be more accurate, the experience is incomplete without the accurate replication of the human interface.
Re:MEGA65 – highly advanced C64 and C65 compatible 8-bit com... by gardners on Thursday September 30, 2021 @05:10PM (#28711343)
A small ARM cannot emulate the MEGA65's 40MHz CPU or 81MHz pixel-clock VIC-IV video controller, unfortunately.
Re:MEGA65 – highly advanced C64 and C65 compatible 8-bit com... by rbanffy on Friday October 01, 2021 @12:23AM (#28714522)
I seriously doubt an RPi 4 class multi core device with a GPU can’t do that or, at least, precisely emulate a Commodore 65.