Mega 65- Enhanced Commodore 65, fpga etc.


Wrath Of Khan

Wrath Of Khan

Soul soother...
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A podcast here http://sceneworld.org/blog/2016/02/17/podcast-episode-20-the-mega65-project/

Official site: http://mega65.org

It looks great and apparently it will have injection molded cases too.

Specs:
CPU 48MHz GS4510 single-core, in-order, no-branch-prediction, no-cache, single-scalar, no-fpu, no-smd, no-HCF, non-pipelined, enhanced 4502 8-bit processor, with 32-bit ZP indirect and 32-bit far-JSR/JMP/RTS operations, 28-bit address space, fast hypervisor traps, virtual memory, IO virtualisation (coming soon).

Speed Synthmark64 score: 44.5x (C64 = 1x). Bouldermark score: 29,970 (C64 = 313).

DMA C65 DMAgic compatible DMA controller. Fills at 48MB/sec, copies at 24MB/sec, swaps at 12MB/sec.

Video Controller VIC-IV advanced rasterised video controller, like the VIC-II and VIC-III no framebuffer. Native resolution 1920x1200 (192MHz pixel clock). Supports all documented VIC-II modes (hi-res, multi-colour mode, extended-background-colour mode, sprites) and VIC-III modes (bitplanes are in the process of adding). Independent horizontal and vertical hardware scaling allows text and graphics resolutions as high as 1920x1200 and as low as 60x38. Separate 256-colour palettes for sprites, bitplanes and character graphics, allowing upto 1,024 colours on screen without changing the palette in real-time. VGA output 12-bit (4,096 colours). The planned DVI/HDMI output will support 23-bit colour (8.3 million colours). Text mode extensions including proportional width characters, super-extended background colour mode, as well as the standard VIC-III extended attributes.

Sound Dual soft-SIDs + dual 8-bit DACs.

RAM 128KB RAM visible to VIC-IV, 32KB colour RAM visible to VIC-IV, 128KB ROM/RAM. 128MB of (extended) DDR2 RAM being worked on to be made accessible.

Media D81 disk images from SD card (native VFAT32 file system support coming soon). Real 3.5" floppy drive support pLanned. Standard loading speed without fast loader ~20KB second. Loading speed direct from SD card 300 - 3000KB/second (1200 - 12000 blocks per second), depending on SD card.

Outputs Joystick ports 1 and 2 (9-Pin Atari Standard), VGA, 10/100mbit Ethernet,Mono Audio (Stereo soon), USB, Micro USB. Planned: HDMI, analog video, extension port, maybe external floppy.

Inputs USB (supports PC keyboards and adaptor cards), Micro USB, Ethernet, Micro SD slot, and coming soon: 3D accelerometer, on-board microphone and thermometer.

Operating System MEGA-OS all-in-one hypervisor and compat operating system, including integrated freezer and task switcher, VFAT32 file system driver and inter-process communications.

Form factor C65-like all-in-one. A laptop form is planned for a future release. Full-height 19" rack option extra.

Supported FGPAs Nexys4DDR (and soon) Nexys4PSRAM. These boards include a Xilinx Artix7 100T FPGA, which is a high-performance FPGA, much faster and larger than the Spartan FPGAs used in other retro computing projects. Unfortunately the old Spartan FPGA boards cannot run the MEGA65 core.

Development options Right now: Use Ophis with the -4 option to target the 4502 CPU. The etherload utility can be used to push compiled programs to the MEGA65 practically instantly to make for a convenient cross-platform development environment. For the future: MEGA-OS will support interprocess communications, making it possible to write assemblers and compilers that assemble directly into a separate process, and then launches that process when it is ready. Thus it becomes possible to use the MEGA65 as an 8-bit development platform for 8-bit software (or to run a cross-compiler for Linux or Windows if you wish to be really strange).

Milestones Reached: the computer is fully operational as a stand alone machine. We are now adding bitplanes, extended Hypervisor and more DOS.

ETA
  • The MEGA65 computer is expected to be ready for sale in third quarter of 2016. However you can always start playing with and programming MEGA65 software on a NEXYS4 DDR board with the latest bitstream (download here). A tutorial on how to setup up everything is available here.
 
dont hear me complaining... but yeah, specs are copied instead of linked. I like the new podcast though.
 
I'm hoarding my last dozen or so 3.5in discs just in case I ever need them. Not including all my old game discs, which are up in the loft somewhere. But I'd imagine most people would be happy with disc images on SD. If this will even run old Commodore software, isn't that mostly on C90 tape and 5.25in discs?
 
levi said:
If this will even run old Commodore software, isn't that mostly on C90 tape and 5.25in discs?
Click to expand...
Yeah, 5.25 inch disks are stupid expensive ($1 or more each when I look for them). As far as I know prices on some 3.5 inchers are starting to go up. That cost, along with convenience, space saving, reliability, getting cool new hardware for cool old computers and such, is why I bought a CFFA 3000. I would prefer something like SD, too. I do still have a handful of blank floppies in case I need them, and I would have no problem feeding them to this (not that they will work, as mine are all 5.25 inchers).

To answer the question, I think so.
 
Last edited:
EvilDragon said:
Well, you can always use a Floppy Emulator which uses SD Cards as original 3,5" replacement. I even got those in my shop, perfect for classic systems.
Click to expand...
Thanks for pointing those out again, and for offering solutions like this in your shop. I considered things like that, probably by the same person that makes the ones you sell. What I have works for my use right now (plus I get to use my old drives and floppies for the wonderful sounds if I want). I will keep it in mind for some of my other computers and silly stuff.
 
EvilDragon said:
Well, you can always use a Floppy Emulator which uses SD Cards as original 3,5" replacement. I even got those in my shop, perfect for classic systems.
Click to expand...
I got excited thinking it was going to look like a 3.5" disk with an SD slot in - kind of like an Everdrive. However, I don't think this floppy emulator would work for the Mega65 considering how the Mega's enclosure covers the drive.
 
pmprog said:
I got excited thinking it was going to look like a 3.5" disk with an SD slot in - kind of like an Everdrive. However, I don't think this floppy emulator would work for the Mega65 considering how the Mega's enclosure covers the drive.
Click to expand...
As I understand it, you would replace the internal floppy drive with a suitable floppy emulator (pull old drive out, put new one in, computer thinks it is the original drive, but you feed it SD cards). I don't know which ones ED has, but there are a variety to choose from to suit many uses.
 
rygD said:
As I understand it, you would replace the internal floppy drive with a suitable floppy emulator (pull old drive out, put new one in, computer thinks it is the original drive, but you feed it SD cards). I don't know which ones ED has, but there are a variety to choose from to suit many uses.
Click to expand...
Sure, I understand that, but if you look at the casing, you'd need to make sure whatever drive you find has the sd card slot in such a way you can actually access it through the Mega65 case

Here's EDs btw
https://www.dragonbox.de/en/311-sdf...ccessoires.html?search_query=floppy&results=1
 
Mega65 website was updated with the faces and merits of the people involved and a percentage progress for the project itself.

And the tutorials for programming are very funny, ;)

 
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