THE 64 - Computer and Handheld Console


That youtube just confirmed what I already knew... It's just toy and it's experience has nothing to do with a C64...
On a brighter note... :)
27973361_10204277737300259_6226126403455475428_n.jpg 28168246_10204277737020252_538093105475005865_n.jpg 28377643_10204277736900249_8638486434676771450_n.jpg

All the connectors will still be mounted of course, Gideon said he asked the assembly line to stop so he could check the fpga before 100 boards were populated and all worked great so it's a go to continue!
[doublepost=1519343029,1519342698][/doublepost]Come to think of it... would an fpga cpu board be a possibility for the Pyra?
 
rygD said:
I asked the same question.
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Same here. I think the consensus was a "not really", though I think the main reason was power consumption.
You might also need to include some flash storage for the FPGA configuration (though I think most can configure straight from an SD card, at least a few of the boards I have can).
It certainly would make an interesting option.

Alternatively, if you got one of those ARM/FPGA hybrid SoCs, that would also be a way of having onboard FPGA whilst still keeping an ARM for running some of the main components
 
Doesn't ED like FPGAs? He should consider something like this if it will sell and won't be too difficult to get everything working. I mean, think about it, this is an awesome idea. Way better than emulators, and it will be tiny with a keyboard that actually does something when you are doing C64 stuff other than collect dust and dirt.
 
FPGAs are very good for reproducing out of print old asics or cpus, and are interesting as an alternative to emulation (just bear in mind that you can't make an accurate SID chip in an FPGA as far as I know - you need an analogue oscilator and analogue filters for those I believe, which FPGA's are effectively all digital as far as I know). But they're no real competition at all as as a general purpose computing platform, where the CPU can simply execute code to behave as a web browser or an mp3 player - and the neat thing about modern OSes is you can do both at the same time effectively. An FPGA can only be configured as one pattern at a time, so unless someone's made an MP3 player and web browser pattern you can't do both of them at the same time.

I'm not aware of their power consumption, but you'd probably have to go a long way to beat an efficient CPU. And I've not yet seen a battery powered FPGA soltion for anything, so I guess they might well run a bit hot.
 
levi said:
I'm not aware of their power consumption, but you'd probably have to go a long way to beat an efficient CPU. And I've not yet seen a battery powered FPGA soltion for anything, so I guess they might well run a bit hot.
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Well, I've got my Digilent Nexys4DDR in front of me, as there's been a new MEGA65 bitstream released. You can power it by microUSB, so I might hook it up to one of those old powerbanks I've got sat around (if I can find it)... I can then see how long it lasts.

One of the other problems you'll find, is that FPGAs don't reach the GHz level of speed (well, not any of the ones I've looked at)... which means, yes, a manufactured ARM core will run a hell of a lot faster.
 
FPGAs are versatile as they can build logic on demand but this comes at the price of requiering more elements than dedicated logic itself does ... more elements draw more power so a FPGA running the same logic as a dedicated chip will run hotter and use more power which makes them a bad choice for running "normal" CPUs (also they are more expensive)

a pure FPGA board would also require to have all the peripheral logic in the FPGA too (which has to be written) and if you are fancy Network stacks etc. which takes real estate in the FPGA and a lot of time to do right

what could be interesting is a smallish ARM running all the interfaces and just feeding the FPGA the cores + input / pulling back video from it but again that will be a lot of software work for someone to do and the board space could be way to small (FPGA chips are quite large normally)

which boils down to this: as long as there is noone who would be able and willing to sink a substantial amount of time (and probably money) into doing something like this it can not be sold to end users at all ... then you end up with a slice of an already very, very tiny market to sell to and I do not think breaking even would be possible

but if someone is interested enough and has the time it could be a fun project for them
 
thats a very nice board but the pricepoint of 300€ and the way they "overwrite" the electrical signals from the original cpu made me cringe o_O its probably safe to do and will work just fine ... old modchips used to do the same but I prefer the C64 Ultimate idea of a complete new system board


given just a rough size estimate of just the FPGA and RAM versus the Pyra CPU board this might actually be doable :


V2-128.png


800px-Pyra_CPU-Board_and_Mainboard.png


but of course in that small volume the price would have to be a lot higher
 
Indeed, but it's probably the only practical solution given that the Amiga hardware is now static and new mobos are unlikely to ever be designed or updated.

The Apollo core is actually a complete Amiga replacement - it not just overrides the 68k CPU but also the custom chips too to provide RTG/SAGA graphics. It's not a GHz class accelerator, but when attached to a Workbench-equipped Amiga it feels a lot faster than an intel multi-ghz class PC (though of course classic AmigaOS is a lot, lot lighter than Windows or even Linux).
 
If you're talking size, just check out the FleaOHM project. It's a Pi Zero size FPGA. I was thinking of joining the IndieGoGo, but I've already got a couple of FPGA boards that I really should use before getting any others
https://hackaday.io/project/13048
He's added some git repos for Minimig and Next186.

ZXDunny said:
It's not a GHz class accelerator, but when attached to a Workbench-equipped Amiga it feels a lot faster than an intel multi-ghz class PC (though of course classic AmigaOS is a lot, lot lighter than Windows or even Linux).
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That's a fair point; and I imagine that as you're implementing the VHDL link to the devices, it might help make writing some of the drivers easier too?
 
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pmprog said:
Along the same lines - it whilst you can put any number of D64 files on your USB stick, the only one that "works" is THEC64-drive8.d64

https://thec64.com/loading-other-programs/

Seems rather arbitrary and a little dumb to me.
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I've heard that you can at least copy 4 games onto the console as save states, and apparently they want to allow you to be able to add more games, potentially to the main menu.
 
Sounds like they shipped way before the software was ready then.

https://snag.gy/MvOI1Y.jpg

I was tempted to reply to say to Paul that his "double delivering" hasn't actually delivered anything from the campaign... but as I'm not in any way invested in THEC64, I might as well leave it be
 
Isn't a FPGA just a lot of work? Analog are the only company that has made a NES and SNES, they produce superior emulation but if it was cheap/easy then there wouldn't be so many crap retro system knockoffs.
 
THEC64 isn't FPGA, it's an ARM board with software emulation. FPGA based Commodores are the Turbo Chameleon 64, Ultimate-64, and MEGA65 (that I know of)
 
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