THE 64 - Computer and Handheld Console

[ible]

^ how about the bitbox and the uzebox? (though of course the more the merrier.)

 

[skeezix]

Theres a lot of these little projects around; like, at least 10 or 20 of them

Way off topic, sorry, but I'll blabber on anyway

The uzebox is more similar to where I was going, though its composite out IIRC; to be useful nowadays, you pretty much have to be VGA (and even then, its on its last legs; but supporting HDMI costs a couple of chips and is just a huge PITA overall for simple projects.)

So Zikzak is VGA output, and has cartridge support (Cause, awesome ... it might be that I'm wanking too far though, as carts really are stupid, in this day and age of SD and USB; but I wanted carts Also, PS/2 keyboard support, multiple joysticks, expandability for SD and all that. Headphone jacks.

Strikes me there is a compromise .. somethign liek a slimmed down Zikzak (ditch the cart support), but still be VGA. There are some FPGA based projects out there that generate VGA very nicely, and VPGA are awesome.. but not somethign most peopel want to hack around on to start with (learning verilog is nuts!).. but Zikzaks approach (which was a learning platform for myself) is silly too.. having a z80 on there.

These days (its been a couple years), the latest STM32 microcontroller has a bit more RAM, even higher performance specs.. the older one could pretty much run as a single chip (and a few projects have done it that way to be sure.. I did it early on but wanted the separate cpu); the latest one can do it even better, more cycles to spare (though more cost, too.)

Theres a couple very good single-chip projects though, so my angle was always doing 'more' .. like a C64 or Amiga capability or better, but still simple and non-cheating (not all done in hardware.)

I'm still not sure if doing a z80 CPU is awesome or rediculously stupid, but theyu're still being made and very cheap ($5 give or take).

RL has been eating me alive the last couple years from kids to insane work, but I'm working on a shield for ZZ right now, so that it has real VGA ports and such instead of just pinouts; just get a base zikzak pcb, clip on the shield, and theres the full machine, with all busses and pinouts exposed, and with real jacks to make plugging it in easy.

The biggest 'problem' I have with ZZ I think, with going 'slightly mainstream', is the AY-3-8910 audio chip. Its very hard to get anymore and quite pricey (the various options.. theres a few different packages of the same chip, mind you, but all more pricey and rare than I'd like.) On the one hand, the z80 could itself do audio, or the stm32 I'm using as GPU; or just toss an atmega on there with a SID chip firmware, so that you could code it like a C64 .. but all those extra chips do make it crazy (and fun).

So, I've been waffling what to do about audio....

So, keep zikzak as it is (z80 cpu etc), maybe change audio, make a shield so its got all the jacks and stuff easy (or redo the main pcb to have the jacks right on board; the shield is just a way to force myself to make time to model all the connectors and get them tested, in the small free time I have; rerouting the main pcb to have all the jacks on it, is a real nightmare .. takes weeks .. then 3d print a case, and I can call it 'done'. Or try to figure out how to produce a few for people, but I doubt anyone really cares but me

http://www.zikzak.ca

jeff

 

[Eight Bit]

as tbh the C64's games were a bit shit

Wot?! U mad?

 

[ZXDunny]

Wot?! U mad?

Nope. See, I came from the Speccy so there was a little bit of rivalry going on in the old playground back in the day - so it's really only recently that I've gotten into the C64, and I have to say I'm underwhelmed. Sure, the sound is quite nice, but there's some really, really disappointing games in that catalogue. Carrier Command (really? I mean, the Speccy got a full 3D version!). Elite. Star Wars. WTF happened to Cybernoid?

It seems that you're really only going to have a good time with a C64 if you're into shooters and platformers (though the C64 version of JSW really leaves a lot to be desired).

Bombjack was good though.

 

[FBnil]

if theres a niche or if its already flooded with

Niche's grow too. Of course, the ZZ can not pull a BBC Zero stunt, but there you see that there still is "room".
The thing is to find the right niche:
I think the game aspect is maybe not that lucrative. Game designers go for bigger platforms, like Rpi where they have audiences (their stuff reaches endusers).
The retro game tinkerers would be drawn to the ZX Vega and Commodore Next... which is unfortunate, as this is the niche I think ZZ is strongest in (machines for learning from the ground up, retro game programmers and retro gamers).
I always thought the ZZ should be strong in audio and with the chips, could be like a nice synth... problem is the CPU power to do anything beyond driving the chips as intended (and not, say, sampling).
Another niche is the "build it yourself"... for those, you get a well rounded machine that can do all sorts of things and is not that limited as the cheap creditcard sized "school" computers.... and that niche could be something...

I'd still buy one if it is worth your time making more ZZ's , but with negative free time I have at the moment I wont be reliving my CBM times soon... so it would be for the display (like my Rpi just catching dust)

 

[Klumpen]

Niche's grow too.

Smartphones were a niche once too. Just sayin'.

 

[levi]

I can see a couple of different approaches regarding these devices.

One being exploited here and in devices like the ZX Vega and even that ZX styled bluetooth keyboard produced by Elite Systems remind people of the physical form of their old devices, while actually being powered by modern simple hardware, albeit mostly configured to act like the old machines.

Another is for mostly software people interested in simple hardware and seeing how they cope with it; devices from PIC boards to Arduinos and even Raspberry Pis fit this model.

And there's the Zikzak model - a learning tool to produce modern hardware using simpler parts that have a limited number of pins so can reasonably be breadboarded some of the way, making use of modern standards. The only problem I see here is people are always going to be limited in some ways, and it's easy for people to push for a few more pins to be accommodated to use a more capable part here and there. I can't see there being just one Zikzak once people start using it and developing for it, but maybe that's okay? Zikzak is documented so it's a known thing, and other people can document their own products on the scale from 8-bit machine all the way up to something completely modern.

And there's the Pandora/Pyra model, which makes full use of the latest parts to create a niche product which is retro only in that it can emulate old machines well, but be a lot more convenient to use than the other types of devices for doing retro stuff.

That latter category is where most of my money is going, but that's not to say I might not be interested in making my own zikzak when Jeff comes up with a system that's easy for my to follow and make myself - but for now it's fine as it is, as a blog about his own experiences (if only it was updated more frequently and with more details about how things came to be wired the way they are in the different revision boards )

 

[Ian J]

I started with a Speccy (1st two games being Atic Atac & Jet Set Willy) and when funds allowed purchased a C64.

Each system had it's excellent and utter shite games, most times the games were much better on one format than the other so owning both was a bonus.

Re Carrier Command being 3D on the Spectrum I could say the same about Action Biker on the C64, the Speccy was 2D while the C64 was isometric scrolling 3D.

Ghostbusters - C64
Buggy Boy - C64
Everything by Ultimate Play The Game - Spectrum
Action Biker - C64
Wanted Monty Mole - Spectrum
The Last Ninja 1 & 2 - C64

The one thing the C64 always had for me though was the music, I even have mp3 recordings of 64 tunes on my mp3 player now.

I still love both machines as much as the Amiga but I know each had utter shite on it.

 

[skeezix]

I can see a couple of different approaches regarding these devices.
And there's the Zikzak model - a learning tool to produce modern hardware using simpler parts that have a limited number of pins so can reasonably be breadboarded some of the way, making use of modern standards. The only problem I see here is people are always going to be limited in some ways, and it's easy for people to push for a few more pins to be accommodated to use a more capable part here and there. I can't see there being just one Zikzak once people start using it and developing for it, but maybe that's okay? Zikzak is documented so it's a known thing, and other people can document their own products on the scale from 8-bit machine all the way up to something completely modern.

I have a model? yay Well, I've made one so far (well, okay, not counting the veritable mountain of prior revisions and experiments, and things that turned into 3d printers, cars, tricopters, mod players and quadcopters).

There is at least a couple people showing up again here in the thread so I guess I shall have to start in the old Zikzak thread again

That latter category is where most of my money is going, but that's not to say I might not be interested in making my own zikzak when Jeff comes up with a system that's easy for my to follow and make myself - but for now it's fine as it is, as a blog about his own experiences (if only it was updated more frequently and with more details about how things came to be wired the way they are in the different revision boards )

haha, yeah, a lot of stuff in the old thread here, but I tried to be more organized once I started the blog; which is to say, fewer posts, but a bit more meat on them. But you're right, I got side tracked and stopped updating it, and never really organized the site to be ... really useful. Needs more links and cross references, more schematics and photos of the parts, and more stuff around the periphery.. screwing with Eagle and so forth.

I'm damned near tempted to build a tool for converting parts from one CAD library to another, as the whole CAD library thing is a super nightmare.

(working on making connectors in eagle now, so that the pcbs can be generated with vga, etc connectors right on, instead of header pins. Hours of pain to measure, print, redo... per part.)

OKay, I'll go back to the old zikzak thread, and stop hijacking this one. This is why I love these boards, all the way from gp2x etc .. random conversations turn into meaningful ones or hacking code/hardware

jeff

 

[rygD]

@skeezix as I have hinted at in the past, I would be interested in messing around with one. I don't know what would be the best fix for some of the problems you would run into making it more of a product, and I don't have time to think about it atm. I will probably check out your thread and blog again later, and join the conversation (i just always feel like I am in way over my head).

 

[Fzero]

The Speccy is close to my heart.
Those yellow and blue, red and grey loading lines and glitchy sounds were a big part of my day ... I'd load a game up before my dinner and [hopefully] play it straight after [sometimes loads fail eh, start again]

Big game for C64 for me was Chucky Egg.
Amiga, it was Shadow of the Beast, Batman and Lotus Challenge.

My mates had those systems back in the day I just had the Spectrum 48k then the 128+2

Bombjack, 180 darts, Jack the Nipper II, Rambo, Cobra, Project Future, Head Over Heels, Renegade, Arkanoid, Xenon, Ghostbusters...
Those were all amazing games for me.

I like the look of this handheld C64, but I really want to get the handheld Spectrum, when I have enough cash to spare on it, I reckon I will add it to the collection.





...I'm going to play some Renegade later on, decided

 

[levi]

I will probably check out your thread and blog again later, and join the conversation (i just always feel like I am in way over my head).

I often get that feeling when confronted by one of Skeezix's walls of text I do usually read them all, but I'm not sure what difference it makes since I usually pick something out to reply to, and there's no evidence I read two thirds of them.

 

[Ian J]

I don't think this is going to get funded.

Looking through the comments they are responding to most requests as "we're hoping to add that feature"

I had hoped they would show off the prototype that they spoke of but nothing has appeared.

EDIT:

I'm very underwhelmed compared to the Spectrum Next

 

[levi]

It's using igg's flexible funding model, so it will still get the money raised thus far even if it doesn't reach the target. I'm not sure this is quite the right project for that model, but they've gone for it and I'm not sure what funders can expect once this completes.

 

[vcoleiro1]

Did anyone here back this?

 

[pmprog]

No, I was tempted, but I thought I'd wait until there was something more substantial (like a prototype), or see if the MEGA65 appeared first.

The fact that they're late on the first two models and are now talking about a third, just seems ridiculous to me. So I'm glad I didn't

 

[Ian J]

Did anyone here back this?

No, it was just emulation in a C64 style case.

I could take a Raspberry Pi and a 64 case and do the same.

 

[pmprog]

I'm still curious on what they envisage the "Mini" being, when you have a "desktop" and a handheld.

Ian has a point about it just being emulated (in fact, that's what I've done with my Amiga 600), but at the same time what's really the difference between that, and an FPGA based system like the MIST or MEGA65? It's still the same computer, just implemented in a different layer. I would like to get into FPGA, but am wondering if it's actually worth it.

I thought the MEGA65 might be nice for my son when he grows up a bit, but yeah, maybe I just buy a keyboard that has some space inside the plastic, whack in a Pi zero. Will work with more modern controllers and devices. Probably cheaper too

 

[ZXDunny]

From the POV of most systems, emulation is no different to the real thing, assuming that the emulator is 100% accurate - not an easy task and only achieved for some systems so far. So there's that. For the C64, you have the added difficulty of analog components in the audio circuitry which can't be emulated 100% perfectly and indeed often sounded different from one machine to the next. It depends if you want as much perfection as possible, and it's unlikely that "the64" will offer that, based as it is on the same massively underpowered hardware that the Vega/Vega+ is.

 

[Ian J]

For me the main reason to use emulation when I still have the original hardware is ease of use on modern displays.

I'd love to get a really nice CRT (Broadcast Sony) but I just don't have the space, I currently use a Philips 8833 Mk II that can take most older hardware but it's so small when compared to a modern flat screen TV.

I would love an upscaler to use older hardware on the flat panel TV, but again those are such a luxury when I can just run an emulator and get a nice image on our main TV.