The Ultimate-64!

[levi]

To me, the emulated sid on that thing sounded quite agreeable to my ears at least. I'd need a closer side-by side comparison of those versus the two different varieties of real SID chips to tell the difference, I suspect for now.

I've listened to a few 6581 vs 8580 comparisons now, and the main difference seems to be the latter chip sounds like the signal's being passed through a low band pass filter, which pretty much kills any spiky pwm speech and things like that, although tunes that are designed for the 8580 can have killer basslines that the 6581 can't reproduce well at all.

And I've found this video which switches between the two real chips and the U64s emulation on the fly, which is fairly revealing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFSnjFtgwUI

Seems the emulator is sounding more like the 6581 in a lot of respects, especially when compared to the 8580. And it's a known quantity, but if your musicing is more in the vain of trance or funk then you'd have to go a way to beat a real 8580.

 

[Eight Bit]

Had I mentioned I installed 3 sids in my u64? 2x 8580 and 1x 6581r4 (Sidfx in socket 1)
Along with the 2 emulated sids I could in theory play 15 voice tunes

 

[levi]

3 SIDs? I thought the board only had two sockets, or have you fitted some kind of multiplexing daughterboard?

 

[pmprog]

Yep, that's what a SIDFX is

 

[Eight Bit]

Yep, what pmprog said. https://www.sidfx.dk/
The SIDFX has two 3-way switches, one to switch between chips (on the fly) and one to switch the 2nd chips addressing. In my config I have 1x 8580 and 1x 6581 in the SIDFX, in the U64 socket 1. I addressed them both at $d400 so I can listen to the right chip with the flick of the switch without having to enter the menu.
In socket 2 I have put the 2nd 8580 which is auto-addressed by the U64 when using the internal player. both SID sockets and the emu-sids can be individually addressed, gained and panned in the U64 config menu.
In other words, I can now listen to just about any SID tune the way it's supposed to sound without having to reconfigure anything. Except dual 6581 tunes but there's hardly any good ones of those around anyway.
I was just listening to http://deepsid.chordian.net/?file=High Voltage SID Collection/MUSICIANS/H/Hermit/E_G_Blues_2SID.sid
But then on my U64...

 

[rSl]

... is this a better bang for the buck than getting a real one?

as it costs about 210€, one must want to replace some periferal devices (floppy drive(s), tapedrive, cartridges etc.) to justify this i think.
if you don't have these (or don't want them), the u64 is a great 'one thing that does it all' device for it's price.
just get a case, a keyboard (and optional sid-chip-of-choice) from a non functioning c64, stick the u64 board in, done.

if you want it all new, check here for c64c style cases from the original commodore moulds.
even new keyboards are made these days. they are about 155€ each, but seem to have verry good quality.
the only thing you don't get as new are key-caps for now.

 

[Eight Bit]

one must want to replace some periferal devices (floppy drive(s), tapedrive, cartridges etc.) to justify this i think.

Or just be a total nerd like me

It's not like I ditched my C64's for it though, I moved them to the basement.
My wife is happy with less clutter on my desk in the living room now... if only for that CRT....

 

[rSl]

need a new breadbin case for your u64 board? just build one yourself!

 

[pmprog]

Funny, I've literally just watched that video

 

[Eight Bit]

Me too, the guys voice reminds me of Bob Ross

 

[pmprog]

In addition, Lego Masters has just been on TV (well, finals are next week), so I've been tempted to look at some lego stuff. The new BrickLink Studio is a pretty amazing piece of kit. Wonder if they'll let you export models for use in 3D game engines.

 

[rSl]

i had a short look into fpga development and was instantly scared away because of the closed toolchains one have to use.
so i'm happy with using an allready developed core right now. but maybe some day gcc can make compiled cores, then i'm back in.

The SymbiFlow project aims to be the "GCC of FPGAs" - a fully open source toolchain supporting, multiple FPGAs from different vendors. Allowing compilation from Verilog to bitstream without touching vendor provided tools, it includes support for large modern FPGAs like the Lattice ECP5 and Xilinx 7 series. These FPGAs can be used for things previously out of reach of FOSS tools, things like high resolution video and many gigabit networking. We have also documented the FPGA bitstreams to allow other new tools and a process for replicating this effort on new types of FPGAs!

looks interesting!

 

[Eight Bit]

The firmware of the U64 is really maturing. It eats just about anything I throw at it, the fpga SID really improved and there's a couple sweet new features too.
One of them is networked streaming of the VIC and SID outputs which means it can handle 3 simultanious outputs right now. (Analogue, HDMI and an IP stream)
Someone made a nice streamer tool for Linux and Mac which can be found here https://github.com/DusteDdk/u64view

It works a charm! If combined with a telnet connection (Putty) just about everything can be controlled and monitored remotely now. (Except key strokes and joystick input of the 64 itself of course)

 

[pmprog]

I was watching Hayesmaker64 on Twitch the other night play Last Ninja 2, and he was streaming the game over his LAN, I found that a really neat function.

Haven't been back to the site to see if they're back in stock for a while... just wondering whether I should... MEGA65 seems to be making some great progress too... plus I never really get to use my C64 or Turbo Chameleon anyway, so it's almost pointless

 

[Eight Bit]

I too am following the Mega65 closely though I'm more interested in the Mega65 phone than the actual machine because the U64 already does everything I want and more. It really pushed the C64 into the modern age.
There's only a few features I would like Gideon to add. One of them is a way to mount a remote webdav folder on it, and the ftp server needs some improvement. But overall I'm super happy with it. I can play 3SID tunes, have a 16MB REU, custom roms, remote control and monitoring, USB, Networking, audio/video streaming etc. etc. Too many features to mention. I think it's ease of use exceeds the TC though that too is a very nice tool.

For me the U64 is rated 5/5. I'd reccomend!

 

[pmprog]

My concern with the MEGA65 is that as it's not natively a C64 (though has C64 mode), there'll be few developers mucking in to make software using all the new functionality.

Do you know if there many developers using much of the new features of the U64? Such as the networking functionality? How well are the features documented (for developers)

I got a breadbin case and keyboard off ebay ready to build a machine up, but one of the screw tunnels/shafts/whaddayoucallit broke when I was unscrewing one time (I guess the plastic was a bit brittle). So one pro to the MEGA65 would be a nice new case and keyboard

 

[rSl]

i really like the u64 too, it's awesome! but it happend that i don't have one.
my friggin' bank screwed up three times for payment via mollie, i canceled my order, yuck.

i could have gotten an next batch board, gideon was verry supportive, but i had allready installed my spare c64g so i'm still on an C= rev. e shortboard.
my happy, current c64 setup is:
c64g (classic nt with voltage protection, tfc3+ plus wifi 64 modem), sd2iec and a small lcd monitor plus active speakers.
allready ordered a lumafix and sidfx for streakfree video and better/correct sound.

i especially like my little and cheap creative t15 active speakers in this setup. they are totally basshead v shaped and a pleasure to listen sidsound and dubmusic on.
for other music they sound somewhat muddy but for sid and dub they are a perfect match.
mega65 is interesting for me because it's completely opensource, i *really* dig this fact.

C=

 

[Eight Bit]

Do you know if there many developers using much of the new features of the U64? Such as the networking functionality? How well are the features documented (for developers)

Well yes, there's a couple... This Scott Hutter guy made a modern terminal suite and IRC chat, groepaz made ucodenet, allowing me to mount or run disk images or start .prg files from my pc. Than there's this streamer thingy and I use acid64pro too to play sids files from my pc on the u64. and more is coming out every now and then... As far as I know most stuff can be found on github

 

[rSl]

Ultimate 64 Turbo option in firmware 1.33+

Games included on video: Driller Stunt Car Racer Elite 128 Leader board golf

invidious.snopyta.org

48x cpu speed, insane haha!

 

[Eight Bit]

There was a bug in that firmware, there's a 1.34 already.
Gideon is doing a good job adding features

I like this speed bump for playing games like in that video though my favorite is the ability to stream video and audio over tcp.
This makes it real easy to integrate it in your workflow on the desktop and/or stream it with OBS.