You are absolutely killing it, designed two games and now you’re BUILDING A COMPUTER FROM SCRATCH! This channels come a long way since the iBook guy when I subscribed lol
hes a legend and extremely likeable. best channel on youtube hands down i can watch this guy do anything and be entertained. i dont understand ANYTHING about computers but i still been watching his content for years
ArQmA, a crypto coin coded for that reason. If you want it done right, do it yourself. I did QA on the code and it's similar to checking firmware and assembly programming making sure the code doesn't leak information, stay secure, and doesn't crash. There was hardware and software bugs caught by me back in the early PC days , but it all started with banging out solutions on 8 bit hardware like the C64 and Atari 800. You wrote your own libraries, tested the results, directly from the hardware if you had to.
This Commander X16 computer is a really ambitious project, and hopefully, it could be a new gaming platform for the retro gaming scene with its own unique library of games. I think the X16's gaming capabilities would be like a mix between the Commodore 64, Atari ST and the Amiga. And speaking of games, are you planning to make a custom port of Planet X3 as a pack-in game for the Commander X16? I think it would be pretty cool.
3:51 reminded me of when in school our teacher assigned the class to each develop a small section of the 8088 processor using all 7400 series logic chips. Everyone did a part of the overall processor and we came in each with multiple breadboards it quickly became a wiring nightmare to run all the buses to hook it all together. I'm sure everyone had at least one if not a handful of wiring mistakes in their section needless to say by the time the class ended we never did get the stupid thing to work.
We did that as well but the teacher opted for each person to set up his own. The Motorola 8088 rocks. Really a predecessor to Intel and everything we know today.
So weird, I'm sitting at my local coffee shop in Champaign Illinois and overhear a guy ordering coffee and chatting with the barista about the work he is doing for "a guy in Texas named David Murray who's remaking the Commodore 64." What a small world. I enjoy seeing your design and architecture decision-making process unfold.
We're super excited to be part of this project! We have a lot more work to do, but the progress at this point is really amazing. We have a great team full of talented folks and we're really looking forward to the day we can start making them available to the public!
I'm eating this stuff up, as I'm a retired EE working from 1981, so this equipment brings back that warm familiar feeling. I broke down and bought a VIC-20 from K-Mart when the price dropped to $239. It only came with 5k or 6k of RAM. I put a 24k expansion card on it. You have a new subscriber! 🙂
I assume this gets asked a lot: But could you please use something else than Facebook to give updates on the X16? You need to make an account there in order to join a group and a lot of people don't want to do that. If you had a website/blog (with an RSS-Feed) it would be easier to follow along. Edit: There's a link to his forum now in the Video-description. Thanks!
Third to that. If the reddits/forums are just as active or valuable, I'll totally go there. Perhaps encourage people to use your forum first, rather than fb?? I dumped fb months ago after I realized that 1) I was wasting time following folks that I didn't really know (anyone close to me has other ways to contact me), 2) I was sick of being bombarded by asinine political memes grossly oversimplifying nuanced social issues, and thus were actually harming any chance of civil discourse in the country, and 3) the only remotely useful point was keeping up with product developments from companies I was interested in... which is all info I could find through other channels where I wasn't being so scrutinized by a company who's sole point is to monetize my personal interests. Zuckerberg can suck it.
I don't do facebook either, though I got thinking, maybe a discord server would be a good idea, not only would it provide a way for people that don't use facebook to receive updates on the project, it would also provide more instant and open discourse, since it works more like an old school chat server. Also, if David actually reads this and considers it, don't be frightened away by the word "server", there is no need to set up a network server or anything like that, it's just the term discord uses for the chat groups it hosts and creating one is quite simple.
@@aw4483 Well, fuck no. My father told me "If five thousand people jump off a cliff, will you do too?" Say no to peer pressure. No mateer if it's smoking, drinking, shoplifting or Facebook usage.
A kit that the end user can assemble makes a lot of sense, because you can incorporate a little info about how the device works and what it can do with the assembly instructions. E.g. this is the sound chip that has 6 channels (or however many it has). That way developers learn as they build and have good initial familiarity with the hardware before even turning it on.
That Perifractic guy seems a bit weird... Otherwise lovely video 8-Bit Guv'nor! Seriously though, I'm truly honoured to be part of this eXciting project. Commander X16 FTW! 👍🕹️ P.S. A word about the case design: We are going this route for very good reasons. I'll be doing a full post and user poll shortly on the Facebook about this. In short, we don't want to custom build a case and keyboard as that would add hundreds of thousands of dollars which you guys would have to pay for. It also introduces many risks and delays as you have seen on other projects like the ZX Spectrum Next. Therefore we are limited to high quality off-the-shelf components, which is the spirit of David's project. We will be customizing and rebranding these and you'll see all the options in the aforementioned poll, and have a say. We realize with nearly 1 million subscribers we are not going to be able to please everybody, and we thank you for respecting that. However you can trust that we are moving forward with the best possible option for the community so you can get this machine in your hands as quickly as possible, looking sweet, and at the best value. Keep in mind too that many beautiful classic computers did not have an integrated keyboard. Apple Macintosh, Amiga 1000, Commodore 128D, Amstrad PCW... Thank you for your enthusiasm and feedback 👍🕹️
@@BillyMartin4Life This is unlikely sorry. It would cost over $100k in tooling and add 6-12 months of time. We did consider it early on. But you will love what we do come out with 👍🕹️
Yes, please! Make bare-board w/documentation and full kit packages available! My first purchased computer was the Rockwell AIM-65 single-board system back in 1977. I saw your memory model and the first thing I thought about was additional programming environment expandability and was pleased about the Assembler. My AIM-65 has 5 ROM sockets on board... 2 for the 8K System Monitor (included), 1 4K slot for the Assembler and 2 for 8K Basic -or- PL/65. I later built a bank-switched memory expansion board (32K) to back-fill low memory (board had 4K) and put ram in the 12K language address range so I could load Assembler, Basic, PL-65 and Forth as desired.
Agreed. I think many people would buy a kit on principle, but it may also keep the cost down. Cost is a factor with a few of my 8-bit enthusiast friends, so a kit option might make that easier for them.
Disclaimer. I love this, I will buy one of these. I have been into computers as well as gaming since 1986, this is my wheelhouse and I will own one. The case, please don't use those cases. Please, every bit of soul that is this machine just got obliterated by those half sized keyboard mock ups and that garish "is that a Dish Network cable box" case. Please, no. The logo is banging but those cases, please don't. Edited just because I want to say I love this project and everyone involved. I just hate the damn case 😩
if Mr.Murray would listen to everyone complaining to "this and that", he would never be able to complete anything!! - let him make his computer as HE wants.
I had to run a spectrum emulator on android in order to demonstrate how I wanted something coding in java using sinclair basic, I could totally get on board with this, pun intended.
Last time I complained about the videos not being longer and there I have it, a 44 minutes long video. The 8-Bit "god" answered my prayers. This is an amazing Project I would like to point out. Your Dream Computer is actually a lot of people's dream computer, for sure, and the fact that you are being so open with the development, the design and with the software and all of this will bring a lot of people into it. Keep it up. I certainly won't buy the first one because I'm not so much into modding and hacking and daughter boards and so on. But I would certainly buy the Raspberry PI sized one (I hope it will come out eventually). Once again great project and thanks a lot for the long and certainly entertaining video.
When this computer releases, maybe you should make Planet X4 for it (or maybe call it Planet X16 :P ). I know you probably won't do that, though, so a Planet X3 port would be cool, too.
Glad to see that there is a working prototype for this now! As a computer engineering student, I find these types of projects fascinating. I know you're not much of a fan of FPGAs, but through my education I've come to see them as the perfect solution for custom logic. Off-the-shelf chips will come and go, but HDLs and re-programmable chips will always be available. I would have loved to help out with the video system, but I was too busy when the initial announcement was made, and I had enough of a struggle making a simple 80x60 pixel display controller for my coursework. It looks like you've got a solid team for this, and I can't wait to see how it turns out!
22:00 "And if enough demand, a custom ASIC" Don't, it'll be more expensive and error prone than using an FPGA.The volume and R&D necessary for ASIC production is higher than this project will ever garner. I'm not saying it won't be popular, but it'll never be sold in every Walgreens and Walmart popular, and that's the level where you'd consider going into ASIC production.
@Intra Ignis personally, I have no problem with people announcing their qualification while making a comment/suggestion. I'm not saying we should 100% believing random guy on the internet, but making fun of him for saying he has worked in the industry for a long time is very unnecessary. It solves nothing.
@Intra Ignis You're right. I am just some rando on the internet. I do invite people to look up rates from places like TSMC, MOSIS, or Global Foundries though. This project would probably go for a sea of gates style ASIC, which are cheap-ish, so around ~$50k startup costs + cost of masks (depends on the fab) + fab fees, 10k-25k/yr. minimums with a three year contract. I guess the biggest deal is at any point, you can call the fab and ask them and verify this info, or even ask other EE's in chip design. They exist, I promise.
@@adamsfusion The point Intra is making is that it's totally useless to say what you do for a living, how long you've been doing it, and so forth. It's totally irrelevant. It's about what you're actually saying (to which I agree by the way) which makes your reaction good. The rest is 'fugazi' (see: wolf of wall street).
@@akkudakkupl Talk to the parallax guys working on the propeller 2 mcu. It's been a decade in the making, they have verilog, and are still having a hell of a time getting it to work. Just because it works on an fpga doesn't mean it will always tape out economically for a given process node and package size. Power dissipation (to only mention one issue) of such a design is a big concern.
You know what she says... "It's not the size, it's what you do with it." In all seriousness though - if developers would properly optimize, we would not need 32 gigs of ram in our offce desktops.
@@BFBeast666 it's bit more complicated ;). You see, when you're entering higher level of abstraction, it's easier to actually write code, but it costs RAM. On the other hand, it's not problem of compilers/optimizers, but rather clumsy x86 arch with mistakes inherited in newer desings in flavour of backwards compatibility ;]
BFBeast666 Nothing to do with optimisation, it’s simple math a single 4K texture on a modern game takes up 16 meg of ram and a game can have hundreds or thousands of textures, That’s why you need gigabytes of vram to hold all that data.
Its the limitations of old computers that give them their magic. Don't go mad on features and then when someone creates something amazing it will be truly impressive, like that C64 game you showed in this video for example. My first thought was why not just use an FPGA but then I realised what I just said above, its too easy to go nuts as they're so flexible and powerful and also original chips have a certain magic themselves too. Good luck, I'm tempted to get one myself.
Gustavo Valdiviesso probably. But if I was to make the decision on which platform teach students I'd go for something AVR or ARM based. This could be Arduino, C language directly (gcc), Nucleo platform (mbed for beginners or stm cube ide later), and BBC MicroBit with its visual editor for children.
@@SergiuszRoszczyk Sure, but I would argue that these modern platforms can be used as a second contact with the subject, instead of a first. This retro-computer they are building is simple enough to be the first contact between a student and computer hardware. I, for instance, started using MSX-standard boards to teach the basics, at least one semester before going into modern microcontrollers. This clearly improved the students performance in later courses to the point where the sophomores are encouraging the freshmen to take this basic course and learn some form of Assembly (z80 or 6502) before heading to FPGAs. That is why I can see my lab full of kits like these in the future 😎
As a computer engineer, I think this is neat, but it is a very poor teaching tool because the design is done completely wrong from a practical standpoint. Many of the design decisions are arbitrary and the memory is hamstrung... the 6502 should be abandoned and a non bank swtiched architecture used instead of this mess nobody wants bank switching. And the machine would be better implemented entirely in a single FPGA... A better teaching tool is something like a PIC32 board, RISC-V board or FPGA board... this board is too complex for students to buy as well. Also the use of vintage chips doesn't do students any favors either. Also, a completely TTL logic computer would be a much better computer to for EE/CE students to work on. While this may seem needlessly harsh... the fact is this the dream computer of a nostalgic madmad ;-) ... not really targeted as teaching tool especially since the architecture is needlessly, from a practical standpoint, stuck in the 80s. Ah the 80's a great decade.
As a big, big fan of the YM2612 (I'm one of the co-founders of Project2612), I'd totally support going for the YM2151, especially if you pair it up with a YM3012 or YM3014 for stereo/monophonic DAC. The MSX has some seriously amazing tunes written for its games (for a good example, listen to Motoi Sakuraba rock out with Granada: th-cam.com/play/PLE71CE8AF98288202.html ), and all that was was a YM2151, YM3012, and an Oki MSM6258 - it was good enough for a nearly flawless conversion of the Street Fighter II arcade soundtrack, and indeed, Capcom used the X68000 as an arcade development board for the CPS1! To me, the Commander X16 owes itself to priding itself on sound, because the SID was such a big part of the Commodore 64's success in that regard. I think it'll work just fine, by the way, since X68000 machines ran from 10-25 MHz generally, with upgrades well into the 75 MHz range.
Did David say that they weren't produced anymore? If so, I'd be in favor of the YM2612 core integrated into the FPGA. This would also help to keep costs down. _And_ it could theoretically be upgraded/updated in the future through some sort of firmware update path.
I had just watched part 1 of this series when I realized that part 2 came out just a week ago. I'm so excited about this project that I could have watched you guys talk about it for much much longer! The X16 opens up sooo many possibilities to continue where we left off in the 80s/90s and go way beyond that. My first computer was a C64 and I still have it. A bout of 8-bit nostalgia hit me a couple of weeks ago and I've basically been watching your videos non-stop since. I can't wait to see this project becoming a reality. I'm excited for myself and especially for my kids who will be able to experience what it was like for us back in the days. I really hope this project and others similar to it will be the start of a whole new/old 8-bit era. So keep up the good work guys and thanks for all you've done so far!
This project is giving me gleeful butterflies in my stomach! I love love love the whole endeavour! I miss the old days when I felt I had control over my machine - and was responsible if I "bricked" it (I started with an HP Vectra, and GWBasic)
I have always wanted to get into old computers and code, but all of my options felt daunting, overwhelming. This? This looks incredible, as a diving board into a dream hobby, I'm super excited to see more of this. Also Facebook sucks, please pick a different website
It is nice to see another platform that is newer and people can program games for. Lets face it, not everyone is able to get a hold of older hardware. This is a dream machine that is slowly coming true. I truly enjoy David starting a project and providing inspiration and seeing others come in and they work together to make it a reality. Judging by these videos and his past games, David does not seem like one to put his name on garbage- it will become a quality product (which would sell big if it was done in the 80s).
Wow, kudos to the entire team, looks like the project is rolling along nicely! Watching the description of the memory map, bank switching and video memory reminds me of my plans to add a 3-D viewer to my Apple ][+, using 6845 chips and surplus camcorder viewfinders from Gateway Electronics in St. Louis. Never got very far with it, but I learned a lot along the way. Best of luck, guys, keep up the good work!
11:10 Instead of having "Auto increment" flag, how about using the value as signed 8-bit value, and adding that to address. This would make it possible to move COLUMN of data instead of normal ROW of data available with plain flag. And using signed value enables both increase and decrease.
If he plans 3D games like that, I wouldn't go with indirect addressing at all. You don't want to build your screen in RAM and then blit it to the videoram; it reduces framerates by two.
For the controller ports, I suggest Sega Megadrive/Genesis compatible. This means it will work with Atari standard joysticks (like most 8 bit computers did) but also have provision for more than one button if required.
I was thinking this too. Assuming the ports aren't just for testing. Less of an issue of possible problems with Nintendo and the standard was quite widespread back then suggesting it was a straight forward design and not vendor locked.
@@MagikGimp Yes, almost every 8-bit computer used the Atari standard, and so did the 16-bit Atari ST and the Amiga. It was the defacto standard in those days. Nobody owns it, so there wouldn't be any legal problems.
I don't think you could do Genesis/Kempston cross-compatibility. There was a 5V power line in the Kempston standard that was used as one of the buttons on the Genesis controller, so plugging a Genesis controller to a Kempston standard port would asplode the machine. Why Sega didn't put the extra buttons on the analog paddle lines, I shall never know.
Me, as Mainframer, playing with JCL, COBOL and such, appreciate seeing your videos, it makes easier to get how a cpu works, how a memmory work and I do want to watch your channel all the time. Good job you've done here! I remember being in Plano, TX and seeing all those machines at EDS back in the 2000's and I can't help myself but think you are a person whowould appreciate that too (sorry the bad english, not native)
Getting stuff shipped from the US is also murderously expensive. Buying a Unicomp Model M keyboard and getting it shipped to Australia had the shipping end up at almost half of the total.
@The 8-Bit Guy - Glad you're still considering the 65C816 (with the same memory map) to get the benefits of the 16bit ALU etc. It would also mean the X16 name remains appropriate (otherwise it should probably be renamed Commander X65). The perfect CPU would've been the 65C802 it seems. But in it's absence, I do still hope you seriously consider the 65C816 (but with 16bit address space). This may be useful / of interest: sbc.rictor.org/support/conv.html :-)
But is it available as a 'new' part? Keep in mind what the goals of this project are. The fact that it has to be off the shelf parts for instance means that the 65816 was an option (even though they gave up on it due to complexity), but a 68000 is not. One is still available off the shelf as brand new parts, the other is not. As it happens, when it comes to Yamaha sound chips, the OPL-2 and OPL-3 of Adlib/soundblaster fame are more likely to be available than the YM2612...
@@ubernerrd I agree . The intention it to make a nostalgic platform and the graphic are on par or better than a 16 bit console , the name of it has 16 so the sound should be nostalgic of a 16 bit system.
@@KuraIthys None of the chips he's suggesting are available as new parts. Yamaha stopped manufacturing actual FM hardware in the early 2000s, and the 2151 he's such a fan of hasn't been in production for over 25 years. Any chip he gets is going to be a used chinese rebadge pulled from a PCB with a new date slapped on it, be it any flavor of AY or Yamaha FM chip.
This is such a cool project - really hope you can bring it to market. Would love to use this with my young son. I think the $50 price point is v ambitious and I would be prepared to pay significantly more than that for this product.
and here we are a year out from possible home release. It's nearer $500 now! Which I think we always knew would be the case. Totally worth every cent! :) I will have two of them.
I'm picking my jaw up from the floor, great work on your design. This channel will make me drop what I am doing when I see a new video posted. So cool! Thank you for posting.
My first computer was an electron and I love the idea of this, I also have a bit of an obsession with software rendering and with the idea of the incremental pointer for writing to graphics memory that got me wondering if anything like this would be possible: Using a similar incremental pointer to the banked ram so sprite data could be read quickly to compliment the quick writing to display ram, maybe even without that particular bank being the currently selected one. Or, more advanced, some sort of interpolation hardware that steps through u and v with each read access and addresses the banked ram instead of just incrementing the pointer, maybe making texture mapping or rotatable sprites possible. Anyway, just some thoughts, but looking forward to seeing how this project turns out.
45 minute vid! Whoo! Cant wait for this to progress further. To combat feature creep, leave sockets for things or blank solder points so these things could be added by those who may want it.
Keep up the great teamwork with your developers and co-creators, David! I'd really love to own a Commander X16 computer someday when it's finished, 8-Bit Guy!
Respect ! I bow to you 8BitGuy1 !!! I was raised on - my first exp was Spectrum (my 5 yrs older sister and her friends....) Than my best friend got Commodore 64 and later I had Amiga 500..... What a great times ! Wish you very best of luck and thanks for video !
Oh... another thing: one of the first C64 things I did was test how much slower BASIC was than machine language. I wrote a BASIC program that went in a loop, placing a random char into screen RAM, then putting a random color attribute on by POKEing color RAM, then after all 1000 were done, changing the border to a random color, then going back to the start after polling the keyboard (so I could quit). RUNning it produced the expected output at a leisurely pace (I estimate one line of 40 per second). I wrote the same thing in machine language with the help of SUPERMON, using SID to produce the random values. When I ran that, as soon as I pressed RETURN, I was amazed by how utterly slow BASIC was in comparison. I only eyeballed it, but my machine code did an entire screen in roughly the time BASIC did one character! It's literally 1000 times faster unless my eyeballs are tricking me. I wonder where the slowdown is. Applesoft on the Apple II is a variant of the BASIC CBM shipped on the C64 (they even left in the two FAC-sized "numbers" that produced the "MICROSOFT!" text), and even that isn't as slow. Maybe there's loads of overhead in KERNAL I don't know about...
On these old systems BASIC is interpreted, which means that as it executes, machine code is reading the BASIC text and converting it to instructions and executing those instructions. This is a slow process since there are a lot of different things going on, and it’s even slower because the interpreter doesn’t save what it converts and has to constantly re-interpret the same instructions over and over again (unlike, say, a compiler which converts text to machine code once before executing anything). All of this means BASIC on these systems was always much, much slower than assembly/machine language. If there were differences between different versions of BASIC it was typically due to how well written and efficient the interpreter was.
FRIENDLY JAPANESE BUSINESSMAN 🤷🏼♂️ Can’t please everyone you know. Looking forward to the day you’re going to stop by and show me how to make music that doesn’t suck. I’ll make some tacos. :)
I like the look, but I cringe at the key layout. In the 80s, people who already knew how to touch-type had to re-learn, because the details of ASCII meant that it was difficult to make (for example) shift-9 be (, shift-0 ), and shift ' become ". People of course DID learn the ASCII-twisted keyboards that came from Teletypes, ADM-3 terminals, and all of their clones. And then we had to re-learn AGAIN when IBM decided they had to embed microcontrollers in their keyboards in order to make the key layout match their mechanical typewriters. So yes, I understand exactly why the keys are as they are, but these days, the microcontroller in the keyboard is a $1 chip. But I'm probably just stomping my feet on holy ground, here.
(And the very next thing I see is the front page of commanderx16.com is a picture of the system with a modern keyboard layout.) Never mind. I mean, not a big deal to offer two different keyboard designs, for true believers of either denomination.
I love this intro. It makes me feel like I'm watching an 80's or early 90's sitcom. All the other music you provide us with is great too, my favourite is "Derivation of cleam". Your channel popped up on my recommended list about a year ago and I've been watching ever since. Thank you for the awesome content and congratulations on 1 Million Subscribers. Here's to a million more! Matt
@@RiksVids That's great except it seems there is duplication now and inevitably out of sync. For example according to the FAQ on FB there is an emulator whereas on the forum the FAQ says there is no emulator but one will come.
@@oscwavcommentaccount Doom runs in 386 protected mode and uses 32bit instruction set but there is DOOM ported to C64 with 20MHz 65816 SuperCPU 8/16bit hybrid as well
Hi David, congratulations! I really liked the video and I would just give you my point of view on some aspects: 1) Vera addressing seems to be in high/low byte as opposed to 6502 2) For a real retro feeling edition I'd like a version (hoping the cheaper one :) ) with the keyboard integrated in the case like C64 or A500 2a) For the same feeling an integrated HDMI port would be great allowing to connect the computer to a modern TV 3) 8Mhz should be enough for anybody :) but it would be cool to run at full 14Mhz default 6502 speed 4) Because you have alredy choose to go in fpga with Vera chip, problably the best choice for the audio chip is to use the same FPGA. Anyway I wonder if the code will be open source 5) Please don't use nes/snes joustick data bus. The best thing about using the Atari DB9 port is the ease to use a button, microswitch or whatever to give an input to the machine. That DB9 port could in teory support 4 directions and 3 buttons, one standard as C64 and other two mapped in the X and Y axes of paddle pins (in teory it could use more buttons multiplexing with some resistors). It would be cool if paddles could be used too even if in this case we can have a single button (or maybe more than one using one or more joystick directions)
Not me, I would like it to be able to use different peripherals on that port. Maybe a PS/2 combobus comparable to 199x era laptops that enable you to connect both keyboard and mouse/ other peripheral using a simple splitter cable.
I'll get one whether it's popular or not! Sure, popularity will make it cheaper and more useful with more software and add-ons, but it can still be fun and not be popular. Maybe I'm just really good at entertaining myself...
Just wanted to say that when you you idea I wasn't that enthused. But now that I've seen what you guys are doing I am. Keep it up and if you provide it in a kit form, I'll buy one.
Ashton Snapp old company that created kits you assembled. Like you would get a multimeter, computer, power supply, logic probe, airplane, oscilloscope, etc. and you got to build it yourself and solder everything
1. Love the idea going for the VIC20 basics, personally, that's my favorite 8bit computer. 2. Love that bankswitching, it reminds me the Atari 2600, the best console of all time.
![[안방1열 직캠4K] 베이비몬스터 치키타 'DRIP' (BABYMONSTER CHIQUITA FanCam) @SBS Inkigayo 241110](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tnlxo79cAqY/mqdefault.jpg)
You are absolutely killing it, designed two games and now you’re BUILDING A COMPUTER FROM SCRATCH! This channels come a long way since the iBook guy when I subscribed lol
hes a legend and extremely likeable. best channel on youtube hands down i can watch this guy do anything and be entertained. i dont understand ANYTHING about computers but i still been watching his content for years
Er, I wouldn't call it "from scratch". He's specifically using off-the-shelf components as much as he can, which is smart
@@TheGreatAtario well for us it could certainly be impressive regardless of being "designed from scratch" or not
Tech&Music
Yeah, but that game was more in the "preview" stage as it never was actually finished.
Yes, he's doing great. Well done to him and all involved.
37:14 LOAD "BALLS". Didn't realize I was watching an LGR video
@Intra Ignis Not a fan, huh?
@Intra Ignis He isn't Smart Game Reviews, y'know.
"FILL SCREEN WITH BALLS"
Could have been a way to try the 256 colours mode... 😂
loool
wouldn't LGR be "LOAD FARTS"?
I’ve been following this project since day one. So happy to say that my stage 1 board just showed up this week!
I was delighted to learn that my CPU code is powering the emulator!
You may bask in your glory.
Very cool
Proof
@@mischiefthedegenerateratto7464 You don't deserve it.
Awesome
*This project is the definition of "if you want something done right you gotta do it yourself".*
+" 30 years later"
+ outsourcing a lot!
@@LarryTheRoleplayerTM :-(
More like a counterexample at this stage.
One Hump or Two?
:-/
ArQmA, a crypto coin coded for that reason. If you want it done right, do it yourself. I did QA on the code and it's similar to checking firmware and assembly programming making sure the code doesn't leak information, stay secure, and doesn't crash. There was hardware and software bugs caught by me back in the early PC days , but it all started with banging out solutions on 8 bit hardware like the C64 and Atari 800. You wrote your own libraries, tested the results, directly from the hardware if you had to.
Love how David's project transformed into a cross-channel collaboration. 8-bit power FTW!
✊
This Commander X16 computer is a really ambitious project, and hopefully, it could be a new gaming platform for the retro gaming scene with its own unique library of games. I think the X16's gaming capabilities would be like a mix between the Commodore 64, Atari ST and the Amiga.
And speaking of games, are you planning to make a custom port of Planet X3 as a pack-in game for the Commander X16? I think it would be pretty cool.
Ivan Simpson Correction: Planet X4 :)
It really is the "8 bit guy builds the best 8 bit micro ever. Period!" kind of stuff!!!
or maybe it should be... *Planet X16* (i'm sorry)
I hope it can do something like Ultima 6.
Soon he'll have a channel and go by 8-Billion Guy
3:51 reminded me of when in school our teacher assigned the class to each develop a small section of the 8088 processor using all 7400 series logic chips. Everyone did a part of the overall processor and we came in each with multiple breadboards it quickly became a wiring nightmare to run all the buses to hook it all together. I'm sure everyone had at least one if not a handful of wiring mistakes in their section needless to say by the time the class ended we never did get the stupid thing to work.
it's like the Manhattan project, but it fucked up and didn't work
We did that as well but the teacher opted for each person to set up his own. The Motorola 8088 rocks. Really a predecessor to Intel and everything we know today.
@@Cotronixco the 8088 was intel, and it's an 8 bit bus version of the 8086
@@wesleymays1931 That's right! I may be thinking of the 6800.
While it’s unfortunate you didn’t get it to work you do tend to learn more from failure than with success
So weird, I'm sitting at my local coffee shop in Champaign Illinois and overhear a guy ordering coffee and chatting with the barista about the work he is doing for "a guy in Texas named David Murray who's remaking the Commodore 64." What a small world.
I enjoy seeing your design and architecture decision-making process unfold.
r/thathappened
Did you talk to him?
@@joychapman9228 He grabbed his coffee and scooted out, but if I see him there again I definitely will.
@@kakeergodt4609 man you suck
@@cvkline Did the barista clap?
We're super excited to be part of this project! We have a lot more work to do, but the progress at this point is really amazing. We have a great team full of talented folks and we're really looking forward to the day we can start making them available to the public!
That's quite a work of art you've created there
This should be a lot of fun! I can't wait to buy one.
I’m just glad to hear 6 months later this project is still plugging along. I began to wonder if he abandoned it. Glad to see you “on board,” ha!
And the Applications of having essentially a 30 year old pc are?
@@nikaluss5946 I suppose you can just go your own way on this one. :-)
Oh I was saying "shut up and take my money" long before you threw the warning in. What an amazing update! This is incredible!
I'm eating this stuff up, as I'm a retired EE working from 1981, so this equipment brings back that warm familiar feeling. I broke down and bought a VIC-20 from K-Mart when the price dropped to $239. It only came with 5k or 6k of RAM. I put a 24k expansion card on it. You have a new subscriber! 🙂
I assume this gets asked a lot: But could you please use something else than Facebook to give updates on the X16?
You need to make an account there in order to join a group and a lot of people don't want to do that.
If you had a website/blog (with an RSS-Feed) it would be easier to follow along.
Edit: There's a link to his forum now in the Video-description.
Thanks!
There is a 8BitGuy subreddit. www.reddit.com/r/8BitGuy/
But more importantly he does have a forum. murray2.com/forums/commander-x16.9/
Third to that. If the reddits/forums are just as active or valuable, I'll totally go there. Perhaps encourage people to use your forum first, rather than fb??
I dumped fb months ago after I realized that 1) I was wasting time following folks that I didn't really know (anyone close to me has other ways to contact me), 2) I was sick of being bombarded by asinine political memes grossly oversimplifying nuanced social issues, and thus were actually harming any chance of civil discourse in the country, and 3) the only remotely useful point was keeping up with product developments from companies I was interested in... which is all info I could find through other channels where I wasn't being so scrutinized by a company who's sole point is to monetize my personal interests. Zuckerberg can suck it.
The project is interesting, but I've already entirely switched to other social media. I'm not going back to facebook.
I've just gave you a 267th like so I'll 267th to that.
yeah, I agree. most people who use facebook are grandpas anyways lol
I left facebook all the way back in 2016 and I've never looked back
I don't do Facebook. Here's hoping you'll provide updates on major milestones in video format.
Just go to his website it has the forums where updates are
I don't do facebook either, though I got thinking, maybe a discord server would be a good idea, not only would it provide a way for people that don't use facebook to receive updates on the project, it would also provide more instant and open discourse, since it works more like an old school chat server. Also, if David actually reads this and considers it, don't be frightened away by the word "server", there is no need to set up a network server or anything like that, it's just the term discord uses for the chat groups it hosts and creating one is quite simple.
It's cool and great that you're such a rebel but uh, just suck it up if you want the updates?
@@aw4483 Well, fuck no. My father told me "If five thousand people jump off a cliff, will you do too?" Say no to peer pressure. No mateer if it's smoking, drinking, shoplifting or Facebook usage.
Doing updates only on Facebook 2019 is like saying to everybody, we're boomers!
21:19 I absolutely would purchase a kit version of this. *YES PLEASE*
The more soldering necessary, the better!
A kit would definitely be fun. I hope they find a decent sound chip for it
I migt buy it but i am not great at soldering but i am learnig
They should keep the LCD as an option on a Kit version.
I'd make you fabircate the silicon yourselves, too - show us what REAL engineers are out there. :)
First time I've heard "1 megahert" ... I mean I can see where that's coming from but still mildly amusing.
Agreed
2020 has been a megahert
@@ScienceFTW spoiler: it ends with a Megadeath.
The man's name was Hertz. It has nothing to do with singular v plural form.
zanconato terahurt
I love the idea of this. A community coming together to build a PC. It's nostalgic. As if you guys were your own startup PC company in the 1980s.
I wish it were the 80s and TH-cam had already been out and people using it normally.
@@gp3328 Just pretend you live in the 80's! I never left lol
@@liveuntetheredmusepodcast4832 how are you here then
Coward.
@@OrangeDied A modified VIC-20 lmao
*It's finally here: 44 minutes of pure greatness*
I've been waiting for this video for so long
10 Print "x"
20 Goto 10
RUN
ALL RIIIIGHT, that works, let's start the mass production.
10 Print "The 8-Bit Guy"
20 Goto 10
Yes
you forgot to put a ";" at the end of the string so it doesn t break a line after printing
10 Print "Planet X4 Coming To The X16"
20 Goto 10
That's all I'd use it for
A kit that the end user can assemble makes a lot of sense, because you can incorporate a little info about how the device works and what it can do with the assembly instructions. E.g. this is the sound chip that has 6 channels (or however many it has). That way developers learn as they build and have good initial familiarity with the hardware before even turning it on.
gonna need a wood grain version of the Commander X16
I'm sure LGR would approve!
Omg that white tho!
yes yes yes
That'd actually be pretty cool.
with balls on the bottom of it
@alysdexia uh uh DS9 was the bomb tng was second to DS9 boyo
That Perifractic guy seems a bit weird... Otherwise lovely video 8-Bit Guv'nor! Seriously though, I'm truly honoured to be part of this eXciting project. Commander X16 FTW! 👍🕹️
P.S. A word about the case design: We are going this route for very good reasons. I'll be doing a full post and user poll shortly on the Facebook about this. In short, we don't want to custom build a case and keyboard as that would add hundreds of thousands of dollars which you guys would have to pay for.
It also introduces many risks and delays as you have seen on other projects like the ZX Spectrum Next. Therefore we are limited to high quality off-the-shelf components, which is the spirit of David's project. We will be customizing and rebranding these and you'll see all the options in the aforementioned poll, and have a say. We realize with nearly 1 million subscribers we are not going to be able to please everybody, and we thank you for respecting that.
However you can trust that we are moving forward with the best possible option for the community so you can get this machine in your hands as quickly as possible, looking sweet, and at the best value.
Keep in mind too that many beautiful classic computers did not have an integrated keyboard. Apple Macintosh, Amiga 1000, Commodore 128D, Amstrad PCW...
Thank you for your enthusiasm and feedback 👍🕹️
LOL, I thought it was someone else saying this, But then I read your name and WOAH,
Hello dude.
Any possibility of there being a version of the Commander X16 in a format like the Commodore 64 (inside the keyboard in a wedge shaped design)?
I bet Puppyfractic's the one doing all the heavy low-level programming stuff
@@BillyMartin4Life This is unlikely sorry. It would cost over $100k in tooling and add 6-12 months of time. We did consider it early on. But you will love what we do come out with 👍🕹️
@@hugocardozo8685 Yes but keep it on the DL please 🐶
I would be so up for a kit version that would allow you to construct the computer yourself!! that would be so retro.
Yes, please! Make bare-board w/documentation and full kit packages available!
My first purchased computer was the Rockwell AIM-65 single-board system back in 1977. I saw your memory model and the first thing I thought about was additional programming environment expandability and was pleased about the Assembler.
My AIM-65 has 5 ROM sockets on board... 2 for the 8K System Monitor (included), 1 4K slot for the Assembler and 2 for 8K Basic -or- PL/65. I later built a bank-switched memory expansion board (32K) to back-fill low memory (board had 4K) and put ram in the 12K language address range so I could load Assembler, Basic, PL-65 and Forth as desired.
Agreed. I think many people would buy a kit on principle, but it may also keep the cost down. Cost is a factor with a few of my 8-bit enthusiast friends, so a kit option might make that easier for them.
All off the shelf components. I would be happy with just the PCB and a parts list. Warming up the soldering iron now!
Yes!!! I would totally be into a kit build too!
Same here. I'd like to make one from a kit to better my soldering skills (which are good enough to do this as a kit but practice never hurt).
Disclaimer. I love this, I will buy one of these. I have been into computers as well as gaming since 1986, this is my wheelhouse and I will own one.
The case, please don't use those cases. Please, every bit of soul that is this machine just got obliterated by those half sized keyboard mock ups and that garish "is that a Dish Network cable box" case. Please, no. The logo is banging but those cases, please don't.
Edited just because I want to say I love this project and everyone involved. I just hate the damn case 😩
What if they squeezed it into a reproduction C128 case with an off-the-shelf Cherry mechanical key board bolted into it?
And the case has to be white or off-white or whatever that old tan color is. Not black.
@@jovetj C128 off-white or C64 Off white?
if Mr.Murray would listen to everyone complaining to "this and that", he would never be able to complete anything!! - let him make his computer as HE wants.
@@MrKeys57 or people can have an opinion and it can readily be ignored. Just an opinion my man.
Looks like 8-Bit Guy wants to make computing FUN again.
Since when was it not?
I had to run a spectrum emulator on android in order to demonstrate how I wanted something coding in java using sinclair basic, I could totally get on board with this, pun intended.
Already been done with pico-8, just wish he would come out with a pico-16.
Terry A. Davis already tried to make it fun
@Adriel R It's just a different type and area of fun, but it has never not been fun!
Last time I complained about the videos not being longer and there I have it, a 44 minutes long video. The 8-Bit "god" answered my prayers. This is an amazing Project I would like to point out. Your Dream Computer is actually a lot of people's dream computer, for sure, and the fact that you are being so open with the development, the design and with the software and all of this will bring a lot of people into it. Keep it up.
I certainly won't buy the first one because I'm not so much into modding and hacking and daughter boards and so on. But I would certainly buy the Raspberry PI sized one (I hope it will come out eventually).
Once again great project and thanks a lot for the long and certainly entertaining video.
When this computer releases, maybe you should make Planet X4 for it (or maybe call it Planet X16 :P ).
I know you probably won't do that, though, so a Planet X3 port would be cool, too.
I'm super excited about having TWO layers. For me that really brings it into the NES level of game development. Nice job David and X16 team!
Glad to see that there is a working prototype for this now! As a computer engineering student, I find these types of projects fascinating. I know you're not much of a fan of FPGAs, but through my education I've come to see them as the perfect solution for custom logic. Off-the-shelf chips will come and go, but HDLs and re-programmable chips will always be available. I would have loved to help out with the video system, but I was too busy when the initial announcement was made, and I had enough of a struggle making a simple 80x60 pixel display controller for my coursework. It looks like you've got a solid team for this, and I can't wait to see how it turns out!
22:00 "And if enough demand, a custom ASIC"
Don't, it'll be more expensive and error prone than using an FPGA.The volume and R&D necessary for ASIC production is higher than this project will ever garner. I'm not saying it won't be popular, but it'll never be sold in every Walgreens and Walmart popular, and that's the level where you'd consider going into ASIC production.
@Intra Ignis personally, I have no problem with people announcing their qualification while making a comment/suggestion.
I'm not saying we should 100% believing random guy on the internet, but making fun of him for saying he has worked in the industry for a long time is very unnecessary. It solves nothing.
@Intra Ignis You're right. I am just some rando on the internet. I do invite people to look up rates from places like TSMC, MOSIS, or Global Foundries though. This project would probably go for a sea of gates style ASIC, which are cheap-ish, so around ~$50k startup costs + cost of masks (depends on the fab) + fab fees, 10k-25k/yr. minimums with a three year contract.
I guess the biggest deal is at any point, you can call the fab and ask them and verify this info, or even ask other EE's in chip design. They exist, I promise.
@@adamsfusion The point Intra is making is that it's totally useless to say what you do for a living, how long you've been doing it, and so forth. It's totally irrelevant. It's about what you're actually saying (to which I agree by the way) which makes your reaction good. The rest is 'fugazi' (see: wolf of wall street).
If they have verilog already then what's the problem? Other than minimum order size
@@akkudakkupl Talk to the parallax guys working on the propeller 2 mcu. It's been a decade in the making, they have verilog, and are still having a hell of a time getting it to work. Just because it works on an fpga doesn't mean it will always tape out economically for a given process node and package size. Power dissipation (to only mention one issue) of such a design is a big concern.
And as we all know, PCB is short for Prototype Commander 16 Board. Nice one PCBWay!
Well done! I especially enjoy the design elements by Parifractic! The Logo is perfect! The technical specs too are awesome. All good wishes.
I never thought I'd be impressed by 2 megabytes of RAM in 2019...
eri well, it was pretty much unheard of for retro systems
You know what she says... "It's not the size, it's what you do with it."
In all seriousness though - if developers would properly optimize, we would not need 32 gigs of ram in our offce desktops.
@@BFBeast666 it's bit more complicated ;). You see, when you're entering higher level of abstraction, it's easier to actually write code, but it costs RAM. On the other hand, it's not problem of compilers/optimizers, but rather clumsy x86 arch with mistakes inherited in newer desings in flavour of backwards compatibility ;]
BFBeast666 Nothing to do with optimisation, it’s simple math a single 4K texture on a modern game takes up 16 meg of ram and a game can have hundreds or thousands of textures, That’s why you need gigabytes of vram to hold all that data.
Meh, my Ryzen as more than in its cache.
Unbelievable how much time, effort and love is being put into this. And not only that, it's happening right in front of our eyes !
Its the limitations of old computers that give them their magic. Don't go mad on features and then when someone creates something amazing it will be truly impressive, like that C64 game you showed in this video for example. My first thought was why not just use an FPGA but then I realised what I just said above, its too easy to go nuts as they're so flexible and powerful and also original chips have a certain magic themselves too. Good luck, I'm tempted to get one myself.
That logo is killer. I love it. You should have a case with a tiny amount of RGB for the logo or strip - not too much so it isn't TOO fast... ;)
Do you know who's going to want this? Every hardware course for every computer engineering college in the world! This is perfect for teaching.
Gustavo Valdiviesso probably. But if I was to make the decision on which platform teach students I'd go for something AVR or ARM based. This could be Arduino, C language directly (gcc), Nucleo platform (mbed for beginners or stm cube ide later), and BBC MicroBit with its visual editor for children.
@@SergiuszRoszczyk Sure, but I would argue that these modern platforms can be used as a second contact with the subject, instead of a first. This retro-computer they are building is simple enough to be the first contact between a student and computer hardware. I, for instance, started using MSX-standard boards to teach the basics, at least one semester before going into modern microcontrollers. This clearly improved the students performance in later courses to the point where the sophomores are encouraging the freshmen to take this basic course and learn some form of Assembly (z80 or 6502) before heading to FPGAs. That is why I can see my lab full of kits like these in the future 😎
Gustavo Valdiviesso that sounds promising 👍
Videos like these and those from Ben Eater are partly why I chose to declare EE for my major
As a computer engineer, I think this is neat, but it is a very poor teaching tool because the design is done completely wrong from a practical standpoint. Many of the design decisions are arbitrary and the memory is hamstrung... the 6502 should be abandoned and a non bank swtiched architecture used instead of this mess nobody wants bank switching. And the machine would be better implemented entirely in a single FPGA... A better teaching tool is something like a PIC32 board, RISC-V board or FPGA board... this board is too complex for students to buy as well. Also the use of vintage chips doesn't do students any favors either. Also, a completely TTL logic computer would be a much better computer to for EE/CE students to work on. While this may seem needlessly harsh... the fact is this the dream computer of a nostalgic madmad ;-) ... not really targeted as teaching tool especially since the architecture is needlessly, from a practical standpoint, stuck in the 80s. Ah the 80's a great decade.
As a big, big fan of the YM2612 (I'm one of the co-founders of Project2612), I'd totally support going for the YM2151, especially if you pair it up with a YM3012 or YM3014 for stereo/monophonic DAC.
The MSX has some seriously amazing tunes written for its games (for a good example, listen to Motoi Sakuraba rock out with Granada: th-cam.com/play/PLE71CE8AF98288202.html ), and all that was was a YM2151, YM3012, and an Oki MSM6258 - it was good enough for a nearly flawless conversion of the Street Fighter II arcade soundtrack, and indeed, Capcom used the X68000 as an arcade development board for the CPS1!
To me, the Commander X16 owes itself to priding itself on sound, because the SID was such a big part of the Commodore 64's success in that regard.
I think it'll work just fine, by the way, since X68000 machines ran from 10-25 MHz generally, with upgrades well into the 75 MHz range.
secondedddddd
Did David say that they weren't produced anymore? If so, I'd be in favor of the YM2612 core integrated into the FPGA. This would also help to keep costs down. _And_ it could theoretically be upgraded/updated in the future through some sort of firmware update path.
Ayyy, Project2612! You absolute hero!
I had just watched part 1 of this series when I realized that part 2 came out just a week ago. I'm so excited about this project that I could have watched you guys talk about it for much much longer! The X16 opens up sooo many possibilities to continue where we left off in the 80s/90s and go way beyond that. My first computer was a C64 and I still have it. A bout of 8-bit nostalgia hit me a couple of weeks ago and I've basically been watching your videos non-stop since. I can't wait to see this project becoming a reality. I'm excited for myself and especially for my kids who will be able to experience what it was like for us back in the days. I really hope this project and others similar to it will be the start of a whole new/old 8-bit era. So keep up the good work guys and thanks for all you've done so far!
i don't like it because it is not compatible with the c64 and is not flexible like a motherboard with card slots
@@stefanweilhartner4415 we all have raspberry pi. emulator would run fast
This project is giving me gleeful butterflies in my stomach! I love love love the whole endeavour! I miss the old days when I felt I had control over my machine - and was responsible if I "bricked" it (I started with an HP Vectra, and GWBasic)
Dude that FM chip would be so freaking amazing. I would die a happy man if that actually pans out.
PANS out, I see what you did there
I have always wanted to get into old computers and code, but all of my options felt daunting, overwhelming. This? This looks incredible, as a diving board into a dream hobby, I'm super excited to see more of this.
Also
Facebook sucks, please pick a different website
He used Facebook like it's discord. Someone should set that up for him.
How does Facebook Suck?
@@aidanfisher97 It's owned by a terrible company that surveils its useds and serves ads that radicalize people
@@thetreeofclues Wow, no wonder Facebook is about to go down.
@Aydon Joseph YEAAAH!!
I don't know why, but your videos are always so interesting and just awesome.. Greetings from Germany 🇩🇪
Woohoo Germany!
Ich bin also nicht der einzige deutsche hier :D
Na endlich :D
bin wohl doch nicht der Einzige.
He hasn't upload many videos recently :(
*I hope he won't retire any time sooner*
:^) unglaublich
This is an inspiring project. I know nothing about this level of computing and computer engineering, but I'm fascinated!
It is nice to see another platform that is newer and people can program games for. Lets face it, not everyone is able to get a hold of older hardware. This is a dream machine that is slowly coming true. I truly enjoy David starting a project and providing inspiration and seeing others come in and they work together to make it a reality. Judging by these videos and his past games, David does not seem like one to put his name on garbage- it will become a quality product (which would sell big if it was done in the 80s).
Wow, kudos to the entire team, looks like the project is rolling along nicely! Watching the description of the memory map, bank switching and video memory reminds me of my plans to add a 3-D viewer to my Apple ][+, using 6845 chips and surplus camcorder viewfinders from Gateway Electronics in St. Louis. Never got very far with it, but I learned a lot along the way.
Best of luck, guys, keep up the good work!
I noticed the TH-cam trophies, and then noticed you’re almost to 1mil subs! Hope you get there, this channel deserves the attention!
11:10 Instead of having "Auto increment" flag, how about using the value as signed 8-bit value, and adding that to address. This would make it possible to move COLUMN of data instead of normal ROW of data available with plain flag. And using signed value enables both increase and decrease.
If he plans 3D games like that, I wouldn't go with indirect addressing at all. You don't want to build your screen in RAM and then blit it to the videoram; it reduces framerates by two.
For the controller ports, I suggest Sega Megadrive/Genesis compatible. This means it will work with Atari standard joysticks (like most 8 bit computers did) but also have provision for more than one button if required.
I was thinking this too. Assuming the ports aren't just for testing. Less of an issue of possible problems with Nintendo and the standard was quite widespread back then suggesting it was a straight forward design and not vendor locked.
@@MagikGimp I can't imagine they'd have any problems with Nintendo, the patent has long expired on the NES hardware.
@@MagikGimp
Yes, almost every 8-bit computer used the Atari standard, and so did the 16-bit Atari ST and the Amiga.
It was the defacto standard in those days. Nobody owns it, so there wouldn't be any legal problems.
I don't think you could do Genesis/Kempston cross-compatibility. There was a 5V power line in the Kempston standard that was used as one of the buttons on the Genesis controller, so plugging a Genesis controller to a Kempston standard port would asplode the machine. Why Sega didn't put the extra buttons on the analog paddle lines, I shall never know.
It ain't retro unless I've got my ZIP STICK plugged into it!
Looking forward to seeing you at Midwest Vintage Computer Fest this weekend!
Progress is progress.
I'm liking how this is coming along. I'd definitely be in for a dev kit version.
Me, as Mainframer, playing with JCL, COBOL and such, appreciate seeing your videos, it makes easier to get how a cpu works, how a memmory work and I do want to watch your channel all the time.
Good job you've done here!
I remember being in Plano, TX and seeing all those machines at EDS back in the 2000's and I can't help myself but think you are a person whowould appreciate that too
(sorry the bad english, not native)
After seeing the "Mario" screen, I was expecting the "Mode 7" to show something resembling Mario Kart or Pilot Wings!
Same
Mode 7 like SNES?
@@amogus7 yes
Mario 7...
@@vriskamoder G R A N D D A D
You need a reseller in europe. I need all three stages, but buying hardware in germany from US is a annoying process.
If it gets big enough he'll probably have them up for sale on Newark/Element 14 network, otherwise you're stuck dealing with your import network.
Getting stuff shipped from the US is also murderously expensive. Buying a Unicomp Model M keyboard and getting it shipped to Australia had the shipping end up at almost half of the total.
Anders may have these.
get Anders Jensen
ugh you should see the process of buying anything outside Jordan my home country
New 8-Bit Guy video? almost 45 minutes long? [Grabs beer and popcorn]... Let's do this.
Really cool Project, David. Good Luck. This Computer is basically the Result of the actual VIC 20 Devs having a Wet Dream back in the day.
@The 8-Bit Guy - Glad you're still considering the 65C816 (with the same memory map) to get the benefits of the 16bit ALU etc. It would also mean the X16 name remains appropriate (otherwise it should probably be renamed Commander X65). The perfect CPU would've been the 65C802 it seems. But in it's absence, I do still hope you seriously consider the 65C816 (but with 16bit address space).
This may be useful / of interest: sbc.rictor.org/support/conv.html :-)
Hey David, please consider using a Yamaha YM2608! It has 6 channel, 4-OP FM, an on-board AY-3, a sample channel, and 6 drum sounds!
I don't think they'll change that. The yamaha is very nice, but I think their solution is quite cost effective and capable, too.
The YM2612 would also be a great choice. Same chip used in the Sega Genesis.
But is it available as a 'new' part?
Keep in mind what the goals of this project are.
The fact that it has to be off the shelf parts for instance means that the 65816 was an option (even though they gave up on it due to complexity), but a 68000 is not.
One is still available off the shelf as brand new parts, the other is not.
As it happens, when it comes to Yamaha sound chips, the OPL-2 and OPL-3 of Adlib/soundblaster fame are more likely to be available than the YM2612...
@@ubernerrd I agree . The intention it to make a nostalgic platform and the graphic are on par or better than a 16 bit console , the name of it has 16 so the sound should be nostalgic of a 16 bit system.
@@KuraIthys None of the chips he's suggesting are available as new parts. Yamaha stopped manufacturing actual FM hardware in the early 2000s, and the 2151 he's such a fan of hasn't been in production for over 25 years. Any chip he gets is going to be a used chinese rebadge pulled from a PCB with a new date slapped on it, be it any flavor of AY or Yamaha FM chip.
44 minutes, thanks for nice evening! :) Regards from Poland
This is such a cool project - really hope you can bring it to market. Would love to use this with my young son. I think the $50 price point is v ambitious and I would be prepared to pay significantly more than that for this product.
and here we are a year out from possible home release.
It's nearer $500 now! Which I think we always knew would be the case.
Totally worth every cent! :) I will have two of them.
I'm picking my jaw up from the floor, great work on your design. This channel will make me drop what I am doing when I see a new video posted. So cool! Thank you for posting.
Beautiful! You make really excellent choices for your design and specs! I can't wait to see the final product. All good wishes.
Yes, spiral bound was so much easier to follow along beside the keyboard.
My first computer was an electron and I love the idea of this, I also have a bit of an obsession with software rendering and with the idea of the incremental pointer for writing to graphics memory that got me wondering if anything like this would be possible:
Using a similar incremental pointer to the banked ram so sprite data could be read quickly to compliment the quick writing to display ram, maybe even without that particular bank being the currently selected one.
Or, more advanced, some sort of interpolation hardware that steps through u and v with each read access and addresses the banked ram instead of just incrementing the pointer, maybe making texture mapping or rotatable sprites possible.
Anyway, just some thoughts, but looking forward to seeing how this project turns out.
Case color? Why beige of course. Can't have retro without beige.
yes
Without a doubt, beige. In fact that could be the ad campaign: "We're bringing beige back, baby!"
Whatever the color, don't go high gloss, please.
The Germans chose beige. Beige is the official color now.
I'd rather have it in bright red.
45 minute vid! Whoo!
Cant wait for this to progress further. To combat feature creep, leave sockets for things or blank solder points so these things could be added by those who may want it.
Keep up the great teamwork with your developers and co-creators, David! I'd really love to own a Commander X16 computer someday when it's finished, 8-Bit Guy!
Respect ! I bow to you 8BitGuy1 !!! I was raised on - my first exp was Spectrum (my 5 yrs older sister and her friends....) Than my best friend got Commodore 64 and later I had Amiga 500..... What a great times ! Wish you very best of luck and thanks for video !
The X16 mock-up case and keyboard designs look amazing.
Thank you for your kind words! Means a lot 👍🕹️
Oh... another thing: one of the first C64 things I did was test how much slower BASIC was than machine language.
I wrote a BASIC program that went in a loop, placing a random char into screen RAM, then putting a random color attribute on by POKEing color RAM, then after all 1000 were done, changing the border to a random color, then going back to the start after polling the keyboard (so I could quit). RUNning it produced the expected output at a leisurely pace (I estimate one line of 40 per second).
I wrote the same thing in machine language with the help of SUPERMON, using SID to produce the random values. When I ran that, as soon as I pressed RETURN, I was amazed by how utterly slow BASIC was in comparison. I only eyeballed it, but my machine code did an entire screen in roughly the time BASIC did one character! It's literally 1000 times faster unless my eyeballs are tricking me.
I wonder where the slowdown is. Applesoft on the Apple II is a variant of the BASIC CBM shipped on the C64 (they even left in the two FAC-sized "numbers" that produced the "MICROSOFT!" text), and even that isn't as slow. Maybe there's loads of overhead in KERNAL I don't know about...
On these old systems BASIC is interpreted, which means that as it executes, machine code is reading the BASIC text and converting it to instructions and executing those instructions. This is a slow process since there are a lot of different things going on, and it’s even slower because the interpreter doesn’t save what it converts and has to constantly re-interpret the same instructions over and over again (unlike, say, a compiler which converts text to machine code once before executing anything). All of this means BASIC on these systems was always much, much slower than assembly/machine language. If there were differences between different versions of BASIC it was typically due to how well written and efficient the interpreter was.
Oh, there's an emulator for it! That might be enough to motivate me to write some code for it.
It is so cool to see you doing all these amazing things, David.
13:42 "This is far more than I really ever even wanted for the system, but the main thing is it works." -NASA on Spirit & Opportunity
It's coming along nicely! Looking forward to tinker with the more musical aspects of it down the line. :)
great, now tell that to all of the other 977k subscribers who listen to it on this channel.
i'll wait.
FRIENDLY JAPANESE BUSINESSMAN 🤷🏼♂️ Can’t please everyone you know. Looking forward to the day you’re going to stop by and show me how to make music that doesn’t suck. I’ll make some tacos. :)
@FRIENDLY JAPANESE BUSINESSMAN be honest, can you make music too?? In 8 bit sounds? Hmmmmmm?
@FRIENDLY JAPANESE BUSINESSMAN speak english, please
@FRIENDLY JAPANESE BUSINESSMAN and what do you mean by that?
I just got flashbacks of Sony Vegas cracks at 19:25
Never cracked Sony Vegas before, but I still INSTANTLY recognized it as Unreeeal Superhero 3 before he even finished speaking.
That shit was obviously a virus lol
@@WinningEmpire yes , but it also cracked Vegas, Sound Forge , DVD architect etc.
THIS IS EPIC
This... Is.... EPIC!
Anxiously waiting for continuation of this series. David you’re videos are like therapy to me
23:40 And then i'm going to give it a Doug Score.
I dig the fact that the new logo font is straight out of Mass Effect. The "Commander Shepherd X16", lol.
The light grey case and keyboard combo looks incredible and clean.
I like the look, but I cringe at the key layout. In the 80s, people who already knew how to touch-type had to re-learn, because the details of ASCII meant that it was difficult to make (for example) shift-9 be (, shift-0 ), and shift ' become ". People of course DID learn the ASCII-twisted keyboards that came from Teletypes, ADM-3 terminals, and all of their clones. And then we had to re-learn AGAIN when IBM decided they had to embed microcontrollers in their keyboards in order to make the key layout match their mechanical typewriters. So yes, I understand exactly why the keys are as they are, but these days, the microcontroller in the keyboard is a $1 chip.
But I'm probably just stomping my feet on holy ground, here.
(And the very next thing I see is the front page of commanderx16.com is a picture of the system with a modern keyboard layout.) Never mind. I mean, not a big deal to offer two different keyboard designs, for true believers of either denomination.
I love this intro. It makes me feel like I'm watching an 80's or early 90's sitcom. All the other music you provide us with is great too, my favourite is "Derivation of cleam". Your channel popped up on my recommended list about a year ago and I've been watching ever since. Thank you for the awesome content and congratulations on 1 Million Subscribers. Here's to a million more! Matt
It's too bad you're using Facebook as a hub for everything. A lot of people especially retro techs don't use Facebook.
I agree, being a retro Tech, I don't use Facebook, Twitch, Scratch, Insta... etc. ;-(
FB is the total opposite of something sleek and efficient.
I guess you didn't see in an earlier post
that he also has a forum murray2.com/forums/commander-x16.9/
@@RiksVids That's great except it seems there is duplication now and inevitably out of sync. For example according to the FAQ on FB there is an emulator whereas on the forum the FAQ says there is no emulator but one will come.
personally i'd find a subreddit or discord would be much better
I love everything about this. Good luck with the finished product!
I love the x16 logo and design.. Im watching this like a hawk.. Wonderful, hard work youre all doing!
So glad you like 'em!
Love this project, started with Q basic in the dos days, cant wait for this to hit the streets, totally blown away.
That opening song always give me nostalgic feeling. It remind me of old education tv show
Nostalgia for... a NEW tune in an old STYLE, a tune which didn't exist a few years ago? I know what you mean - it's nostalgia *for the style* right?
@@unlokia The OP clearly states that it reminds him or her of old Educational shows, so he or she gets nostalgic feelings because of it.
@@EximiusDux correct!
Man, having sprites AND layers is going to permit some DAMN fine graphics.
Horizontal/vertical scrolling of background layers (with transparency) for sweeeeet parallax effects.
2MB of RAM and 16bit CPU... I smell DooM being ported ;)
I thought Doom needed a 32bit processor?
@@IanC14 But dos computers are 16 bit. And doom was for dos.
There is a doom on snes
@@oscwavcommentaccount Doom runs in 386 protected mode and uses 32bit instruction set but there is DOOM ported to C64 with 20MHz 65816 SuperCPU 8/16bit hybrid as well
@@enjibkk6850 And on Gameboy Advance....even though 32bit system, but still i find incredible to this day.
When will there be a part 3 video, can't wait to watch it!
Hi David, congratulations! I really liked the video and I would just give you my point of view on some aspects:
1) Vera addressing seems to be in high/low byte as opposed to 6502
2) For a real retro feeling edition I'd like a version (hoping the cheaper one :) ) with the keyboard integrated in the case like C64 or A500
2a) For the same feeling an integrated HDMI port would be great allowing to connect the computer to a modern TV
3) 8Mhz should be enough for anybody :) but it would be cool to run at full 14Mhz default 6502 speed
4) Because you have alredy choose to go in fpga with Vera chip, problably the best choice for the audio chip is to use the same FPGA. Anyway I wonder if the code will be open source
5) Please don't use nes/snes joustick data bus. The best thing about using the Atari DB9 port is the ease to use a button, microswitch or whatever to give an input to the machine. That DB9 port could in teory support 4 directions and 3 buttons, one standard as C64 and other two mapped in the X and Y axes of paddle pins (in teory it could use more buttons multiplexing with some resistors). It would be cool if paddles could be used too even if in this case we can have a single button (or maybe more than one using one or more joystick directions)
An integrated keyboard would be great and obviously more retro-correct, but wouldn't that whack the price up significantly?
Commander x16 coming
Atari box coming
Intellevision coming
The c64 coming
HISTORY IS REPEATING ITSELF 2023 VIDEO GAME CRASH COMING
So... Will Nintendo make a R.O.B. The Robot II to revive the market once more?
Oooh, if someone makes a neo-vectrex i'm in.
@@tails64dsntchannel8 Ataribox is dead
And a scam
@@tomf3150 Me too 8)
I really wish the case and keyboard were one unit like all the classic 8-bit machines.
Me too, but that would probably be even more expensive
Not me, I would like it to be able to use different peripherals on that port. Maybe a PS/2 combobus comparable to 199x era laptops that enable you to connect both keyboard and mouse/ other peripheral using a simple splitter cable.
my idea could be that you could dock the keyboard above the box , otherwise, if you undock it, you put it in the front just like the actual mockup
Sameeee
I like the idea of a seperate keyboard personally. The idea of an integrated keyboard gives me nightmares.
The C68 was first PC in 1983, I loved your ideas to build new pc.
Would love to see an fpga with dual sid emu on it, nothing beats those gritty sid basslines =)
If this computer really comes popular to buy, I want to get one and build so cool stuff with it... I'm hyped of this thing
I'll get one whether it's popular or not! Sure, popularity will make it cheaper and more useful with more software and add-ons, but it can still be fun and not be popular. Maybe I'm just really good at entertaining myself...
@@jovetj jea, I can't doing English wery well, I wanted to say that everyone can buy it... 😂
Just wanted to say that when you you idea I wasn't that enthused.
But now that I've seen what you guys are doing I am. Keep it up and if you provide it in a kit form, I'll buy one.
Definitely would be interested in seeing this put in a, “Heathkit,” style package.
“Heathkit”?
Ashton Snapp old company that created kits you assembled. Like you would get a multimeter, computer, power supply, logic probe, airplane, oscilloscope, etc. and you got to build it yourself and solder everything
Wes8761 Oh!
1. Love the idea going for the VIC20 basics, personally, that's my favorite 8bit computer.
2. Love that bankswitching, it reminds me the Atari 2600, the best console of all time.
So excited about this. I would gladly pay $200 to $300 for step one in a diy kit
If you add an additional register or two to the GPU you can do DMA in and out of VRAM. That could be really interesting.
The "X" in Commander X16 means Cross-Platform!