Amiga, Commodore and creativity

[Unkillable Cat]

This is one of the best C-64 releases in recent years that I've actually played (stick around for the theme song & dance):

 

[Luzur]

"DOOM" on the Vic20!

 

[Luzur]

 

[Luzur]

New wallpaper bros!

 

[Luzur]

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

 

[Astral Rag]

 

[Luzur]

Stupid marketing, stupid exec decisions, cheapskate Irving Gould and Ali Mehdi the butcher, those are the reasons Amiga and Commodore languished.

Rattigan could have saved Commodore, but he was held back and refused by Gould.

 

[Luzur]

 

[Luzur]

better move that ass to the side, bro, the Amiga Boyos from Gävle, Sweden is coming through

 

[Jarpie]

 

[Luzur]

Found this little endearing tidbit about Jack Tramiel in his last interview before he died in 2012:

News.com interviewed Tramiel, and it gives a few small surprising insights into the man–he still spends a few minutes a day playing the old games on a C-64, and he owns a Dell–but the most interesting thing to me is the financial aspect. He talks about how Commodore’s products made some of his employees rich, and he is very delighted in the cottage industry that sprung up around the C-64, allowing some of its users to make a lot of money selling products to go with it.

EDIT: some more Tramiel interviews:

https://www.cnet.com/search/?query=...XFI7DXwRGiCSSeUQbXQLNhqwadahTvS6w9vmrrp7FpFzg

 

[Luzur]

So people are doing Cannon Fodder 2, open source, for Amiga:

https://github.com/OpenFodder/openf...CXWbYiXLU4YNamGbJl9YEYyMUk-Ln6JH6D5WlP5y6o7-I



http://openfodder.com

 

[Luzur]

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Found this little endearing tidbit about Jack Tramiel in his last interview before he died in 2012

Interesting. Tramiel always came across as the sort of person who would sue his mother if he though she was making money off his hard work.

 

[Luzur]

Found this little endearing tidbit about Jack Tramiel in his last interview before he died in 2012

Interesting. Tramiel always came across as the sort of person who would sue his mother if he though she was making money off his hard work.

In the book "On the Edge" his employees talks about him as "hard, but fair", even his enemies, but yeah he had this cutttroat business tactic that screwed with some parts of Commodores dealership business (then again i guess he was forced to do have that tactic to earn enough cash since Gould refused constantly to give him more money for marketing, production and ads so Tramiel was forced to live hand to mouth for years), but that was pretty mild compared to Gould and Mehdi's work.

 

[Luzur]

.....And there C64 have now reached even greater heights:

 

[Bumvelcrow]

.....And there C64 have now reached even greater heights:

I thought it was going to be a C64 port of Doom but it's just the PC version running through a reasonably convincing C64-style resolution filter.

 

[Luzur]

.....And there C64 have now reached even greater heights:

I thought it was going to be a C64 port of Doom but it's just the PC version running through a reasonably convincing C64-style resolution filter.

Well, its still a great leap forward, also Doom have been ported to C64 before.



Now, if only there where a way to add in Brutal Doom....

 

[Luzur]

It's actually a video of DOOM on PC, converted and then played back on a C64

Uh, yes, it is kinda clear from the video? still, motion picture with nice speed on a native C64? leaps forward.

 

[Luzur]

The C64 Mini is going BIG for 2019

THEC64 Update - 24th December 2018

We are so excited to finally reveal to you the first photos of the full-size pre-production prototype of ‘THEC64’, complete with a fully functional integrated keyboard, giving you a taster of what’s coming in 2019.

These photos have come direct from our manufacturing partners. Small modifications here and there are likely as we move forward, but - as you can see – it’s real, it exists, and it’s coming as we promised!

In a couple of the photos, the full-size pre-production prototype is positioned next to THEC64 Mini to show their comparative sizes. Also, the key legends you can see are not yet finalised but hopefully you can get a good idea of where we are heading and what has been achieved so far.
We aren’t revealing the full and final specification quite yet, as we don’t want to spoil all the surprises. For a variety of reasons, we also can’t yet confirm the delivery date, but it will be as soon in 2019 as can be achieved. As always, we will keep you all updated with any news on this as soon as we are able to.

To round off the year, all of us at Retro Games Ltd want to thank you all for supporting and believing in us. We hope that our backers and customers who pre-ordered before late September 2017 have enjoyed their FREE THEC64 Mini and exclusive poster set. We hope you are all still enjoying using the Mini while you wait for the full-size THEC64 to arrive, especially in light of the new functionality added by the recent firmware upgrades.

Finally, season’s greetings to you all, and we hope you are as excited about THEC64 and what’s going to happen in 2019 as we are! Thank you.

(Please note this is a prototype version made by our manufacturing partners and final versions will only incorporate our trademarks not third party ones)

With the resurgance of retro gaming hardware enabling us to play old classics on big TV's with lots of built in games such as the NES Mini, SNES Mini, Playstation 1 Classic and the C64 Mini you'd be forgiven in thinking there wasn't much else to announce by the end of this year. Well The C64 crew have something to shout about and in a pretty big way, as they have just announced the full-size pre-production prototype of ‘THEC64’, complete with a fully functional integrated keyboard, giving you a taster of what’s coming in 2019!

Yes indeed if the C64 Mini let you down making you feel extremely frustrated having no keys to press even though a keyboard was staring you in the face, you'll be pleased to know the next version will have a real working keyboard built into what looks to be a much bigger C64 Mini! Although the team Retro Games Ltd have shown off a number of prototype pictures direct from their manufacturing partners, they do say there will be small modifications here and there, but atleast it's proof a keyboard working version of the C64 mini will be coming in 2019 or beyond as TheC64.

https://www.facebook.com/THEC64computer/posts/1958514911120407?__tn__=-R

http://www.indieretronews.com/2018/12/the-c64-mini-is-going-big-for-2019.html

 

[Luzur]

Hey, what if a Commodore Amiga retail shop existed today where you could visit, admire the most wonderful hardware and purchase whatever you fancy?

Wouldn't that be cool?

To visualize my retro dreams I've created a virtual shop window display!

 

[Luzur]

JANUARY 2, 2019 AT 9:09 AM
Found: a Commodore C65 Classroom Prototype #VintageComputing #RetroComputing #Commodore

Via Steve Gray on 6502.org, last month surfaced pictures of a C65 variant called the C65 Classroom Computer. Revealed in December 2018 by Fred Bowen on the Commodore International Historical Society Facebook group.

Little is known of it at this point, but externally it is a C65 with the drive section chopped off. On the back there is a DB25 female which could be a serial port and a DB-15 that could be an RGB output, or perhaps an ethernet port. On the side are the same ports as the C65. There is the power, two joysticks, and a reset button. Moving to the motherboard there are two big sockets for custom chips. We don’t know yet if they would hold the same chips as the regular C65, probably CPU and VIC-III. There is no smaller square socket for the floppy disk controller chip. Since there is no drive this makes sense.

There is an expansion port that looks the same as the C65’s, but no cutout for it. There is no internal trap-door expansion but there is an unpopulated header there that could be for the same or similar purpose. The PCB has an unpopulated port, also without a cutout that looks like it could be a standard C64 video port. Also on the inside is the keyboard connector like the C65 and another connector beside it that looks like it could be for a C64-type keyboard, or possibly is for accessing the joystick ports. There are two regular rectangular sockets. One looks like a SID socket (given the placement of two capacitors directly beside it), and the other most likely is a ROM socket for the firmware.

Comparison of an issued board vs. the prototype (right)


In the new Commodore The Inside Story by David Pleasance, C65 chapter, it is mentioned about plans to sell a C65 with no Internal drive:

In fact, there was the “1565” External drive, which was prototyped as well (seen in the picture at the top of the page). This “Classroom” C65 is obviously an entirely different product designed for a different market. The “Diskless” C65 would most likely be a simple case modification and would likely use the same motherboard as the “regular” C65. The “Classroom” C65 has no floppy drive controller on board, no user port (probably), no sound connectors. It was designed to be very minimalist and inexpensive. It would make sense for this to use the “Diskless” case since it’s pretty much the size of the keyboard itself.

Read more on 6502.org

https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/01/0...ap8O7g23SCR_TSLGFpg97HVmE4q1HkitIo9Yha9qVWVN8

 

[Luzur]

Now this is kinda super interesting, a real and fully working open source C65 computer

MEGA65 is an open-source new and open C65-like computer.
Hardware designs and software are open-source (LGPL).
DEVELOP

The MEGA65 is completely open-source. Unlike other FGPA-based computers you can see, modify, and improve the implementation!

COMPATIBLE
The MEGA65 is designed to offer both C64 and C65 compatibility and is already highly compatible. Because it is open-source, compatibility will continue to improve over time.

CREATE
The MEGA65 supports your creativity with several easy-to-learn programming languages, paint programs and tools. Remember how easy it was to produce something nice on the C64? Now it has become even easier!

PLAY
The MEGA65 is fun: Several thousands of great retro games can be played right out of the box and will keep you happy (and floating in nostalgia) for years!

MOBILE
The portable version of the MEGA65 is simply unique: A dual 4G (and 5G upgradeable) mobile phone with uprecedented battery life (est. 1000 hours standby) and stereo 2W integrated speakers, boot time of < 1 second, why would you use anything else to keep in touch and entertained while on the move?

MUSIC
Equipped with dual soft SIDs (and the ability to use hard-SIDs in a cartridge) plus stereo 16-bit digital audio, the MEGA65 sounds great!

IT'S REAL
MEGA65 is not an emulator but a real 8-bit computer with real gun-racing video chip and internal floppy drive!

IT'S QUICK
MEGA65 is around 50 times faster than a C64 making it possibly the fastest 8-bit computer of all time!

IT'S CREATIVE
MEGA65 lets you access and watch thousands of legendary digital artworks plus the tools to make them yourself!

HIGHLY CUSTOMIZABLE
With its FPGA open-source design the MEGA65 comes with a growing community extending and modifying it in various ways.

CODING & DEVELOPMENT
Making your own games, demos, or applications has become as easy as it was in 1982. You can program a game in just one day.

CORE FEATURES
MEGA-OS hypervisor and operating system including freezer and task switcher, VFAT32 file system & inter-process communications

PORTABLE PLATFORM
Everything you run on or code for the MEGA65 will also run on the MEGAphone! And what about SID music as a ring tone?

ENJOY THE COMMUNITY
With the huge number of C64 fans and the growing MEGA65 community you will never be alone with whatever you intend to do!

http://mega65.org/?fbclid=IwAR20shv4-t45adpMHMOyaCErvF3pfxTy27ytKvMHdGr4wXfhapvYOgSg52g

https://twitter.com/MEGA65Retro

 

[Luzur]

THE EPIC COMMODORE C64 SID COLLECTION

The Epic Commodore C64 SID Collection includes 640 minutes of our most favorite SID tunes from our youth. Painstakingly selected and lovingly arranged into hour-long sectors, these are the legendary melodies that have burned themselves deep into our brains.
The EC64SC aims to be a delight for the veteran C64 freak as well as today's millennial who loves chiptunes but has never even seen an 8-bit computer.
Press play, turn the volume up to 11 and get into the groove!

https://www.cosmos-c64.com/The-Epic...bxJOan7Qhp_5pRqlVhx34F7eBi0DHrgEmJVJCp3nybCIY