JFYI: the Next has also 256x192 256 color mode and 320x256 256 color mode (1 byte = 1 pixel). ad dream computer: personally I'm not sure, don't feel particular need to dream about another 8bit machine, when I have ZX Next on the table (for a year already?)

@slithymatt

2 жыл бұрын

The Next Facebook group pointed this out as well. I missed the whole "Layer 2" part of the docs. It really is a video mode in its own right, but is not listed by such. I am going to make another video to demo that.

@AlexEvans1

2 жыл бұрын

I was a bit intemperant. I'm not sure which docs Matt was looking at to miss Layer 2. Then again, I am probably not a good judge of what is obvious in teh docs.

@ped7g

2 жыл бұрын

@@AlexEvans1 I think docs for Next are quite decent. It's just the amount of features and things to learn about. Just reading some summary or quickly skimming through manual to figure out "different video modes" in couple of hours will not work, because that's not how Next works and because the amount of info to grok is about tenfold compared to classic ZX, and also it's easy to misunderstand parts of it by just reading the docs and not experimenting with it. There's now quite a bit of new Z80 assembly videos and like this comparison of Next and similar.. and most of the time the videos are quite good, but if the authors would join for example Next discord and ask for script/idea review by somebody experienced, they would be able to avoid many subtle inaccuracies. (but also their production time would probably grow by x2 at least :D ).

@AlexEvans1

2 жыл бұрын

@@ped7g as I said, I'm probably not a good judge of what is (currently) obvious. I have spent far too much time going through things as they evolved and too much experimentation.

@realzneo

2 жыл бұрын

This is so good to hear! Thanks for sharing!

Glad to see another video from the series! Remember seeing "Arthur C Clarke - Fractals - The Colors Of Infinity" on TV back in 1990s, and I was hooked. Later, after many experiments finally made my 8b Atari draw one in 16 shades of gray (mode 9, had a monochrome TV connected to it). It took overnight to draw 80x192px using BASIC. Yes, 320x192 real resolution, "logical pixels" were 4px wide. Some years later finding that my PC has FPU made things way faster and better, and SVGA with VESA BIOS Extensions helped even more 😸

All of these computers are still fast enough to do MORE than what most of us intend to make, even the x16 could port 286 level games.

Cool video! From my point of view, having actively experienced the entire commercial 8-bit era since the end of the 70s, the Commander X16 corresponds most closely to what one could have expected as the next logical 8-bit development step at the end of the 80s. I also think of 2 8-bit systems that were actually still being released but did not really make the big breakthrough in western countries at the end of the 80s due to the increasing demand for 16- and 32-bit systems: The MSX2+ Homecomputer Standard and the PC Engine/SuperGrafx16 Console. Both from 1988. The Commander X16 plays roughly in this league of high-end 8-bit systems and uses standard components that existed in this way (or something like this) at the end of the 1980s. In terms of multimedia, it surpasses the MSX2+ standard somewhat, and in terms of CPU power, it even slightly surpasses the PC Engine (65C02 derivative with 7.16 Mhz). Of course, it is a pity that the X16 is not backwards compatible with the Commodore 8-bit line. But backwards compatibility hasn't even been achieved by Commodore itself... lol

Hi Matt! Really enjoyed the video!! All of these machines are awesome! Very difficult to say which one is my 8-bit dream computer! These are all very close! But I'll tell you about my dream N-bit computer: Direct access to the hardware - as on the Commodore 64/X16. No real OS, just kernal routines you can override. 6502 ASM flavor. HDMI and 16:9, 960x540, 8bpp. Dream audio: 6+ voice synth and/or 6+ ch 16bit sampler with 8MB+ ram. Stereo dsp for effects. SD card. As easy to make games for as Flash was. Open source. 200-400 EUR/USD price tag. Available and easy to buy. A big community with thousand of games and software titles developed. Adopted by the young generation. Yeah.. It's a dream!

@slithymatt

2 жыл бұрын

That's a great dream! Hopefully one day it can be closer to reality

@realzneo

2 жыл бұрын

@@slithymatt Thanks Matt! Hopefully..! Also, I forgot, my dream computer need sprites, collision detect and hardware scrolling.. In the mean time, those 3 new 8-bit machines are a fantastic development!

@customsongmaker

2 жыл бұрын

@@realzneo what about a game engine in the hardware?

@realzneo

2 жыл бұрын

@@customsongmaker That would be great! Something to make it easy for everyone to make games would be amazing!

Well done! The section about the ZX Spectrum Next was quite interesting. My next video will explain the part of MEGA65 FCM graphics I use and this will also explain why I go y by x. Price: you can build your own MEGA65 using a NexysA7 FPGA Development board. It's a more DIY approach and won't have the nice case, keyboard and drive, but you still will be able to do most of the things you can do with "retail" model.

@realzneo

2 жыл бұрын

Hi Oliver! Thanks for making the Mega65! It's beautiful! And very tempting! But please consider making a low cost Mega65 one day - for those of us who are afraid of bare pcb boards..

@mikafoxx2717

4 ай бұрын

​@@realzneostuff like custom keyboards, sourcing and repairing old floppy drives, custom cases are really pricey in low numbers

Thank you for this video! My dream computer: MEGA65. Already ordered and impatiently waiting...... 😇

It would be cool to see the JAM-1 pipelined 8-bit cpu running these tests compared to other machines. I know it's not (yet) a mass produced machine, but its very cool and surprisingly capable.

I'm working on building a decent amalgam of Athlon 64 era parts and modern addons for a XP/Linux PC to run games, software, and hardware of the era. I feel more connected to the XP era personally, but I love that these modern DOS/Basic systems exist, if I ever feel like venturing further back and my XP era machine can't do it justice I'd love to be able to get something like the Commander X16 or Mega65!

I agree about the graphics of the X16. I've been able to do some things with the graphics that have me shaking my head. Some other people have done double-PETSCII images that are astonishing.

I think a STM8S MCU chip will be great to play with. I plan to write a MONITOR program for it (or get one...). The register set is much like the 6502 or 6802 (if you ignore the B accumulator), but the nostalgia value would be minimal for those who need their pretty pixels... The STM8S207 has heaps of ROM and adequate RAM on chip to be a nice, cheap self contained controller or gadget... two bucks!

To link this with another topic that Mat is looking at, this is what you can get an FPGA to do in native hardware. kzread.info/dash/bejne/gZmJ1aSGZ9HZhtY.html

@slithymatt

2 жыл бұрын

I wish my FPGA board had enough memory for that! According to the description, even though it's a Cyclone 3, it has much more RAM than my Cyclone IV board.

@stevetodd7383

2 жыл бұрын

@@slithymatt not as much extra than you might think. The sizes quoted are in BITS, not bytes. Roughly 2M bytes of SRAM and 8M bytes of DRAM. I remember something about someone who had got an FPGA to race the beam with Mandelbrot images, i.e. they were calculating each raster line on the fly and not bothering with a frame buffer.

Interesting, I'm developing a SuperCPU clone for the 64, I may try similar code to see how it compares. Upping the voltage slightly it could get close to 30MHz. I wonder what times you would get if you try a modern $10 microcontroller like the STM32h730.

@Theineluctable_SOME_CANT

Жыл бұрын

You definitely need to tinker with these fast little STM8 and 32 chips! So cool...

Ultimate 64 can now run at 16mhz. I wonder how it would do here?

Again, is there a difference in the PAL vs NTSC? for MEGA65.

Seems like it is the ZILOG Z800 chip in the Sinclair SPECTRUM NEXT.

@slithymatt

2 жыл бұрын

Not quite. It does have the multiply instruction, but not as many addressable registers -- only D and E, but then a lot of other things unique to the Z80N, like NEXTGEN and a bunch of pixel math instructions

How fast is it if you use the 3.5MHz CPU speed on the Spectrum Next? Is it linear, so around 2.5 minutes?

@ped7g

2 жыл бұрын

no, at this moment the 8x mode (8x3.5 = 28MHz) adds extra wait state on every memory read, so it's not linear 8x, but more like ~23MHz. Then again the video is timing the emulator, which doesn't have this slow down and is probably closer to full 28MHz. So at 3.5MHz it would need about 8 times the time, and it would be maybe closer to the real machine (the result in this video is probably somewhat faster than real machine, by 10-20%).

@slithymatt

2 жыл бұрын

Like ped7g said, with the emulator it's a straight multiplier for the clock rate. I still need to get a real Next! Definitely with the next KickStarter, at least.

@alexandruianu8432

2 жыл бұрын

@@ped7g Didn't they fix that extra wait state in an update?

@ped7g

2 жыл бұрын

@@alexandruianu8432 it's been improved long time ago (there were more wait states before), but still 28MHz is not full 28MHz ... yet. It may further improve in future cores.

It would have been interesting to try the benchmark on the TI99/4A and see how fast can go.

@slithymatt

2 жыл бұрын

I might in a 16-bit battle, just to show how bus width does not equate to speed!

What about "modern" 8-bit computer, but without CPU and FPU. 1970-1980 technology. Gigatron TTL gives you that. Currently benchmarking it against channels basic and assembly codes. This one is written in C-language.

Why is there no Atari 800 new computer.??

@slithymatt

Жыл бұрын

Good question! Maybe you need to make one!

If there was a version of the TI99-4A which used the TMS99105A then it should be able to run that program in 8 seconds

For graphics, today, I don't see why a nice big fast bank of RAM can't be accessed by interleaved busses. You could have 1 MB of video or more you wanted. Genlockable, too, so it can be really professional. Make it a coprocessor system, like in the free standing arcade games of yore. Taito and Williams gave forgotten more than a thousand KZread retrocomputing channels will ever know about system design. Seriously, they were the professionals. Why not learn from them?

The price of the Mega65 is CHEAPER than a brand new C64 adjusted for inflation. The C64 was introduced in 1982 at $599 ($1,814.36 today) The Mega65 OTOH is 800eur ($841.60) which would be $283.75 in 1982.... not soo expensive huh?

@tetsujin_144

Жыл бұрын

Yes but on the other hand I paid less than that for my laptop, which is about a hundred times more powerful... And I get that raw power isn't the point of a machine like the mega65, the point is just, this comparison looks totally different if you frame it a little differently

@richy69ify

Жыл бұрын

There were less things to spend money on in 1982, a computer was a good investment and new form of entertainment. Still, better having a Mega65 provide happiness than social media damaging mental health

just give me an 8- or 16-bit CPU at 2 Ghz

@slithymatt

2 жыл бұрын

Just as Bill Mensch to make a liquid-cooled 65C816

Matt, the real winner is „Agon Light” (search for it here on YT).

@pseen

Жыл бұрын

Amen to that.

the problem with this.. they aint real 8-bit machines.. i mean they use FPGAs or custom chips and have extra commands that original software will never use....basically they just emulators.. ...but still interesting results none the less...

@AlexEvans1

2 жыл бұрын

The commander x16 uses an actual 65C02 CPU, not an implementation in FPGA. The original C64 used custom chips and programmable logic for the support chips. The ZX Spectrum line uses programmable logic to support the CPU. C64 software on a C128 doesn't use the extended capabilities of the C128. They aren't period retro computers, but then they don't purport to be. If you want an actual period 8-bit machine, then that is what you should get.

@andyleighton3616

2 жыл бұрын

To an extent. Personally I think I would like to see a machine which is really a development of old 8 bit stuff. So maybe something built around an eZ80 - however that would have affected backwards compatibility (undocumented instructions, IO ports and timings) for those who want more of a retro machine. You would also still need some sort of FPGA to stand in for the ULA of the original Speccy, and to provide new graphics modes, hardware sprites etc.

@alexandruianu8432

2 жыл бұрын

8-bit = Data Bus that is 8 bits wide. These are 8-bit machines.

@AlexEvans1

2 жыл бұрын

@@alexandruianu8432 Is the Sinclair QL 8-bit? Is an IBM 5150 8-bit?

@alexandruianu8432

2 жыл бұрын

@@AlexEvans1 Well, yes, even if they're not generally associated with the more gaming oriented "8-bit" term.

AgonLight2 now available - eZ80 20Mhz + ESP32 boots to Quark BBC Basic. 50 euros plus tax

I think a STM8S MCU chip will be great to play with. I plan to write a MONITOR program for it (or get one...). The register set is much like the 6502 or 6802 (if you ignore the B accumulator), but the nostalgia value would be minimal for those who need their pretty pixels... The STM8S207 has heaps of ROM and adequate RAM on chip to be a nice, cheap self contained controller or gadget... two bucks!