It is still in beta test and they have a free emulator and the ROM is open source. It is a Commodore 65 clone, which is like a cross between an Amiga and Commodore 64. It has Amiga graphics and sound. It also has a C64 mode.
Only developers can buy a computer and it is expensive, once it hits retail they will make them in mass production to keep costs down.
Yeah, but any news around it is pointless unless I can buy it. Devkit or no. I can’t even find a price, that makes it kind of hard to get enthusiastic.
While the final machines are not yet purchasable, you can buy an off-the-shelf Artix7/Nexys4DDR FPGA development board and run the core on that. This has been supported for several years. Also with 100 devkit machines sold and in people's hands, its definitely not vapour ware.
A curious mix of old-style and new for the keyboard, but one thing that really stands out is a key labelled "Help". I wish this had become part of standard keyboard layouts decades ago.
Other keys that would have been great to become standard:
Load, Save, Undo, Redo
And the very fact of the Function keys' configurability meant that they couldn't be relied upon to always do some specific thing, which kind of let devs off the hook. If nobody's going to try pressing F1 anyway, you may as well not bother to make it do anything. Vicious cycle. (See also, and even worse: the "What is This?" window caption-button in Windows, that invoked a modal "Context Help" mode. It was so non-discoverable — and optional! — that I don't know of a single third-party that ever bothered enabling their software to use it.)
On the other hand, if there's a key on the user's keyboard explicitly labelled "Help", then as a developer you'll feel somewhat obligated to put some informative documentation into your app that appears when "Help" is pressed. "Burning" a help function into the hardware, takes away the developer's choice in whether they want to offer help or not, without needing to impose any sort of centralized QA process. The QA process is something the dev will be incentivized to do on their own, when faced with the realization of the inevitability of users' frustrated expectations when they think pressing "Help" will get them some help. :)
>This sort of response is why people dislike techies.
Enter was called "return"..and you know why? Typewriters...carriage return, if you have already functions why no use it? You want a Copy/Paste button too?
This is true, but there is another issue: people who are not techies are not held up to the standard they should be when using computers. If you work with certain software, it is your job to learn to use it well. And if you screw things up because you didn't take the bother to learn how to do it properly, then it is not "the system's fault".
You have to be proficient at least with the system you are using, but people want to use software that is intuitive, even when the task is complex.
plenty do—frexxed and resource off the top of my head—which is why the fact that my externalized a1200 keyboard solution not mapping the help key is super annoying
Do any of those extra keys even work in today’s apps and OSs? What does the Call button even do? Are they essentially macro keys you have to program so they produce a series of keys?
I have this on an Artix 7 FPGA board. It works well for what it is, but what I really want is a proper case. A replica C65 case would be optimal, but I can't even find a 3D-printed case for this board (specifically a Nexys 4DDR). Any suggestions?
Is the site just overloaded or something? It took 26 seconds for the content of the page to actually appear...
More importantly, the site is not keeping my interest at all, even though an open 8-bit computer sounds amazing to me. Is there somewhere with like... tech specs? Text? I don't care about a photo gallery, videos or marketing-style summary descriptions. There seem to be some concrete details on this external webshop though (???) https://shop.trenz-electronic.de/en/Products/MEGA65/
Wait .. is MEGA65 just a design? ... And Trenz happens to be the place that made some limited physical units so far?
Where are the hardware design files? It says it's open source hardware and software, but I can't find the hardware design files anywhere. They don't appear to be on the Mega65 Github repo.
You're quite correct that this is an oversight of ours. I thought Trenz had already put the schematics etc on their website as they are manufacturing the PCBs and selling the units for us (we are currently between the 100 devkits having gone out, and being ready for pre-order for final machines, so unfortunately you can't just yet order one, but later this year we expect to open pre-orders). We will solve this one way or another.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 60.7 ms ] threadOnly developers can buy a computer and it is expensive, once it hits retail they will make them in mass production to keep costs down.
https://c65gs.blogspot.com/2020/07/mega65-emulator-and-tools...
Other keys that would have been great to become standard: Load, Save, Undo, Redo
it was called F1
On the other hand, if there's a key on the user's keyboard explicitly labelled "Help", then as a developer you'll feel somewhat obligated to put some informative documentation into your app that appears when "Help" is pressed. "Burning" a help function into the hardware, takes away the developer's choice in whether they want to offer help or not, without needing to impose any sort of centralized QA process. The QA process is something the dev will be incentivized to do on their own, when faced with the realization of the inevitability of users' frustrated expectations when they think pressing "Help" will get them some help. :)
Enter was called "return"..and you know why? Typewriters...carriage return, if you have already functions why no use it? You want a Copy/Paste button too?
Yes the thing who needs 10y old dell software and always opens IE even if something else is the standard browser ;)
Also, some keyboards like sun's and some serial terminals had dedicated copy, paste, &c.
You have to be proficient at least with the system you are using, but people want to use software that is intuitive, even when the task is complex.
https://retrothing.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/wp51.jpg
https://groupbuys.mechboards.co.uk/shop/hyper-7-keyboard-r3/
It's a beast.
It did nothing
More importantly, the site is not keeping my interest at all, even though an open 8-bit computer sounds amazing to me. Is there somewhere with like... tech specs? Text? I don't care about a photo gallery, videos or marketing-style summary descriptions. There seem to be some concrete details on this external webshop though (???) https://shop.trenz-electronic.de/en/Products/MEGA65/
Wait .. is MEGA65 just a design? ... And Trenz happens to be the place that made some limited physical units so far?
If the real one also floats like a back to the future skateboard as per the mockup I will have a retroverdose.