The Commodore 65 was to be a major hardware upgrade to the venerable Commodore 64.  Scheduled to be called the C64DX/C65 and set for an early 90’s launch, Commodore pulled the plug rather abruptly and shelved the unit due to unforeseen rising manufacturing costs and probably due to their own success.  During the period that this new computer was to launch, the Commodore Amiga 500 was seeing tremendous success in the market.  You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that it is a bad idea to introduce a competing piece of hardware when you have another, similarly priced, piece of hardware killing it at retail.  Fate stepped in and ended the life of the C65 before it was ever able to breathe its first breath.

Now, thanks to fans and programmers, the C65 will live on within the FPGA based Mega65 computer.  This is not a project that is being handled like similar projects where it is a C65 in name only and runs Windows or Linux under the plastic shell.  No, Mega65 will be a full-fledged 8-Bit computer, just like it was planned to be but with more power than the original specs called for.  Compatibility is expected to be quite high as the developers are focusing on that quite a bit.  Interestingly, the Mega65 will take advantage of modern trappings including high definition outputs, SD card slot, Ethernet connection and other features that will satisfy old and new fans alike.

Here is a bunch of technical stuff from our friends over at Retrogaming History have compiled:

CPU: 48MHz GS4510 single-core, enhanced 4502 8-bit processor, with 32-bit ZP indirect and 32-bit far-JSR/JMP/RTS operations, 28-bit address space, fast hypervisor traps, virtual memory, IO virtualisation (coming soon).

RAM: 128KB RAM visible to VIC-IV, 32KB colour RAM visible to VIC-IV, 128KB ROM/RAM. 128MB of (extended) DDR2 RAM being worked on to be made accessible.

Video Controller: VIC-IV advanced rasterised video controller, like the VIC-II and VIC-III no framebuffer. Native resolution 1920×1200 (192MHz pixel clock). Supports all documented VIC-II modes (hi-res, multi-colour mode, extended-background-colour mode, sprites) and VIC-III modes (bitplanes are in the process of adding). Independent horizontal and vertical hardware scaling allows text and graphics resolutions as high as 1920×1200 and as low as 60×38. Separate 256-colour palettes for sprites, bitplanes and character graphics, allowing upto 1,024 colours on screen without changing the palette in real-time. VGA output 12-bit (4,096 colours). The planned DVI/HDMI output will support 23-bit colour (8.3 million colours). Text mode extensions including proportional width characters, super-extended background colour mode, as well as the standard VIC-III extended attributes.

Sound: Dual soft-SIDs + dual 8-bit DACs.

Media: D81 disk images from SD card (native VFAT32 file system support coming soon). Real 3.5″ floppy drive support pLanned. Standard loading speed without fast loader ~20KB second. Loading speed direct from SD card 300 – 3000KB/second (1200 – 12000 blocks per second), depending on SD card.

Outputs: Joystick ports 1 and 2 (9-Pin Atari Standard), VGA, 10/100mbit Ethernet,Mono Audio (Stereo soon), USB, Micro USB.

Operating System MEGA-OS all-in-one hypervisor and compat operating system, including integrated freezer and task switcher, VFAT32 file system driver and inter-process communications.
Form factor C65-like all-in-one. A laptop form is planned for a future release. Full-height 19″ rack option extra.

Planned: HDMI, analog video, extension port, maybe external floppy. Inputs USB (supports PC keyboards and KeyRah II), Micro USB, Ethernet, Micro SD slot, and coming soon: 3D accelerometer, on-board microphone and thermometer.

The reason the Mega65 is interesting is because the RETRO Video Game System is using FPGA also.  This is a programmable computer, of sorts, that developers can use to create a Nintendo or Atari 2600 in software and the system will emulate that hardware.  Once the FPGA hardware is loaded developers are able to program for, what should be familiar to them, hardware.  Since the Mega65 is FPGA based too, it should be possible for modders to make it run other hardware profiles just like the RETRO VGS.

Source: Retrogaming History

Carl Williams

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