Commander X16 Discussion with David Murray and Kevin Williams

David Murray, The 8-Bit Guy, and Kevin Williams of TexElec.com present a discussion of the history of the Commander X16 computer project and demonstrate the current state of the completed machine.
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[@mlongval]

Very nice presentation! Thank you very much for your hard work and commitement to the project. I would venture to say that you have passed through the "long dark night of the soul" over the past 4 years. Obviously you have learned many things and had many failures along the way, but that is the sign of true growth. I commend you on your steadfastness. Cheers from Canada!

[@jegarsan]

Very informative presentation from the 8 Bit Guy! Congratulations, Dave and company!

[@AndrewSternkern]

I really hope one day I will be able to purchase one of these beauties. Thanks for all the effort going into this project.

[@voidstar1337]

Years ago, Dave made a comment along the lines of "the X16 is not a C64 clone" and elaborated that his vision was to create a hypothetical late 1980s system - and to that, I think they've succeeded. As Kevin said here, it's a kind of Commodore{Amiga}/Apple hybrid. Or in my view, the X16 is like a hypothetical Color Computer 4 (the CoCo3 had decent graphics, but lacked an integrated multi-voice sound chip -- so the X16 corrects that shortcoming, and embraces solid state storage tech). Note the CoCo3 also had a capable multitasking OS-9, would be neat to see that ported to the X16 someday.

[@rabidbigdog]

Running OS-9 on a 65C02 would be ... errr ... challenging. :) Perhaps Geckos could be revived though?

[@HomerNarr]

In my humble opinion a real C64 clone would have made more sense.

[@FlyingPhilUK]

Then the X16 should have used the 6809! ;) Although the '816 would have been even better 😁

[@Jody_VE5SAR]

Great presentation and Q&A.... reminded me of Steve Jobs addressing his internal engineering audience to give his "vision"... and the audience not quite understanding it but still recognizing that this is something that will become very special..

[@JonRowlison]

@52:33 Robot: What is my purpose? Rick: You pass butter. Robot: Oh my god! Rick: Yeah... welcome to the club, pal.

[@gmirwin]

Excellent. Thanks for putting this up.

[@59withqsb12]

David: I did the most awesome thing ever done on a 6502 processor Also David: I don't do that for bragging rights 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Thanks VCFSW for sharing this, it kinda makes up for not being there in person. I've been watching the CX16 project for some time and it's so awesome to see David and Kevin in their natural habitat. I am still waiting for the price point that makes me bite, but I am hooked. PS David gets bragging rights whether he wants them or not 🙂

[@VCFSW]

Glad to share this with the community. Please check out our other videos from VCF Southwest too: kzbin.info/aero/PLM7UHPl-hz6wiyXk-z4-UoMtsq65POvYo

[@michaelkaercher]

I never thought that the team could not complete the project.There are like 40 retro-platforms out there which demonstrates that it is doable. I also think there is a market for those computers. Especially for someone like David promoting it. He is a good guy. Design - wise it is quite complex however. Look at competing projects like Agon light - they avoided several of the complexities be dedicating an ESP32 with video and audio. The complexity added by the Vera chip, by standard peripherals of the time and of legacy sound chips took its toll on the price tag, the manufacturing and complexity. Now looking at the prospects of the system, I do not consider the demand as a problem. I have doubts about the supply. Seeing stacks of keyboards in a garage may be nice and reminds me of the "Apple Garage", I visited recently on a trip through California. But it is just no more the time for that kind of manufacturing. There is a high danger, that the manufacturing approach slows supply down so much that the project will never live up to its potential. It is however - still possible to fix it. Not the design. But the production. A decent manufacturer may produce the current board in 20-30% of the time and for about 50-75% of the cost. Just outsource it completely and stop the home grown manufacturing. Those large manufacturing companies have resolved problems you may find out in 5 years to be there. Otherwise there is a probability that your perceived profit turns into loss and that is not what you want.

[@johnsonlam]

Fun story of developing a retro-style computer, no one will expect it's dirt cheap from the very beginning, of course the first few people got it have to pay a bit more, but it's will be history item since the next batch will not be the same due to changes will happen.

[@gryzman]

Very cool! I am always confused, because X16 sounds like its 16 bit

[@frnno967]

I don't speak for the project but I believe the '16 is left over from early in development when they were considering the W65C816 processor as the heart of the system. They later changed to a 65C02. They probably felt justified not changing the name since the VERA gives the system graphics performance comparable to 16-bit machines of the day.

[@fliplefrog8843]

I've paid 750eu for a mega 65! $350 would be a pleasure, for such a machine!! And thank you, for mentioning, that the sound of Adrians DanceParty is an Oxyron Artwork ;)

[@dav1dbone]

I'd hoped they'd go to town on the sound chip replacement/alternative and go for something more arcade orientated, multiple channels with pcm or wavetable.

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

Someone should have designed an advanced X32 running a TMS99105A using the multiplexing techniques that IBM used in the PC that used the INTEL 8086 and 1GB of RAM.

[@shaunvandercook2514]

the hole underwear gnomes thing was the funest thing ive seen in all ive watched ty buddie and not your guy pail and not your friend buddie lol

[@JonRowlison]

Is V4 kind of a stable hardware design now? Meaning someone who buys several V4s and makes some hardware or software for them has some kind of "things won't change much" guarantee at this point? I'm looking at a platform like the C64... if the motherboard was redesigned a few times every year, it would really have messed up anyone's plans to develop for it.

[@paullee107]

I want to apologize to Dave and texelec. Y'all are doing things that I will NEVER do for retro computing. I think there's something to be learned here for creating a... better? ... more clear business plan - because WE are idiots. These developers are the pioneers continuing to keep 8bit alive. I'll buy a X16 - I don't know when, but thank the both of y'all for doing. Much more than any naysayers ever have.

[@youcrackmeupdude]

Great presentation!

[@kjakobsen]

Most of Commodores 8 Bit machines was incompatible too.

[@johnsmith1953x]

Not really. You can run PET Basic stuff on a Vic20/C64/C128 even though the PET came out 10 years before the C128D/

[@josephlunderville3195]

"just use A*", ha ha ha... RTS on modern PCs don't just blindly run 200 independent A* queries either! It's a great way to introduce the worst frame spikes. If you are moving a lot of units at once, one strategy is to group them. Typically a large bandbox select can be assigned a virtual mover that does the full pathfind and everything in the group can move relative to the virtual mover. This also keeps units in formation which might be aesthetically preferable. Hierarchical pathfinding is another typical approach, where you don't necessarily do the whole detail pathfind all at once, you have an automatically preprocessed version of the map you use to get a rough path at the start and then refine it as you go. It's still resource intensive but not as bad. There's also memoizing and batching tricks that are possible. Pathfinding is a discipline you could specialize exclusively in. It's not "just" use A* -- implementing A* well in an RTS and keeping performance up and resource use down is complex! A modern AAA RTS might easily have a couple full time years of engineer time sunk into it.

[@8bitwiz_]

43:34 It freakin' works!

[@FlyingPhilUK]

Just about the only thing I don't like about the X16 is that it uses the 6502 - would have been much more interesting to use the '816... - *that* would have been the CPU to use for an imaginary late 80s 8/16 bit machine...

[@gregclare]

Totally agree. The ‘816 defaults to 6502 mode on power-up, and in fact is 6502 clock cycle accurate, so is truer to the 6502 than the W65C02 is! It was a pity they didn’t keep the ‘816, just operating with the same memory map as the 65C02. At least developers could’ve then chosen to use some of the ‘816’s enhancements, which would have made for a more enticing “get back into retro programming” experience.

[@jacklawsen6390]

Originally I thought this would be a retro-type computer without the drawbacks like harsh memory limits & proprietary media & connections, but seems they've worked hard and increased costs to add those back in. At least they're outsourcing mfg now and avoiding potentially huge issues, I guess.

[@weakbit633]

But you made a BIG-Board and so it comes it cost like today. Nobody knows in 2018 when the project are come to talk about the little-board. Also Raspberry cost today 3times more then during it come out. And we must also mention that the production of 100pcs or 200pcs are not can made with a low cost this is impossible if you come to 1000pcs then you have loose all your money and your time you need to made 10k up to 100k then you can earn. I know that in case of I work for big industrial companies and we're producing 3M up 3.5M pcs. Congratulations to your product and I'll download the I hope so book (pdf) where I can read all the information to make a external-card?

[@demwill]

Did you manage to send the fake chips back and get a refund? I really feel awful for you guys :(

[@andrewdunbar828]

You can't copyright any word in any language. You can trademark them. No idea if you could trademark "Blitz" or not tho.

[@daemonmagic8261]

Why Commander's CPU frequency is changed by jumpers ? Won't it be better to make some register to write to the divider, and make, for example, a BASIC command "MHZ [1,2,4,8]" which would change the frequency just from the command line, or even within BASIC program? And also, if Commander is X16, why won't use 65C816 CPU? :)

[@Lion_McLionhead]

The amount of suffering they put into that thing makes lions wonder why they didn't charge $10,000 & intend it to be a reference design for creating an emulator while everyone who wanted to program on it just used the emulator.

[@jimmiles33]

You’ll find plenty of naysayers for the foenix, the x16, and everything else

[@damientech88]

If the video is FPGA, why not make all of the chips FPGA?

[@toboterxp8155]

Because that'd be boring

[@damientech88]

@@toboterxp8155 Boring or pointless...pick your poison I guess.

[@gabor222]

The bigger FPGAs are hard to get: I've ordered the Mega65 this summer and the estimated delivery date is 2014 due to the FPGA shortage.

[@Dr.Logistik]

how can something be better in bad ways lol

[@HomerNarr]

I love 8bit guys channels. I subbed him and Adrians Digital Basement. But to be honest: I don't really see the point in new 8 bit hardware. Due to the actual situation the Commander could be expected to be a very niche product, with a tiny market. The absolute success of smartphones made computers a common household item. Even more, multiple devices per household are common. Those things could run C64s, Commanders, Apple 2s on their left toe with all data stuck in a tiny part of cache. I am sorry, i can not imagine young ones looking up those 8 and 16 bitters to start learning about coding / internal workings of computers. One would not learn car mechanics on a Ford Model T either. That does not make the Model T, C64, Apple 2 any less awesome. But in the actual world, they are relicts of old times. "We have 3 Commander for sale, if more want to buy, lets have a list and a lottery..." "... ok we don't need a list..."

[@letMeSayThatInIrish]

Learning about mechanics by fixing up a Ford Model T sounds awesome to me.

[@toboterxp8155]

I mean, 8 bit guy has sold floppy disk games before, presumably he is very aware of the market he's getting into here.

[@johnsmith1953x]

*Dude, nobody wants new 8-bit computers!!*

[@Churchill250267]

Way too expensive for what it is.

[@mightwilder]

this is not 8bit and not retro with such a large fpga

[@rabidbigdog]

Could you mention where your solution can be purchased please?

[@novh4ck]

The CPU is 8-bit, mouse/keyboard microcontroller is 8-bit, the FPGA has no concept of "bits" in the same sense as CPUs. It is pure 8-bit machine so you are wrong. And since "retro" literally means "imitative of a style from the recent past" you are wrong with that statement as well.

[@mightwilder]

@@novh4ck retro means platform that was possible back then, and this was declared on the start of project, meaning logic < 14mhz and integration < 3000nm, 8bit cpu with modern fpga it's like roman emprire with tanks

[@novh4ck]

​@@mightwilder You are acting like there is some other "true retro" option other than implement video logic in an FPGA. It's not like you could go to Mouser and order 8-bit compatible video chips. The only other option is to go a route of Agon Light 2 and use some kind of modern 32-bit microcontroller to handle video. Yes VERA is implemented in a modern FPGA however it's interface is purely 8-bit with computing capabilities of 80's machines. Staying close to your comparison it's more like Roman Empire with swords made of modern steel but still swords not tanks.

[@mightwilder]

@@novh4ck you just want to justify using fpga because it's easy way to achieve any digital circuit... but it is not usable for true retro machine, and options are exist, you may use 22v10 or v9958 or any other chips from 80ies that available today in large quantities...

[@IkarusKommt]

There are 3 or 4 8-bit novelty systems out there in the market already, who needs this overpriced failure?

[@63801170]

No one needs an 8-bit novelty system... just those who "want" one can buy what ever they choose.

[@PregnantSausage]

Fascinating talk