Commander X8 Disussion
What are your thoughts on the Commander X8?
Extract from David's Announcement Post:
The Commander X8 - Believe it or not, this product already exists. I've had one sitting on my desk the last 6 months. This is entirely designed by Frank. It's a 100% FPGA implementation. It is sort of a subset of the Commander X16. It has mostly the same architecture, but it has minor differences. There is also already an emulator for it. It's about the size of a Raspberry Pi.
So what is the deal with the X8? Frank and I were in favor of bringing this product out 6 months ago due to the delays of the X16. But some team members didn't like the concept, saying it would dilute the image of the X16. And they made some good points. So, we decided not to release it at that time. But now that things are changing, I thought at minimum I should explain what it is and see what kind of interest people have in it. On the bright side, it is a product basically ready to be released. But does fall short of some of the cool things on the X16. So let me explain how it differs. Most of these concessions and incompatibilities boil down to using a smaller, cheaper FPGA design.
It has 64K of base RAM and 64K of VRAM. It does not have any banked RAM beyond that.
BASIC works essentially the same and should be compatible with most X16 programs that are coded in BASIC.
VRAM access is fundamentally different. There is a 256 byte window into the VRAM which is mapped to a section of base RAM. You can move the window around. This is actually more efficient than what we do with the X16 and is only possible because it is all inside an FPGA. This does mean software written in assembly language will need to be tweaked to be compatible.
The Vera is more or less the same. All of the same registers. Same PSG sound features too. But, programs that use more than 64K VRAM would need to be modified.
There is no Yamaha sound chip. However, as we've seen already. The 8-voice sound system in the Vera is pretty darned capable!
Uses a USB keyboard instead of PS/2. and USB for controllers (so, no SNES ports)
Runs at 12 Mhz instead of 8.
So, I just wanted to address some of the questions/concerns about the X8.
Just to reiterate, BASIC code should be compatible unless it uses a bunch of pokes and peeks. You could literally take the SD card out of the X8, stick in in the X16 and the code should run.
For machine language programs, as for the differences in how the Vera is accessed, it's not nearly as many here are thinking. I saw one person who seemed irate over the idea that we'd be throwing away all of the coding work people have done. It's still the same features, the same registers, and same behaviors. The sprites, the layers, the PSG, it's all the same. The primary difference is how you copy data to VRAM. I suppose with some software this could be a major problem. But in most cases, I suspect it would be less than an hour worth of work to convert a game from X16 to X8 or vice-versa. I haven't actually ported Petscii Robots yet (since I don't know if this product will see the light of day) but I suspect I could have it running on the X8 in maybe an hour or two. It's nowhere nearly as difficult as porting between something like the VIC-20 and C64 which have very different video/audio systems.
The reason it has USB, or more specifically, the reason it CAN have USB is because this is all handled by the FPGA. There was no way we could handle USB on a 6502 system due to the enormous complexity of USB. However, the USB support would be limited to keyboards and controllers.
For the person that asked why on earth you would want this and compared it to a C64 and then saying a C32 instead. Well, the main benefits are: half the price and immediate availability. As i've mentioned before, the X16e might never see the light of day because it is going to be dependent on the X16p being a success before that gets developed. But we could have this available now. And it will be so darned cheap, there's no reason you couldn't have this along side the X16p, or use this to develop on and wait for the X16e or whatever.
For those asking where to donate. I haven't set anything up yet. I've already seen a few paypal donations come in. But I'd rather people wait until we have some official account for the X16 development.
Could the X8 be bundled with PETSCII ROBOTS?
Absolutely. I had already planned to bundle Petscii Robots with the X16. And it can certainly run on the X8 as well.
So, I'm just going to answer a few more concerns about the X8.
One person said I was clearly in favor of this, or something to that effect. Well, I made that clear at the beginning. I wanted to release it 6 months ago. I haven't tried to cover that up.
Several people seemed concerned about how much money I was going to make from this project and how the X8 might reduce that. I know I have said this before, but I'll say it again. This project was NEVER about money for me. In fact, I've made it clear many times that I never intended to profit from this project at all. All profits made from the X16 would be split between Kevin, Frank, Michael, Perifractic, and a few other people. I have told the entire time many times I didn't want anything. I'd rather my "profit" be sacrificed to help reduce the cost of the system. My main goal was to have my dream computer, and that other people would have it too. Now, if it ends up selling millions of units, ok, we'll re-visit that conversation. But that's not likely.
I haven't released the emulator for the obvious reason that if this product is to be buried and never see the light of day, I'd rather the emulator just not be out there. So we'll release that if it is decided to go forward with it.
I suppose I could find some time next week to port Petscii Robots to the X8 for demonstration, since some people were asking about that. It shouldn't take long. Petscii Robots doesn't use any banked RAM. After all, it was originally designed for a computer with 32K. However, I was going to be using banked RAM for the new soundtrack eventually. But at the same time, having access to the SD card can compensate for that. I could load each song in as needed, for example, rather than storing them all in RAM at once.
Some people seem confused on why I'm in favor of releasing this. So I'm going to open up and totally lay it out here. This is my honest opinion on that matter: The X16 has taken much longer to bring to market that I thought. There were many times where development was halted for 6 months or more because of unsolvable bugs. And even though we are close to being able to release a kit fo the X16, it's going to still take more time to get this out the door and the people wanting fully assembled systems will be waiting extra time. The X16 is definitely happening. The X8 is not meant as a replacement for it. But, I felt like the X8 with it's super-low price-tag and easy manufacturing could help keep interest in the project much like "The C64 Mini" did, even though everyone was wanting a full-sized machine. This would keep development on-going, and most anything made for the X8 could easily be ported to the X16 later. I do not believe X8 sales will cannibalize X16p sales. And sales of the X8 could even help to fund more development on the X16 surface-mount version and eventual X8-FPGA version. And for those people that don't want an X8, it seems like the solution is simple. Just don't buy one. Buy the X16p instead. Or wait for phase-2, or whatever.
