Commander X16

Hello friends! I'm late to the party (as usual!) I've been feeling super nostalgic about my C64 days in the early 80's and stumbled onto The 8 Bit Guy's YT channel. Loved it from the first video and I binged on the whole channel over a week or so. I am so stoked about the Commander X16. I feel that giddiness that I haven't felt since 1983 when I first used the Apple II's at school and my Dad bought me the 101 BASIC Programs book to try on it. The programs weren't 100% compatible and I spent a lot of time learning BASIC and updating the programs so they would work. I begged and perhaps did a little crying until my parents met me halfway on the price of a new Commodore 64. I could not wait to get home from school every day to read the next chapter of the User's Guide and learn something new. Eventually I got the big Programmer's Reference Guide and it went everywhere with me. Being in a small town with no computer stores nor book stores, I didn't have a lot of resources so learning assembly was very challenging. My method was to draw vertical lines on paper, write what the ml routine should do in the first column, the assembly instructions in the second column, and figure out the values for DATA statements to be POKEd into memory. Not sure why, but that torture was so satisfying. I recall asking my Dad if people got paid money for writing programs. He said he didn't know anything about it. Well, it's given me 30+ years worth of a career so I guess it did pay

Again, I'm so excited to start coding on this thing (emulator for now, I'm going to wait for a surface mount version.) @mwiedmann, your documentation and sample C code is absolute gold! Thank you for putting that together. Combined with the Programmer's Reference Guide, I am learning so much and quickly. I have some ideas for games and I'm getting my kids involved to help me design them. Maybe I can pique their interest in the coding as well. I wrote the classic Snake game for the C64 last week to get myself comfortable with 6502 asm again (this time with KickAssembler ) It felt great! Well, back to it...

Welcome! The C64 has its charms, it's SID is great. But the X16 definitely has some "quality of life" updates: Built in VGA out and standard SD data storage, standardized mouse support, and of course banks and banks of RAM to play with. Then BASLOAD makes playing with BASIC fun again! And a number of other compilers/dev environments are available. Lots to explore, and buying the hardware does help support the project (motivating maintaining the tech ref pages, ROM updates, improving the website, and of course helping the Gen2 development).

Yeah, the more I read and play the more impressed I get. It's a treasure trove of goodies for sure. I definitely see your point in purchasing hardware and I definitely want to contribute to it's success. And honestly, I'm chomping at the bit and probably can't hold out much longer. I just need to make sure what I'm getting is pretty stable as the wife isn't going to love the idea of me making another purchase if there are drastic changes.

Much isn't officially known about the Console version ("Gen 2") but I suspect Kevin and David know the importance of making minimal changes which means the Dev edition is, I think, a pretty safe bet to invest in though until things are official it remains to be seen. I wouldn't expect any architectural changes but there might be some differences.

We know for sure the 65816 might be a thing. I suspect that will come down to cost/availability. If that happens, the 816 is a drop in for the Dev edition and costs about $15.

Some open speculation about what the YM2151 solution might look like on Console. It might be an FPGA (which is fine, it's a digital chip wherein the quality of the sound really comes from the op-amps). A darker timeline was rumored that Console might not have an FM chip at all, but that would surprise me given it's for gaming where the audio solution would be a pretty big selling point to me. But who knows.

Point is, some speculation there in what the smaller edition of the X16 might or might not have, but I don't think it would invalidate the Dev edition.

Dev isn't cheap for sure but for what it's worth, I own an X16 Pre-Dev, an OtterX and have even been pondering getting the latest pre-order since I do a lot of development work (given DreamTracker, but also other stuff). Being a music guy, I can attest it sounds GREAT in person. Kevin really did a good job there. And the Serial and MIDI cards make the real hardware even more fun (MIDI card isn't officially out yet, but should be coming soon). VGA can be a tad fickle on a few random monitors is perhaps the only thing to be mindful of there. I haven't had any issues with that though myself.

Been well worth the cost and I don't think you'd be dissapointed. But as mentioned it's not cheap so if you're on the fence, Console will likely be the next version and you could wait on that although I suspect that's probably a year out at least.

jaydg wrote: ↑Wed Sep 25, 2024 12:53 am I could not wait to get home from school every day to read the next chapter of the User's Guide...Eventually I got the big Programmer's Reference Guide and it went everywhere with me...

So you carried the PRG around, but not the UG?

Slight correction: The CPU in the X16 is currently a 65C02, a work-alike of the 6502.

Of course! The Prog. Reference Guide was so full of info, I had to read it every free moment I had.

So I pulled the trigger and placed my order. I want this computer to succeed! I know there's a pretty long line ahead of me, but it will be a great day when I get that package. Can't wait. Still on the fence about what case to use.