MEGA65 – Open 8-Bit Computer

MEGA65 – Open 8-Bit Computer(mega65.org)

49 points by turbolent 11 years ago | 6 comments

unwind 11 years ago |

This was submitted only 5 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9425628. There was some discussion back then.

userbinator 11 years ago |

What is this "4502" processor? I suppose it's related to the 6502 in some way, but I can't find much info on it.

The specs are a bit ridiculous though, especially the graphics: "upto 1920x1200 256 colour" - I don't see how you could even fit that in the 128KB of RAM it claims to have.

Funny they had to blur out "Commodore" in one of the screenshots...

porsupah 11 years ago | |

There are some informative threads here:

http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=56191

http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=51542

"The GS4510 is compatible with the 4502, which in turn is compatible with the 65CE02"

As for the graphics:

"There is a new graphics mode to access the full colour graphics. This is the biggest difference from the real C65's which used an awkward bitplane mode that is not really that friendly to 8-bit CPUs. The new modes are actually enhanced text modes where the characters are defined using 64 bytes, each providing the colour for one of the 64 pixels in the character. This allows large highres images with repetitive sections to be drawn without using gobs of RAM. Remember that 1920x1200 is >2Mpixels, which would be >2MB of chipram required. The C65GS like the real C65 has 128KB of chipram."

pekk 11 years ago | |

> I don't see how you could even fit that in the 128KB of RAM it claims to have.

Sounds like a pretty typical challenge for the demo scene.

glitch 11 years ago | |

"4502" might be a mushing of "6502" and "4510" together, making a name for their own thing? (The 4510 is a system in package variant of the 65CE02.) I too am not familiar with any "4502" in this context.

rogeryu 11 years ago |

Can't wait to run C64 games at 50x the original speed! But very cool this! ;-)