Jeff Pare

This. Many moons ago I made an Arduino-based PID controller for my espresso machine, then realized it was overkill and ported the thing to an ATtiny84. It's a capable microcontroller for small tasks but no powerhouse. I'm starting to believe many people lump in ATMEGAs, their smaller cousins and Raspberry Pi together with regards to capabilities and performance.

Very nice - the speed improvements are already impressive!

Adrian's Digital Basement on this Vic-II FPGA prototype. It's cool to see Adrian try it out.

A while ago I managed to find 5 of what *might* be the 4MHz variant (AM9511A-4DC) - but haven't been able to test them yet. Maybe they're real, maybe they're only good for 2MHz or they're outright fakes. Once I manage to find some time, I'll need to build a minimal system to test these, as my eventual goal is to build a math coprocessor card for the X16 - not because it'll be profitable, just to see if I can make it. I suspect it will be somewhat similar to the Arithmetic Processor AP-1 described here. Still, I first need to test the chips first.

My favorite computer case of all time is the one used for the Apple IIgs, so it's no surprise that I like the X16 design!

Considering how many of the Commodore 64's part just die of old age, it's been a joy to see people creating very good modern replacements for problematic chips (PLA, SID). I learned today of someone working on an FPGA replacement for the VIC-II. Here's the video

I'm subscribed to Adrian's channel partly because he's a superb troubleshooter - very glad he helped the project this way! He also has the most 80s intro music, which is cool.

Dude. It's a wedge form-factor. Tiny wedge to be sure, but my favorite computer form factor! Thinking about buying one.

Oh, sure. The 17" LCD monitor I got is 1280x1024, which is hardly perfect but good enough for me. The smaller monitor is also good enough for *me* as I like the smaller size - I'm fine with black sidebars, not as good image quality and I've used an SX-64 and Apple //c with the 9" monitor back in the day. I have no interest going with a CRT, though I get why many would like to use one.

I went to a thrift store and found a VGA 17" LCD monitor for $10 - you might be able to find 15" monitors the same way or on Craigslist; however, I also bought myself a 10 inch monitor with multiple inputs (including composite and VGA) on AliExpress.

For me, it's a feature that is best implemented as an expansion card (or maybe through the user port?); otherwise feature creep will increase cost and make the X16 ship a lot later. Besides, the added complexity means troubleshooting and support get trickier, so it's better to have a simpler platform at first and get it right. However, I would say guidelines on how to create APIs for the X16 and expansion cards could be enough to ensure different implementations of ESP32-base expansion boards behave well together and with software that will use them. Having clear guidelines will also spur hardware development for the X16, which would be nice.

8-bit games that I actually played at home in the late 70s or early to mid 80s - I don't count games I played on emulators decades later: Pong (Telstar Deluxe) Omega Race (Vic-20) Centipede (Vic-20 version, clone) Breakout (Apple //e) Stellar 7 (Apple //e) Mario's Bros (Apple //e) Lode Runner (Apple //e) Ultima I to III (Apple //e) Sargon II (Apple //e) Moon Patrol (Apple //e)

Eh, all we learned is that David like everyone else is human and sometimes screws up; I don't see this having any significant impact on X16. In fact, it bolsters the case for making a new "retro" computer as we'll be able to fiddle with it without worrying we might be damaging vintage hardware.

@Anshul2 Go check out the Features and Specifications in the FAQ - no cartridge port, but some info about the slots, user port and other I/O.

Thank you; I've a had a project in mind for quite a while, one where the retro chip I'll be using runs at 4MHz - I'll need to check the specs again to see what kind of window I'm dealing with, but I'm glad there may be a simple solution to at least make it work, even with the performance hit.