Date   : Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:33:58 +0200
From   : kortink@... (John Kortink)
Subject: modern BBC remake

On Tue, 17 Jul 2007 21:05:53 +0100, Rob wrote:

>On 17/07/07, John Kortink <kortink@...> wrote:
>>
>>
>> It's a recurring idea, and I've been toying with some
>> ideas myself. There's not that much to gain though.
>>
>>
>
>Whilst I'd personally not wish to see econet removed in a clone
>(unless you could lever in an ethernet port instead) what are the
>additional costs of using a big fpga for everything?
>
>ISTR that one of the 'everything in a joystick' tv-games you can buy
>is actually a complete Commodore 64 + 1541 disc drive, totlaly
>emulated.

That's the popular view. Actually that thing is quite
cut-down. It only plays a handful of rather mediocre
games that happen to run on the part of C64 hardware
that has been implemented.

>(And if you know where to solder, you can add keyboard &
>external interfaces!)  Surely a Beeb isn't that much more complicated?

In its entirety, it is for sure. Only the core (without
most of the extra periphery) isn't that different.

> Obviously it all depends on the quantity you are making...!!  Maybe a
>similar deal could be negotiated?

The C64DTV was thought up by a large toy manufacturer,
with projected sales of something like 100.000+ units.
There's no 'deal' to make, or you'd have to find a
similar interested party with similar figures, which
you can just about forget in this case.

>Of course, as soon as you design using anything but the original
>components and circuit, you run the risk of losing compatability,
>which the OP was trying to avoid (based on his coments on problems
>with software emulators.)

Exactly. Getting it exactly right is not trivial. E.g.
for the C-One thing, the C64 core is tweaked all the
time to get things 'more right' than they were before.
That won't end any time soon I guess.


John Kortink

-- 

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