X16?

isedwards · Post by **isedwards** » Fri Oct 09, 2020 2:14 pm

Can someone explain the '16' in 'X16'? I can't find an explanation anywhere.

It seems clear that the machine was always intended to be 8-bit, or as close to 8-bit as possible.

Lorin Millsap · Post by **Lorin Millsap** » Fri Oct 09, 2020 2:28 pm

Originally the 816 was our cpu choice but it was dropped for a variety of reasons.

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Perifractic · Post by **Perifractic** » Fri Oct 09, 2020 4:15 pm

Another reason is that it is an 8-Bit machine with 16-Bit tendencies.

BruceMcF · Post by **BruceMcF** » Sat Oct 10, 2020 3:09 pm

It has a 16bit address space, over which your command Xtends.

desertfish · Post by **desertfish** » Sat Oct 10, 2020 4:50 pm

.... or it provides "16 times the detail" as other retro platforms ... ? Oh wait that was supposed to be something else.

xanthrou · Post by **xanthrou** » Mon Jan 25, 2021 11:56 am

If you have watched the second video of "Building My Dream Computer", it was originally called "Commander 16" with "Commander" as a placeholder term with similar meaning to "Commodore, but ended up as permanent name. The 'X' in front of '16' was added to avoid confusion with C16, which is a low-cost version of Commodore Plus/4 with 16 kilobytes of RAM.

StinkerB06 · Post by **StinkerB06** » Wed Jan 27, 2021 3:11 pm

I guess because it has 16 PSG channels?

BruceMcF · Post by **BruceMcF** » Wed Jan 27, 2021 4:20 pm

1 hour ago, StinkerB06 said:

I guess because it has 16 PSG channels?

That's an even later retcon than because it has a 16bit address space.

Cyber · Post by **Cyber** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:56 am

On 10/10/2020 at 6:09 PM, BruceMcF said:

It has a 16bit address space, over which your command Xtends.

Wow. Good one. )

TomXP411 · Post by **TomXP411** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 6:48 am

On 10/9/2020 at 7:14 AM, isedwards said:

Can someone explain the '16' in 'X16'? I can't find an explanation anywhere.

It seems clear that the machine was always intended to be 8-bit, or as close to 8-bit as possible.

Here's my contribution to the made-up reasons.

The computer is named X16 because it has two separate 8 bit busses. The 65C02 lives on the system bus, and VERA has its own 8 bit bus with 128K of independent video memory.

As to the real reason, Lorin already touched on it...

The original design was intended to use a 65C816 CPU running at 20MHz. The team wanted a name that fit the 16-bit nature of this computer, so came up with Commander X16.

However, the design of the computer got too complicated, and David became discouraged with the extra silicon needed to decode the address bus. So the team dropped back to an 8 bit CPU and came up with the banking system that gives the Commander up to 2MB of banked RAM. (The 65816 can handle 16MB of RAM.)

That's how I remember it from the Facebook group and David's videos on the subject.