Commander X16

5 hours ago, BruceMcF said:

The software where everything fits comfortably into 64K RAM (well, 54K of RAM taking system RAM use into account) are the "very few things" that I was referring to.



How quickly people have forgotten how little room 64K of RAM really is.

I’ve been feeling that lately since writing C for the X16.  Memory goes fast.

There are two solutions though:

1. More RAM; that is, the RAM banks, which are fun to use!

2. Fast I/O

if the SD card on the X16 is fast enough, then you don’t need RAM banks.... in fact even with RAM banks, if I/O is slow, loading up the RAM banks is painful in at least some circumstances.

I'm not sure.  I still get a bad feeling about releasing the X8 now.  I'm not so concerned about the team's support for the X16 as much as the community.  Let's say they release the X8 now, and a lot of people are excited about making something for X(anything), and so jump on writing software for the X8.  Then a couple years down the line the X16 finally comes out.  A LOT can happen in just a couple of years, software-wise, from what I've seen on these forums.  By then probably a lot of games will have come out, written for the X8.  And I can't help but feel that a lot of the hype may have gone down by then.  And with the X16 being slower, and the interface to the VERA being a bit more tedious to deal with, will all that many people really be excited to port their stuff to the X16?  Sure, people will start to develop things for the X16 at that point, but I feel like it will always be behind the X8.  Also, a lot of people may feel their games and whatnot should support both the X8 and X16, which means not being allowed to use too much RAM or VRAM, which means a lot of developers not taking full advantage of the X16's capabilities.

Again, this is just a worry, I could be totally wrong.  I hope I am.  But I feel like I have to put it out there.

I'm glad to see so many responses here, hopefully this is representative of the larger community's desires as well.

I'll admit that I have real mixed feelings about the X8. I'd ultimately voted in favor of it (in addition to the phase-3), but it tears me. To me, the concept of a feature-stripped X16 is most appealing if the product is specifically targeted at handheld experiences. Instead, the X8 feels like it's trying to compete with the Raspberry Pi, something which I'm not sure it'll be good at without more exposed digital I/O for people to hack with. And with the 50% faster clock speed, the X8 is not strictly worse than the X16, which means there will inevitably be members of the community who will prefer the X8 over even the phase-3 X16. Not to mention the benefits of USB, which are hurdles (small hurdles, but nonetheless) to owning an X16.

So I worry that the X8 would ultimately bifurcate the community, and drag the quality of both X8 and X16 software down to run as much as possible on the minimal subset between the X8 and the X16.

I think I've talked myself into wanting to change my vote to say "No" to the X8.

2 minutes ago, rje said:

I’ve been feeling that lately since writing C for the X16.  Memory goes fast.



There are two solutions though:



1. More RAM; that is, the RAM banks, which are fun to use!



2. Fast I/O



if the SD card on the X16 is fast enough, then you don’t need RAM banks.... in fact even with RAM banks, if I/O is slow, loading up the RAM banks is painful in at least some circumstances.

It's not loading the RAM bank where you get the win, it's switching to the RAM bank to use it where otherwise you would have to reload the RAM bank where you get the win.

The SD card is 12.5MHz/bit, about 1.6MHz/byte plus overhead (not every SPI packet byte is a data byte, the bytes have to be put somewhere, etc.).  The difference between the C64 1541 disk drive is night and day. Load an 8K RAM segment faster than you can blink.

So the "get Bank25" process is saving the current X8 RAM Bank2 as "Bank13" and then loading "Bank25" into it. Each happening ... well, basically faster than you can blink.

And you do it, and have a "swap bank" routine, and use it ... and compared to the C64, man, you are cooking.

But then ... LDA $0000 : PHA : LDA lrublock : STA $0000 : ... : PLA : STA $0000 -- 20 clocks at 8MHz, 400kHz/8K bytes.

And the CX16 version of that leaves the X8 version in the dust.

Since the beginning of this thread, my opinion on the X8 has changed.

In the beginning I was against it. Now I find the platform interesting and

the possibility of quick availability appeals to other people again.

Addendum: I got to the VIC20 / C64 through 8-bit Guys channel. Before that

I didn't want anything to do with assembler. I watched his videos, his series about

Planet X2 / X3 / Robots and finally the X16.

That's how I came across Matt Heffernan's, Shallan's, Oldskoolcoder's channels and

finally discovered a connection to assembler. It's a lot of fun, I don't want to stop! This is just an outline.

What I mean to say, Mr. David Murray has my complete confidence.

If he just sees the X8 (absolutely not a bad platform) as a means of the times, then there are reasons!

The whole team is investing so much time, money and brainpower in this project and

here in the forum there is currently a split. I do not like that.

My opinion: X8 Go! Extend your range and collect money for the X16.

Let the X16 mature and publish it as a solid, complete work of art.

5 minutes ago, StephenHorn said:

Not to mention the benefits of USB and HDMI, which are hurdles (small hurdles, but nonetheless) to owning an X16.

Emphasis mine.

Wait, what?  HDMI?  For the love of god, please just release ALL the info about this blasted thing. I just don't understand why the holdback. Now I'm starting to get frustrated.

Just now, x16tial said:

Emphasis mine.



Wait, what?  HDMI?  For the love of god, please just release ALL the info about this blasted thing. I just don't understand why the holdback. Now I'm starting to get frustrated.

My mistake, I'm not sure where I got that from. I'll edit the post.

1 minute ago, x16tial said:

just release ALL the info about this blasted thing. I just don't understand why the holdback

Because then people would get excited and assume the decision had already been made to release the thing as a product. And if that didn't come to pass, those people would be more disappointed than if they hadn't learned all the nitty-gritty details.

There is sausage being made here, and everyone's trying to avoid getting their fingers clipped.

I'd accept that, if we weren't being asked if we want the product or not.

Just now, x16tial said:

I'd accept that, if we weren't being asked if we want the product or not.

And without an option to say, "not enough information to tell".