A labor of love is exactly correct. In that sense, Jeri Ellsworth is right on track and well on her way to a C-64 on a chip: http://www.geocities.com/cm_easy/ Really, it seems a little contrived to assume that by putting a C-64 into a marketable "appliance" a market will appear to buy it. If such a market exists, it is already filled with dedicated devices to perform those functions. PDA's and hand-held game units are popular items, but putting a C-64 into a PDA won't help you compete with the products that already occupy that market. Anyone willing to pay for "C-64 ness" will be much happier just to buy a new C-64. This will satisfy their needs and they won't have to deal with the extra baggage of another product wrapped around it. That is probably the lesson of the Web-it 64. People who want a C-64 are happy to spend $100.00 to put together a system and have a real C-64. People who want PC's are happy to spend $1000.00 on a new and full-featured computer and they don't need a C-64. They certainly won't be satisfied with an under-powered 486 system and having pre-installed emulation software doesn't do anything to offset that. If you want a cheap PC that plays C-64 games, spend $100.00 on a used 486 system and install Miha Peternel's C64S. Run DOS for speed and you don't even need Windows unless you want to browse the web. The good thing about emulation is that it allows us to preserve what we already have. Unfortunately, it does nothing to advance the hardware of the C-64. No one writes new sophisticated applications to run on emulators. You can't browse the web from an emulator like you can from a SuperCPU. If you think long enough about it, you may realize (as I have) that that's what you REALLY want. An advanced hardware design built from the ground up with C-64 compatibility will satisfy all your desires. Developers (and hackers) become most excited when they have new toys to play with. Thus the SuperCPU begets the Wave. --- "Dave R." <watson@enteract.com> wrote: > At 04:28 AM 4/26/01 -0700, you wrote: > >While you and I (and many other C-64 enthusiasts) > >would be willing to pay ALOT of $$$ for a new C-64, > >that's not really a large enough market to justify > the > >development costs. > > That's true, we enthusiasts are the only market for > such a device. But I > think the development costs can be largely offset if > you consider such a > device a "labor of love" by someone willing to spend > their own time to > design a 64 replacement. That only leaves their > monetary investments to be > recouped, which shouldn't be too bad with the costs > of programmable logic > technology. If the entire 64 can be crammed into > one FPGA, the chip itself > will probably only be $40-50 each in small > quantities. Add a board and > other parts and we're talking maybe, what, $150-$200 > per unit? ===== Get a FREE 6Mb webmail box from go6502! - http://www.geocities.com/profdredd As low as 2.99% Intro APR from NextCard! - http://www.nextcard.com/index6.html?ref=aff0074521 PayPal is the FAST FREE and SECURE way to send money! - https://secure.paypal.x.com/refer/pal=profdredd%40yahoo.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices http://auctions.yahoo.com/ - This message was sent through the cbm-hackers mailing list. To unsubscribe: echo unsubscribe | mail cbm-hackers-request@dot.tml.hut.fi.
Archive generated by hypermail 2.1.1.