Atari 800XL Remake | Hacker News Reader

Atari 800XL Remake

revive-machines.com

205 pointsgtirloni168 comments

For my 55th Birthday last summer, I pulled my original Atari 800 out of storage and played Star Raiders and MULE non-stop for a weekend. Great fun. The most challenging part of getting the 800 running was finding an old enough TV that I could connect the game box too.

I also couldn't get my 810 disk drive working, so I found a copy of MULE on eBay burned on a ROM, so that was a nice find.

Great old machine, I think I'll buy one of these, the addition of HDMI and USB alone are worth it. Plus it'll be fun to write a game on that thing, something I dabbled in as a kid and was my start as a programmer so so long ago now.

I'm a bit younger than you, but I was visiting my mom a few weeks back, and found my old NES in some boxes she had saved for me (along with a few of the better games). Thanks to the composite connector, I managed to plug it into a modern HDTV and it worked just fine. My old copy of Zelda somehow even had a working save battery.

My mom made an offhand comment like "someone isn't sleeping much tonight."

The new games are more complex and realistic, but there is still plenty of joy in those old systems and games, especially for those of us who grew up with them.

I started Zelda: BotW a couple of years back but the open world nature and sheer number of side quests make me think it will take another few years before I finish the main quest. I find there is little to draw me back except the joy of exploration. The sheer freedom kinda puts me off.

It's not a criticism, just a different type of game to Zelda: A Link betwen Worlds which I adored and had that more linear old-skool structure.

get yourself an online map of BOTW. That will sooth your need for structure.

I have such good memories of both of those games, and the first Archon with the overpowered unicorn. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32pAGs9AiCo)

Oh, also Behind Jaggi Lines and BallBlazer. (One or both of those they renamed somewhere between beta and production, but I had, let's say, "not quite commercial" versions of them.)

Archon might be my favorite game of all time...But what's this with the overpowered unicorn? Was it way more powerful than the dark side equivalent (basilisk?)? Did they release another 8-bit version or something?

The unicorn was the fastest. The Basilisk was fast but not quite as, and could withstand more hits. (Or maybe I'm mixing it up with the bigger Serpent thing which was slow but very powerful?)

The best is finding a unicorn on a dark square and attacking it with a 'pawn' and charging it all zigzag-like. A lucky club swing could kill the unicorn, result in a real-world punch, and temporarily end a friendship. Stakes were high in that game.

It could easily outmaneuver basically anything. It didn't hit hard, but if it never got hit, it didn't need to.

BallBlazer was excellent. I could never figure out what was the point of Jaggi Lines (actually Rescue at Fractalus, I believe).

BallBlazer/Blaster was an unreleased LucasFilms game, if I remember correctly. It was leaked and so wildly pirated that they didn’t bother releasing it.

Ballblazer received several releases across multiple platforms, including cartridges for 7800 and Famicom.

The prototype "Ballblaster" was widely pirated, though, as well as "Behind Jaggi Lines" (Rescue on Fractalus) - I had both as a kid. Key differences between the prototype and the final release are the addition of the company logo in the intro, more developed opponent AI, and the "endless solo" in the music(my recollection is that the prototype only has the bassline and chords).

The only problem with MULE is that the theme song gets stuck in your head for a week!

It just got stuck in my head for a week at the mere mention of the game.

Years ago, I ported the emulator Atari800 to Macintosh. I used MULE's title screen to test the sound emulation.

Are you a galactic cook or a garbage scow captain?

Maybe also take a look at the Mister project if you haven't already. Same idea of using FPGA to reproduce old hardware but broad support for many home computers, game consoles, and arcade boards

Interesting, thanks for mentioning this.

Pretty cool idea/project:https://www.theverge.com/22323002/mister-fpga-project-retro-...

I had the 2600 and Star Raiders with the complete accessories keypad joystick and love every minute of it. I always dream of owning the Atari 800.

Star Raiders is a great game, but Gauntlet(Gauntletak) was hands down my favorite. I still fire up an emulator every now and then for a play through.

FWIW Retrotink[1] makes boxes that can take old analog inputs and outputs HDMI

1: https://www.retrotink.com/

Amazing how much emotion a physical retrocomputing experience to our youthful days can be. Emulators are neat but they don’t trigger the physical sensation of the keyboard, the sounds, hell the smells. Like nibbling a madeleine for some of us….

My parents got me an Atari 800XL for my 8th birthday in 1985. It came with a very terse list of Basic commands along with a few program listings from which I learned how to program.

Stuck with Atari over the years, through an 520STfm, and even a Falcon 030 - before eventually switching to a PC running Linux in the late 90s while a student.

Last year I went on eBay and bought one of these (I have no idea where the original one ended up), was so much fun.

dude, same! Got mine in 1985 (i was 9, not 8) and it was THE machine that got me hooked on computers. BASIC coding, playing Missile Command, so classic.

When I think about what clueless Atari execs did to the machine and company, driven by ignorance and greed, it makes me really mad. It was such a good machine and they were desperate to not let any 3rd party make money, hence software, for it they essentially killed the company (amongst other bone-headed mistakes).

You think Atari execs were bad? Don't even get me started with Commodore.

I started with a VIC 20, then a Commodore 64, then an Amiga 1000, before getting my first PC running DOS. The Amiga was the best computer hands down. Shame about the Commodore board idiots. Always love the work of Jack Tramiel and Chuck Peddle.

Grew up with C64 then A500 all the way to Athlon K75.

After that, I was an adult and I got a job and could afford more frequent updates.

Yes, it hurts to think about CBM management, and what they did to the Amiga.

Very efficient that it was Jack Tramiel for both (for a while)

I got my 800 when I was 16, so I'm a bit older than you. I, too, had a 520ST. I later added a daughterboard bringing it up to a full 1MB RAM, and also make a little mod to expose a composite video connector on the back panel.

I never met anybody who had a Falcon, though. Very cool.

I think you mean 1M of RAM, not 1G.

Indeed. Corrected, while it still lets me.

The Magic Sack by David Small made your ST a Mac!

PC-Ditto (a NEC V20 chip on a daughter card soldered to the 68000!) made your ST a PC!

Awesome hacker box, those STs.

On a related theme, here's the Spectrum Next, Issue 2:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spectrumnext/zx-spectru...

(Delayed about two years due to supply chain problems -- their FPGA was back-ordered for over a year -- but due to ship in 3-6 months' time: the ultimate Sinclair Spectrum revival.)

I've got one of the first run. It's back in the box, I was always more of a Tandy guy. The RC2014 is also more my speed. CPM.

Let's not forget the MSXVR:

https://msxvr.com/en/tienda/msxvr-computer/

(even if not FPGA-based, still pretty cool)

This sorta reminds me... whenever I have a bit of free time and I'm tired of commenting on HN, I daydream about what the next generation of Atari or Commodore 8-bit machines would be like (not STs or Amigas, but something still mostly 8 bit.)

I was thinking you might get a windowing system where each window held a "Virtual 800XL" so you could run multiple apps simultaneously, and an OS that shared peripheral access to real devices. Definitely a faster SIO port. Maybe something like FujiNet to communicate between virtual XLs (and other, real XLs.) If I made such a beast today, it would definitely have a built-in SD Card reader. Maybe a built-in trac-ball and no mouse buttons since you could use the select and start buttons.

You might have wound up with something a lot like the Apple II GS.

(At least one Atari engineer I know worked on the IIGS. Personally I thought it was crazy to work on 16-bit machines when 32-bit architectures like the 68000 were just coming into the marketplace).

Yes and no. The 6502 die size was tiny compared to most 16 bit and all 32 bit cpus. It was ALWAYS going to be cheaper. For quite some time (maybe even still) WDC had a great business selling 6502 family cores matched with semi-custom IO on the same die as device controllers.

But the IIgs was a crazy machine. My mom brought one home for a couple months when the school district she worked at adopted them. It was surprisingly usable, though the screen resolution was a bit low.

I dunno. The 6502 looks pretty large with this version.

https://monster6502.com/

I'm sure there's a die-shrink coming soon

Fun fact: The Macintosh II (68020) had two 6502 processors on its motherboard, somewhere in the I/O system. Originally intended to do some kind of I/O acceleration, they were never used by MacOS. I heard they just ran Mandlebrot-generation test code.

The IIfx, Quadra 900 & Quadra 950 each have two 6502 processors. They offload ADB processing (keyboard and mouse), the floppy disk and serial ports. MacOS uses all of them, NetBSD can use ADB offload.

Oh, cool! I thought that only A/UX had made use of them.

The Commander X16 [1]?

[1]: https://www.commanderx16.com/

Yeah. That's pretty cool. I lived in Dallas for half my life and am surprised I never ran into the 8-bit guy at 1st Saturday or various users group meetings. I think we're about the same age. Love his channel, didn't know he was doing this. Thx for the pointer.

Or Mega65 which is already out (and great) https://mega65.org/

Yeah, haven't seen much about it but it looks and seems really cool! Buy why oh WHY doesn't the fscking landing page have the tech specs? I spent way too long trying to navigate their maze of documentation without finding a basic listing of the raw specs (and whether or not it's FPGA based, since that sometimes matters for retro computing). No dice.

Checked for a Wikipedia entry, but found only the "real" Commodore 65 that the Mega65 is based on, and it does not seem to have been 40X faster than a C64.

Finally found a German retailer's page, with some actual specs, yay [1]! So it is FPGA-based, in fact there's three of them if I understand correctly. Cool.

[1]: https://shop.trenz-electronic.de/en/TE0765-03-S001-MEGA65-hi...

I built this! It's amazing! It's a 16-core Z80 running at 140 MHz: http://www.chrisfenton.com/the-zedripper-part-1/

This is absolutely crazy! (And that's the best compliment I know.)

You could have spent your time studying for the CISSP exam, but instead you did something that made the world a more beautiful place.

That’s. Insane! I love it!

Or one of the Foenix systems, like:

https://c256foenix.com/16bits-new-retro-computers/?v=7516fd4...

You mean like the super xe? https://forums.atariage.com/topic/287546-super-xe-game-machi... Scoped in 1988 with Ricoh.

Add a gui and you have an interesting machine https://youtu.be/T14dL9MeMHE

However, in the light of the 16bit ascendence I can see why this was canned.

Very cool!

from 2018 - Atari 8-bit emulator app, Xformer 10, has tiled mode (not sure about the hardware/inter-XL communication)

The text mentions running hundreds of Atari 8-bit apps simultaneously.

see http://www.emulators.com/xformer.htm#XFORMER10

The predecessor to this, the Atari 800, is the computer I wanted when I was 12. A TI-99/4A is the computer I got. It was still a wonderful gift that set me up for the rest of my life.

My uncle worked for TI, so we were pretty deep in the 99/4 world. But later in the 80s I saved my pennies and bought a 600XL and later an 800XL.

On paper they were pretty similar, but there was definitely a different "feel" between the 99/4 and Atari 8-bits. Atari went to great lengths to remind people their 8-bit line were more than just game consoles, but at the same time I think they had the most flexible graphics systems and the best games.

I had big player-missile graphics envy.

Every once in a while I find myself on eBay thinking about buying the system of my childhood dreams. That would be a TI-99/4A, the speech synthesizer, the peripheral expansion system (with floppy drive), the memory expansion cart, and a dot matrix printer. I don’t pull the trigger though because I know it would give me a weekend of fun and then it would sit gathering dust.

Yes indeed! I remember a store near me having B-17 bomber on the original 800, with it's synthesised voices and that was a glimpse into the future. I'll gloss over the ethics of a game about bombing cities, sold to children, but it was a more innocent age I guess.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-17_Bomber_(video_game)

B-17 bomber was an Intellivision exclusive

Well I never knew this. I guess the shop had an Atari 800 on the table and the game playing on the monitor and I put them together!

That's funny! I wanted an Apple ][ but my dad got me the 800xl. Looking back, it makes sense. The Atari was about $100 and the ][ was like $1000 and I was a little kid. I wouldn't buy my kids a $1000 computer now and that's 2023 dollars!

But I am so glad I got the Atari. I learned BASIC, assembly, and Pascal on it. I would type in games from the back of the magazine. And here I am decades later!

Yes the AppleII priced itself out of the 8-bit home computer market. I never saw one in the UK in the 80's. One could get the same tech (6502) with an equally good BASIC and OS for less than half (e.g. Acorn BBC Micro was my choice).

I wanted an Apple ][ as well, but also got an Atari 800xl. It did make sense for cost reasons, same as you.

A bit later on, I did end up with an Apple and have both today in working condition.

I am glad I got the Atari first. There was a lot in the box, so to speak, and I learned a ton. Later, when doing more advanced projects, I found the Apple and it's expansion cards could make a very capable workstation.

It's great to see a real SIO port, as well as USB.

SIO always felt ahead of its time, particularly its ability to attach multiple devices to the bus.

Joe Decuir who did chipset design for the VCS and Amiga is well known for his work on SIO, USB, Fax Modems, ITU modem standards, Bluetooth. You could say his career has been a serial success! :)

Joe spoke about SIO being used as prior art in a patent troll case re: USB. I believe it was in one of his VCF talks.

>serial success

I see what you did there.

I always liked the original Atari 800 case design. I felt it was intentionally designed to not look like a boring computer, but something else.

Then there was the Atari 400 with that awful membrane keyboard :(

I would say it was the worst membrane keyboard of all time but the Sinclair ZX was definitely worse.

It was awful, but it was still better than the 2016 Macbook keyboard.

I would disagree. With an Atari 400, you knew you could upgrade to a real keyboard by buying an 800. But with modern mac laptops, your only option for a real keyboard is an external one, but you have to also carry a usb-c to usb-a adapter around to connect it. And it's hard to use as a laptop with an external keyboard hanging off it.

I still prefer the Atari 400 membrane keyboard to the chicklet keys on modern macs.

Just for the record, I agree with you. I'm not sure if I worded my response correctly.

I also think the keyboard on the Speak & Spell is better than the 2016 Macbook keyboard.

There's a nostalgia hit!

  SNS: SPELL MRGHHSHFG.

  Me: what?

  SNS: SPELL FHJFRJEBRBDN.

  Me: what ARE you saying!?

Bit of trivia: my uncle was the executive at TI that green-lit the Speak-N-Spell. I was a tad bit older than the target market, but got invited to be in one of the early focus groups they used to gage reaction to it. I thought it was the coolest thing since sliced bread and saved my pennies to buy a speech synthesizer for my 99/4 after seeing it.

But yes, it had a worse keyboard than even the original 99/4.

You could upgrade the atari 400 to a 'real' keyboard, though not a great one. It would just replace the membrane keyboard.

And as much as I'm not a fan of the chicklet keyboards, they're 100x better than the atari 400 membrane keyboard. No. Contest.

Even as a 5-year-old when they let me use it in Kindergarten, I knew that keyboard was garbage :D

I think the Atari 800 looks a bit like an IBM Selectric II typewriter, made to be more sleek, like a spaceship.

https://www.vintage-calculators.nl/P1010274s.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atari-800-Computer-FL.jpg

Now that you mention it, it does look like a typewriter! Typewriters had a lid in the same spot so you could access the mechanics if something got stuck. And in the space where the type levers (or type ball) would be in a typewriter, the Atari 800 had its cartridge and expansion slots...

I heard somewhere it was designed to look like a typewriter so it wouldn't look too unfamiliar to buyers.

Readers might also be interested in a MiSTer FPGA-based system to emulate many hardware devices from your childhood: https://www.retrorgb.com/mister.html

It's pretty great but the hardware has become crazy expensive in recent years :'(

I would love to see a complete modern pc wrapped in a retro styled keyboard like this. With usb-c power and video output you could just plug it into a monitor with one cable.

Raspberry Pi 400 might be a good halfway point for you!

Yeah, I actually have one. Pretty cool little machine, but too slow, ugly and no ssd built in.

I know it's not fully a modern computer, but that sounds like a Pi 400 to me.

Can confirm. Using a PI400 as my SDR rig. It does have a little of the old C64/994/800 feel to it. But the keyboard is pretty crappy.

the keyboard is loads better than the Atari 400 keyboard though!

Well, yes. That's definitely true. And I've been thinking about hacking a repurchased klacky-key keyboard into my PI400. It shouldn't be TOO hard.

you might enjoy https://cyberdeck.cafe/

Get a full-sized keyboard - a model M would work fine here - and a laptop with a broken screen plus some assorted bits and pieces. Fit the motherboard from the laptop in the keyboard after making the required openings in the keyboard enclosure. Hook up the power supply and a monitor and voilà, a keyboard PC.

It's quite a bit bigger than an Atari 800XL, but I jammed a whole PC in an old Mac SE case.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmods/comments/11zqznn/jammed_new_...

Just take a laptop with a broken screen, and remove the screen and connect it to a desktop monitor.

Atari 8-bit was a remarkable computer architecture. This is an odd target for a nostalgic clone, though. There are still a lot of used systems available, some lovingly restored by people who really know what they're doing.

I've got a pile of legacy hardware in the basement that's all in some way tedious to try to use.

One of my sons watches "speed running" videos that spend endless amounts of time discussing how mario jumps here or there to put a sprite into the wrong slot resulting in a stack overflow allowing a goomba to set the level counter to a weird hex value. He loves to play 8 bit games on his chromebook in dosbox.

I'd want to leave this thing in his room connected to a cheap 12in hdmi monitor and a reliable USB power supply to let him noodle with day and night, rather than his "has too many distractions" chromebook.

There's at least one fanatic who sells Atari 800XLs (and other Atari systems) on eBay, and he does things like test, refurbish, and update with HDMI interfaces, etc. I don't disrespect what the remake folks are trying to accomplish but I tend to think dealing with the refurb guy might actually be a more rewarding experience, with a simpler path towards getting support if it's needed.

Not to take away from this thread, but here's a fun project I did a few years ago to make a SD based external floppy emulator for Ataris like the 800XL: https://nuxx.net/wiki_archive/A/SDrive_NUXX

I reused an existing OSS project and sold some kits and nice enclosures and stuff to make it more than a DIY PCB-based project. Was fun and a nice learning experience, and it also gave me a reason to start poking around with the old Atari hardware that I grew up with.

Fun story.

My first computer too. Got it from my uncle without any manuals, we spend a whole afternoon writing down a code of a game from a magazine letter by letter. We thought we will just press the "Start" functional key on the right side. To our surprise, sadly, absolutely nothing happened! After few more hours, my dad came home and it took him few guesses to finally type "RUN" in the console...

Bought a refurbished Atari 600XL at a clearance store for less than $90 around 1984. Borrowed a tape drive from my older friend Richard in exchange for making him a video titling program for his fledgling wedding video business.

All 16k of RAM was glorious, I already knew BASIC from the stack of Apple IIs in the library computer lab. Wrote some rudimentary generative art and music types of programs and was just starting to PEEK and POKE my way into machine code.

Unfortunately my mother's mental health condition (now treated, thankfully) viewed the noisy machine as a threat and she disassembled and destroyed it. I found my way back to computing via electronics and an EE tech degree. DOS on the 8086 just wasn't quite the same a few years later.

The nostalgia factor is powerful and getting something like this is tempting, although I've fired up emulators and dabbled a bit in the past and realize that I'm still looking to the future, not the past.

When I see picture of an old computer, I remember how it smelled. Very nostalgic feeling.

This is awesome, and I'd love to see more of it. Seems like Amiga and Atari get all of the love (because the company is defunct), but I still hold out hope that someone will make a recreated Macintosh II or something.

They get the all love because they were not only technically excellent for their time but also affordable, they are we what we had. The Apple Mac was something I only read about.

i bought one of these ultra cheap when currys (dreadful uk electrics store) decided it didn't want to inventory or sell them any more - must have been mid-80s? yay, star raiders! very nice 8-bit computer.

I bought an 800xl explicitly to get star raiders (probably around the same time, I remember it was reasonably inexpensive.) I kept expecting my C64 to have something just as good, and though elite was good, it wasn't star raiders good.

So... at least for me... Star Raiders was the Atari 8-bit Killer App. (And weirdly, I came to like SynCalc a bit later.)

OP mentions "USB socket for connecting external memory, such as programs"

I wonder if that means that there will be some internal interface for USB-based storage like a flash drive to be seen by the computer as a floppy disk?

There really needs to be some way to get images of ancient disks mounted through modern hardware, since 40-year-old floppies are going to be very iffy, and it's pretty tough to source new floppy disks to re-write to.

I might be misunderstanding the question and treating you like you are dumb. If so I'm sorry.

That has been the drive for pretty much all vintage computers lately - emulating floppy or hard drives allowing them to load and save disk images. I would assume and hope this USB interface is similar.

Here are a few examples:

https://www.bigmessowires.com/floppy-emu/

https://scsi.blue/

Yeah, I think we're in agreement. It's just that the OP doesn't specifically mention this, and I think it's relevant.

Other 8-bit computers that have had modern re-issues:

Commodore 64 -> THEC64 https://retrogames.biz/products/thec64/

Commodore VIC-20 -> THEVIC20 https://retrogames.biz/products/thevic20/

Sinclair ZX Spectrum -> ZX Spectrum Next https://www.specnext.com/about/

I would personally be interested if some of the iconic computers from the 16-bit era were also re-released (Amiga 500, Atari ST). (I am into electronic music and having modern re-creations would make them more viable in a live set-up as you wouldn't be too worried about reliability, which is an issue with vintage machines).

Having said that, for anyone who is feeling nostalgic and doesn't want to spend a ton, a Raspberry PI 400 can emulate all of those and it's close enough in terms of form factor.

Well.there is the MiSTer project. Which started off as an FPGA ST but had since branched out to support other systems including the Amiga.

https://misterfpga.org/

The Commodore 64 looks like vaporware. The newest update says "Coming December 2019". The A500 Mini has release dates in 2022.

I stand corrected. The website has not been updated, but their FaceBook page indicates that the computers are out, but the C64 is sold out at least in North America.

Yeah, all of these computers are manufactured in limited runs, and sometimes they go out of stock and all you can do is pre-order the next run and wait (this is currently the case for the ZX Spectrum Next for example).

However in the case of THEC64, you can still find it at certain international sellers, so you can have it now if you're willing to pay a premium for international shipping.

Have there been any attempts to truly revive 8-bit hardware?

Every one I've seen (including this one) are some form of emulation, either FPGA or software.

It's great, but I've always wanted a brand-new faithful recreation of something like an 800 or C64.

Ben Eater has a nice 8 bit kit that uses real chips, he also has a great video series. https://eater.net/8bit/

A true replica would probably involve spending a large amount of money on fabbing custom or otherwise out of production silicon.

Most of the replicas have that issue when it comes to PLAs. They sometimes use FPGAs for those particular chips.

You can buy new boards, cases, and components to make most of a C-64.

I think there are just two chips that have to be replaced with drop-in FPGAs: the SID, and I think the CIAs.

Unlike today's machines, 8-bits were usually made with mostly off-the-shelf parts.

> It's great, but I've always wanted a brand-new faithful recreation of something like an 800 or C64.

I'm fairly sure a full array of replacement parts are available for the C64, from the keycaps all the way down to the PCB. You could build a new one for yourself, theoretically (except for the 6502, etc.). I think one of the Commander X16 guys (not the balding white guy, the vaguely European guy) has done something like this.

Fpgas can be undistinguishable from the original logic. There's nothing magic abt those digital guts except slower, hotter chips. You can build a c64 100% now from new parts! Only the SID's analog items have to be emulated.

> Fpgas can be undistinguishable from the original logic.

In my experience when you try to get this point across to the nostalgic, you're tilting at windmills.

The problem with you kids is you clearly didn't get enough paint chips in your diet. That's probably why you tolerate python.

In that era many games depended on obscure things that the logic did by chance.

An implementation with chips similar to the originals would probably cost an order of magnitude more. Which would mean the venture would not be financially viable.

Some of the challenges that would balloon the costs:

- Source ancient-tech components.

- Guarantee rights to reproduce the original board design.

- Make sure that everything works the same as the original, down to the tiniest quirk.

- Interface the ancient components with modern output ports.

- Do everything correct the first time (updates are not possible), or face hordes of angry customers.

- Do everything in a short timespan, or face hordes of angry crowdfunding supporters/customers.

Check out C64 reloaded (mk2) and ReAmiga.

There are quite a few in the "building it is half the fun" space.

You've got things like the Omega (MSX) and ZX81+38 (Sinclair), and Tynemouth Software made PET and ZX80 clones.

The RC2014 ecosystem is interesting; it's sort of a more modern take on the early world of passive-backplane 8080/Z80 machines-- you can build it pretty much vintage-only or with a variety of modern parts.

If you want to stretch to 16-bit there are a couple of 8088-based kit projects too, ranging from "all old stock parts" to "a few affordances for modernity",

Oh wow, this was my first computer exactly. I wanted a commodore 64 which was way more popular in the Netherlands but it was 3 times the price so my parents couldn't afford it.

But it was good, because the lack of software availability (locally) made me learn programming in short order.

I still have 2 of these, my original one and another one I bought during the years. Both have dead memory chips though. For some reason these age poorly. They are all socketed but very hard to obtain these days. I'll probably buy this remake when it comes out.

From the description:

> Our engineers write code only in C and HDL languages.

Hooray! No Rust in this box.

Or python. So there's a chance the code will still compile in two years.

Ooooh, this is nice. I may have to see about getting one of these when/if my Atari 400 gives up the ghost. I still have a few games I like playing on it. :)

M.U.L.E for the money.

M.U.L.E. is still one of the best games ever. I played that to death.

M.U.L.E.'s great, but in my case it's Zaxxon (believe it or not, on cassette :) and a cart version of Joust.

The C64 tape version of Zaxxon was the "good one", right? I loved that game.

Believe it or not, I never played M.U.L.E. I know everything about the creator and the game, and why it's a landmark, but I never encountered it back in the day!

I keep hoping for one of the open source clones to become playable, but they never seem to get that far. Someday I'll have to contribute myself I guess.

The 800XL was my first Atari, before the ST. It was quite hackable, and within a few months I didn't need a disassembler any more. I could read the 6502 instructions directly out of a hex dump and could write them in hex, without an assembler (6502 has so few instructions, you can memorize them all). Fun times. Math functions in the ROM were all operating on BCD — there was no FPU, of course.

Super cool. I had a 130xe as a teen, but I moved around a lot since then and travelled light so unfortunately it's in a landfill somewhere now :(

I was always slightly envious of the c64 for getting more/better games, but cherished my atari for some of the great titles that were unique to that platform.

I also credit my atari for getting me online at a blazing fast 300bps to some great local BBS's.

The first program I ever wrote was on an Atari 800XL - in BASIC. It played the theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

I'd be interested if this was open hardware.

Otherwise, I'm better off with either buying an used Atari 800xl or with miSTer.

Nice, but so far it's only future tense text and rendered images. Let's see it when it's out!

My first computer! Lots of fond memories. Loading programs from a cassette in particular sticks in my head.

What would be the benefit of these old clones beside learning to create hardware? RPi4 can probably replace them all with emulators. I'd rather see old games resurrected by improving graphics through stable diffusion and increasing refresh rates.

This was my first computer. Not the first one in my house, but the first one that was mine.

Have we hugged to death? "revive-machines.com refused to connect."

Here's a remake of the Commodore 64. With more advanced features.

https://www.commanderx16.com/

It's not - because it cant run C64 software (outside of basic) unmodified, the internal memory map and graphics hardware are very different

You are correct, but I wonder if any new hardware is going to be able to mimic the old completely.

The Mega 65 gets pretty close, they say “highly compatible”.

https://mega65.org/

Somewhere I saw a project where someone made a new motherboard for a 99/4A so it would fit in a mini-itx case and tweaked the ROM so you could add an external PS/2 keyboard. After buying the board, you bought an original 99/4, yanked the chips out and used them to populate the new board.

I don't know if that really counts as "new hardware" but it was an interesting idea and was supposedly very compatible.

Or maybe I dreamed that.

The Geneve?

https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=120...

It's actually pretty easy to port C64 software - both Assembly and BASIC. It uses the exact same BASIC and same processor family as the Commodore 64, NES, Apple II and many others.

Memory map, graphics and sound are the biggest challenges in porting because those are different. But code to translate between these will get better and better. Lots of ports from other systems already.

It's more inspired by the zeitgeist of the C64, but definitely not a remake.

If you are looking for a C64 remake there is https://mega65.org

The Mega65 is actually a realisation of an unreleased model that only made it to prototype stage back in the day, but yes, it is backwards-compatible with the C64.

the Atari 800XL looks closer to the ultimate 64:

https://ultimate64.com/

an FPGA mainboard that can cycle-exact emulate the 6510, plus various disk drives, printers, cartridges, etc., with modern I/O and storage.

If you are looking for a "retroremake" of the C64 that's actually an ARM chip running inside a functional C64 breadbin case, with working keyboard, I recommend TheC64 [1] (full size version, not the Mini which is just a game console).

You can program in basic and assembly language with it, plus it has HDMI output so no additional cables or adapters required to connect it to an LCD.

Internally it's running a modified version of VICE.

[1] https://retrogames.biz/products/thec64/

So can it actually connect to an original floppy drive and read my disks? That would be super fun! Protector II here I come! Solfeggietto!

>So can it actually connect to an original floppy drive... Yup!

>... and read my disks? You can try, little dove.

These days, lots of businesses seem to be based on Nostalgia as a Service, almost.

Maybe it's not a new idea. I don't know.

I’m thinking it’s a generational thing: people who grew up with machines such as the Atari are now of the age where they’d like to re-experience part of their youth.

Just like the resurgence of the Shelby GT500 in 2007.

If you were 12 in 1969 and dreamed of owning/driving one, in 2007 you were 50 with $$$ and nostalgia.

I recall years ago reading a magazine article discussing the (at the time) market bubble for either Lionel-style toy trains or baseball cards. So this was probably early 1990s, and it pretty much tracked with when the kids of the late 1940s/early 1950s had reached career endgame and peak earning potential.

They literally had a timeline predicting that eventually video game consoles would have a similar bubble. I want to say I think they predicted it in the 2000s though, so perhaps they were off, but maybe the infographic was just loosely designed.

If Nostalgia as a Service is a thing, this project could be considered an edge appliance for it...

The 8-bit computing renaissance has been going on for quite some time. I think it's a combination of 1. the age & experience of the original audience, 2. tech changes that make it much easier to design, build and supply retro-inspired computers and 3. the appeal of a stand-alone "computer" where an individual can hold the entire design in their head without massive abstractions. There's a lot of sad, negative, stupid things in the world today but the state of the NEW 8-bit scene is amazing. If you're a purist for original 8-bit gear it is not as great.

They were also a LOT of fun to program as you could really learn every bit of the architecture. Being able to do edit/compile on a modern box and download to something like the Atari makes it a lot nicer than native development was in the day. (IIRC, back in the day, some folks would cross compile on DEC boxes for similar reasons.)

I'd probably do a lot more 8-bit work in my spare time, but bare metal embedded systems scratch similar itches for me and, well, folks will pay for that sorta thing. :)

Maybe it's just that you've aged yourself into the target markets for that kind of thing.

One thing I've learned hanging out on vintage computer communities is that you can not use your lenses to understand the motivations of the folks who practice the hobby.

Commercial nostalgia has been around since classic cars, Happy Days, and 50's diners.

I do know that, on the whole, this stuff is not for me, and that's fine. But I still like to hang out and reminisce about the time of my youth and the foundations of computing as I experienced them. That said, I have a Model 100 that I can't part with.

A friend of mine has a small collection of vintage Macs. He has a very nice specimen of the G4 Cube that I dabbled with one day. It's a beautiful piece of hardware. But, oh my word, is that box slow. It is glacial. I don't know how good it was in the day, I have to assume it was competitive, which means everything we did back then was glacial, we just couldn't appreciate it.

But it's a nice piece of sorta kinetic sculpture, and it brings him joy, so who's to question that.

Hang out on vintage forums with folks with their racks of PDPs, assortments of beige, 90's PCs, old Apples. Trying to bring Windows 98 to life to play a game, connecting a pair of modems to call each other, rebuilding a power supply on some garage filling Data General Nova, etc. Just eclectic collectors. No different from Hummel figurines.

hopefully it will get something similar to fujinet built in or at least be able to support it

https://fujinet.online/

If it accurately emulates the SIO port and timings, FujiNet will just work on it. There is no need for something similar....

Man, I love this ... Atari 800xl was my first machine ...

Thanks, bookmarked.

oh, how I miss that form factor.

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