C64 fans...check out this news story on Cnet

[FogDogger]

The whole computer on a chip...http://news.com.com/Commodore+64+reincarnated+on+a+chip/2100-7337_3-5497584.html?tag=nefd.top

How cool is that. I bought one on QVC today. Man can I remember blowing away HUGE chunks of time in my dorm room playing games on my Commodore!

Does anyone remember Beach Head?

- Jeff

[Raedon]

Old news for those who follow all things Commodore but a good article for those who need to catch up. I met Jeri Ellsworth at CGE2k3 and she is the best kind of "hottie", great body, funny, and has finished goals worthy of Geek.

She kinda looks like an evil elf in the original story.. Therefore, hot to gamers..

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/20/technology/20joystick.html

[FogDogger]

Judging by the nuber of folks who have read this post in the last ten minutes, it must be news to many.

I see she first brought this to light in 2001. Very cool person indeed!

[ubikuberalles]

The technology to put these computers on a chip has been around for at least ten years but it took an uberhacker like Jeri Ellsworth to make it come to fruition. Nowadays you can program a PAL (or PLA or PLD - it's a brand name thing) from your PC - all you have to do is download the software from the manufacturer. PAL is certainly the cheap way to go - developmentwise - and it wouldn't surprise me that the namco 5-in-1, the Atari 10-in-1 and other similar systems used PALs. You could go with a custom designed chip but the development cost would be enormous. The cost of manufacturing a custom chip would only be better than PALs if you built millions of them.

After the holiday season I may end up getting one of those C64 30-in-1 systems. It'll be cool to modify it to take a keyboard and disk drive.

[DigitalSpace]

Nice. The ability to hook it up to a keyboard, monitor and disc drive is pretty damn cool.

And Jeri gets an extra point for being from Oregon.

[ddockery]

Beach Head was the first C64 game I bought! That game ruled back then.

[Flack]

Check out this thread, which has links to some of the hacks being done on this thing.

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=47376

[FogDogger]

I'm not a hacker (wish I better understood these things) but what would the purpose be to add the ports? Would you be able to bring in additional software through a disc drive?

Also, what about the hack to bring the computer up to 256K colors? Would you have to write new games to take advantage of that. Could you modify existing game software to take advantage?

[Raedon]

I'm not a hacker (wish I better understood these things) but what would the purpose be to add the ports? Would you be able to bring in additional software through a disc drive?

Also, what about the hack to bring the computer up to 256K colors? Would you have to write new games to take advantage of that. Could you modify existing game software to take advantage?

1) adding the ports makes it a hacked C64 up to the Floppy port anyway..

2) New software would need to be written.

[leonk]

The advantage is that you can use it in ways you didn't think off. For example, take the guts of the joystick, merge it together with an LCD screen, and you're starting to build a portable C64!