https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-64-computer-and-handheld-console#/


Sorry for the double post in different categories.

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retired

@AmigaBlitter

Put me down for handheld c64 what a dream handheld. What ever next handheld a500 now that would be dogs what's its. Hope this c64sx gets made

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A1200 ACA1232 128MB Indivison MkIICr
Elbox empty Power Tower
RPi3 Emulating C64 ZX Atari PS BBC
Wii with Amiga emulation
Vampire v4 SA

tell me that they are putting a 'real' joystick port so 'real' joysticks can be used

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c64-2sids, A1000, A1200T-060@50(finally working!),A4000-CSMKIII
! My Master Miggies- Amiga 1000 & AmigaOne X1000 !
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X1000 I BELIEVE

@g01df1sh

Remember that the C64 display had 25 X 40 characters. I don't know what this is in pixels. Probably not a lot. I don't really understand people who want to bring back classic hardware. Do they like seeing lots of little colored squares? It reminds me of people who are crazy about vinyl and love the background hissing sound that records always had.

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X5000 / microA1(OS4.1 FE U2) / CodeBench / Imagine / Blender
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@AmigaBlitter

Interesting. I know there was a recent Sinclair handheld also funded in a similar way.

My question is, are they using an ASIC or plan to use ARM + emulation? If the latter, it wouldn't seem quite as nice to me ... not when I could buy a $35 Pi (or $10 android phone) and sort of do the same thing. There is some nostalgia for just the case design, but I'd prefer to see an exact hardware replica (or close enough) vs just more software emulation.

Not sure if it was mentioned in the campaign page, but I didn't see it.

The "desktop" unit is quite nice, but I just can't see the point of the handheld version having a dpad, when the vast majority of games was relying on a one button joystick (mind you, dpad isn't bad per se, but it surely plays quite differently, making certain things harder).

@Turrican3

Most games needed the space bar too as second button. Either for launching big bombs, either to change weapon or to enable a bonus, you can't play many many games without it.

Moreover, I remember the space bar signal was also replicated by the fire button on joystick port 1. This made me modify a joystick by adding a second cable, and using the second fire button as fire on port 1/space bar to play those games. Even better, I also used a switch to replicate with the second button either the fire in port 1 signal, or the "up" on port 2 direction, which made playing platform games like Giana Sisters even better.

Ah, lovely times...

@thinkchip

Quote:

thinkchip wrote: I don't really understand people who want to bring back classic hardware. Do they like seeing lots of little colored squares?

Oh the irony of posting this on an Amiga forum :D

@AmigaBlitter

There is a lack of detail as to what the capabilities or implantation of the computer is which is scary.

Another question is why anyone would put their money into an unfinished product that wouldn't be available until April 2017? That is a year away. How do you know it is finished or how well it would work and can they get the bugs out by then assuming it would work?

How do you know this product will be delivered? When it costs $150, that is a lot of money to sacrifice towards something you might not get and they wouldn't have to repay.

Why don't you wait until you can buy it off the shelf?

@thinkchip

40 x 25 characters @ 8 x 8 pixels a character would be a resolution of 320 x 200.

Perhaps these people still have good eyesight.

Also I thought tape had the hiss and records had the rumble of the needle?

I wouldn't trade those days for anything. I grew up with both. And CD. Vinyl at least retains surround sound which is more than I can say for CD-subquality mp3s. And playing that 12 inch version off a big disc was just exciting. 7 inch versions on the radio and mini phone mp3 players. Borig! Vinyl is liked for it's dynamic range since 24-bit studio quality music still isn't common in any media format. But anyone with real interest in vinyl these days buys expensive equipment that won't fit in the back of a car next to the subwoofer.

Last edited by Hypex on 16-Apr-2016 at 04:55 PM.
Last edited by Hypex on 15-Apr-2016 at 05:57 PM.

Quote:

Britelite wrote: @thinkchip Quote: thinkchip wrote: I don't really understand people who want to bring back classic hardware. Do they like seeing lots of little colored squares? Oh the irony of posting this on an Amiga forum :D

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c64-2sids, A1000, A1200T-060@50(finally working!),A4000-CSMKIII
! My Master Miggies- Amiga 1000 & AmigaOne X1000 !
mancave-ramblings
X1000 I BELIEVE

@thinkchip

Being an oldie,I,too, grew up in the days of the C64 and vinyl records and cassette tapes (in fact, my first tape recorder was a reel to reel)

If my (3) C64's hadn't been destroyed in a flood some years ago,I'd still be using at least one of them occasionally. Retro games are great but still don't quite have the same feel as when you play them on the real equipment.

And as for vinyls, the wow and flutter you get and the crackles on old records, evoke a real nostalgic feeling of my youth. If you buy the same album on CD or download as mp3,it doesn't sound quite the same. I see that certain stores in UK are selling vinyl records again, by the way.

I like my more modern equipment too, including my Raspberry Pi's.

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Fred Booth
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A500, A600, A1200 c/w Mediator and 030
AmigaOne and OS4.1
Mac LCII, G4 Powermac running OSX + Amigakit and MorphOS 3.0
Dell Mini 10 Netbook running IcAros and AmigaForever+Amikit+AmigaSys
2006 Macb

@Britelite

Heh, my thoughts exactly. Also found this ironic on an amiga forum:

Quote:

Another question is why anyone would put their money into an unfinished product

X1000 and most of Individual Computer products for example (heck, did catweasel *ever* have properly working drivers that werent made by a 3rd party years later, not to mention features that never happened for indi mk2).

Half assing it,...... the "modern" amiga way

At least this is only $150.

@OldAmigan

There are also new vinyls being sold here. But I didn't see the point. I didn't see it because it was rap music. What young person is going to buy that? That's what I thought. I mean it was an album, wouldn't it make more sense to put some 12 inch versions on a single instead? Well given rap isn't much more than a simple rock beat done on a computer with a load of words stuck on top and makes techno sound more interesting musically. Yes there was more than rap but I just concentrate on the least sensible stuff.

Last edited by Hypex on 16-Apr-2016 at 05:07 PM.

@Hypex

Perhaps its your choice of words, but what exactly did you mean when you said at least vinyl has surround sound (in comparison to mp3s)? (paraphrasing here as Im typing this on a phone and cant access exact quote).

mp3s can have both higher than cd quality sound and any form of surround sound a person choses to encode in.
Granted higher than cd quality requires a high quality original source, but its no harder or easier to encode than, for a random example, low quality mono.

Or have I misunderstood what you was saying?

@OldAmigan

More rhetorical than an actual question, but is it specifically nostalgia thats invoked by vinyl, or just having heard something sound a particular way so many times that it becomes the way it seems it should sound?

Ever repaired a chewed audio tape for example? From thenonend the missing seconds in a song seems natural, and the song played without those "repair edits" sounds wrong :)

And just to confuse the question of nostalgia Ive gotten all nostalgic over repairing audio tapes :)

Last edited by fishy_fis on 16-Apr-2016 at 06:40 PM.

@Chuckt

Just waiting and buying off the shelf makes the most sense, but with these kickstarter (or similar projects) sometimes there is no actual off the shelf version later on. And some folks are willing to pay more early on, just as a donation sort of thing.

A bit too much for me though, especially when my C-64 joystick thingy from years and years ago was like $35 (and used an ASIC). At this price level + low product run, expect they probably are using ARM emulation. And then what is the point really? $150 for a case or for physical buttons?

Ideally I'd like to see something like this, handheld, for $50 or less.

Even better if one day we see an Amiga handheld like this, nice little flip out keyboard, ASIC, loaded with games .... priced right and I think it's the one Amiga-ish system that could sell in stores/big retailers, in 10s or 100s of thousands.

@Nameless

Quote:

Nameless wrote: @Chuckt Just waiting and buying off the shelf makes the most sense, but with these kickstarter (or similar projects) sometimes there is no actual off the shelf version later on. And some folks are willing to pay more early on, just as a donation sort of thing. A bit too much for me though, especially when my C-64 joystick thingy from years and years ago was like $35 (and used an ASIC). At this price level + low product run, expect they probably are using ARM emulation. And then what is the point really? $150 for a case or for physical buttons? Ideally I'd like to see something like this, handheld, for $50 or less. Even better if one day we see an Amiga handheld like this, nice little flip out keyboard, ASIC, loaded with games .... priced right and I think it's the one Amiga-ish system that could sell in stores/big retailers, in 10s or 100s of thousands.

Of the 21 "most funded" projects in Kickstarter's tech-heavy "design" category, a grand total of four appear to be currently available for sale. Of the top 12 "most funded" in Technology, four are available. Yes, many are available for "pre-order," which is another way to say "we'll take your money for a product that doesn't exist yet."

These projects aren't all new, either. ZionEyez took in $343,415 starting a full year ago and still hasn't delivered a pair of heads-up camera sunglasses. Plenty of the projects have little updates explaining that oops, the products are taking longer to make than expected.

Yes, this is heartbreaking, because many of the products look gorgeous. Many have prototypes. Many have had demos. I want some of them. I want to review some of them. But. They. Don't. Exist. Just because you can build one of something doesn't mean you can get proper quality control out of a factory line.

A success rate of 33 percent is good for a venture capitalist, because actual investors expect to hit it big often enough to offset other losses. But when you give money to Kickstarter for a tech product, you're not a real investor. Investors have equity. You're just a buyer who isn't getting your gadget for who-knows-how-long. The longer you don't have the product, the less value your money had - and if you never get that product, well, remember, they don't have to refund your money.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2407046,00.asp

And Kickstarter has a blog post that says "Kickstarter Is Not A Store". It is because stores don't have the same risks and challenges that start up companies do. There is risk involved and you don't care until you don't get your money back.

https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store

You will have to copy the whole link into your browser or google it to get it to work.

Last edited by Chuckt on 16-Apr-2016 at 09:27 PM.

@fishy_fis

You did understand. Back in the day I listened to music, mostly 12 inch singles, through our Pioneer system with surround sound output and speakers. And it was present on the records. We added a CD player and the surround was more enhanced. Shift to the future...

Now, because of the destructive form of compression, mp3 is said to destroy the surround sound matrix encoded into a songs sample. Since surround sound relies on the difference between the left and rigfht channels to encode that hidden extra channel, mp3 compression can destroy the surround sound matrix.

As an example, there is a trick to extract centre panned audio from a song sample, for example a vocal recorded as exact mono. Subtracting the left from the right stereo channel will extract this centre panned audio, if it exists. And it just happens to sit in place of where any surround sound would be encoded.

I've read on music sites about people wanting to do this trick and they are always advised not to do it with an mp3. For the above reasons.

I didn't know there could be higher than CD quality mp3s. All I knew was a max of 320kbps with 480kbps possible. But nothing that could match CD for lossless. When I say CD-subquality mp3s I would also include 320s as even though it is good for human ears it can't exactly retain the data like a lossless codec. And since a host of mp3 are 128Kbps or as I call them teenage bitrate they are certainly very CD-subquality mp3s! Infact they are so tinny I don't know anyone, especially those with younger and supposedly better hearing, can put up with them. Perhaps ignorance is bliss when it comes to default settings.

Last edited by Hypex on 18-Apr-2016 at 05:48 PM.

@Hypex

I agree that a typical mp3 is audibly lower quality than cd, but the practice is usually different than what is theoretically possible.
As for younger people these days (now there's a sentence that says Im getting old :)), perhaps theyve been so predominantly exposed to them that they dont know any different, much in the same way as certain music we listen to doesnt seem quite right without the pops, crackles and high-end fidelity of vinyl.
Teens and even some young adults were born into this downloadable, disposable world (and now I feel old again :)).