If for many the Amiga is their own current love, the C64 was for sure their first love. 30 years ago, during this period, the C64 was presented to the winter edition of CES. The C64 has entertained and amazed millions of people and continues to do so. It 'was responsible for the birth of a movement of artists who continue to be inspired by their gem and still to be his devotees. And it's really impressive to see what can coders, artists and musicians do today with a CPU to 0.98 MHz and 64k of ram, thirty years after the birth of this Commodore jewel.

Artist and coders like Deekay and Algorithm (just to mention two) was able to extend the limited c64 possibility

C64 trilace rendering:

















Nufli graphics:
















C64 cubase
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDrqBYkco-Y&feature=related


c64 video 50hz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDrqBYkco-Y&feature=related

DTV extensions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_X2uZDTQQ0

C64 easyflash:

http://skoe.de/easyflash/

Daily software release:
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/latestreleases.php

c64 reu expansion playing wave files
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6A2ptuHF7s

Last edited by AmigaBlitter on 05-Jan-2012 at 10:41 AM.
Last edited by AmigaBlitter on 05-Jan-2012 at 10:15 AM.

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@AmigaBlitter

True, but where's 1541 Ultimate and Mssiah?

Could also mention hardware-based C64 emulators, such as C64 DTV and Chameleon.

1541 Ultimate II - Cartridge, that can emulate 1541 drive (with good compatibility), cassette deck, SID, several types of module games, 16MB memory expansion, USB etc - ultimate C64 addon!
Mssiah - Collection of 5 music programs for C64 on a single cartridge, that also has MIDI input for playback synchronization & live playing complete with good support for additional controls. The MIDI input cannot be used outside the bundled programs though.
C64 DTV - "C64 in a joystick", hardware-based emulator. Not perfect compatibility, but as bonus, user can solder f.ex. connector for external floppy drive, Was sold in "normal" shops and was quite popular, hard to get nowadays as it's no longer manufactured.
Chameleon - Hardware based C64 emulator, that can also be plugged to a real C64 (to use its keyboard) - As everything is emulated, it can support VGA output (which isn't possible on "real" C64 properly, as the gfx chip doesn't output RGB). Can be plugged to a real C64 to use some parts of the "real" hardware.

Definition of emulation (wikipedia)
"In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates (or emulates) the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system."

Should also add that afaik, no official documentation of the inner workings (including bugs etc.) of many of the involved chips have been released, so much of the functionality is reverse engineered which can result in wrong behavior in certain cases. (which, of course, is a common problem with both software and hardware based emulation. Not much can be done, except for updating the behavior, whenever detected to be wrong.

Of course there are older products, such as Retro Replay, MMC64, MMC Replay, 1541 Ultimate 1, but as there's nowadays better hardware available (and old ones might be sold out too), I don't see that much point in mentioning them.

-EDIT-
Added links & descriptions

-EDIT-
Of course those pictures look quite a bit different on real hardware, with flashing

-EDIT-
Forgot to clearly list C64 DTV as an emulator.
Bolded all "emulator" words, so they stand out more clearly.
By request, added a definition of an emulator.

-EDIT-
Of course, as such, there's nothing wrong with emulators. In some cases there isn't much other choice anyway (like exceeding the specifications of the original, like getting better-than-svideo image from C64, running the "CPU" faster than the original can etc.)

Last edited by Jupp3 on 06-Jan-2012 at 05:22 PM.
Last edited by Jupp3 on 06-Jan-2012 at 05:18 PM.
Last edited by Jupp3 on 06-Jan-2012 at 05:15 PM.
Last edited by Jupp3 on 05-Jan-2012 at 07:02 PM.
Last edited by Jupp3 on 05-Jan-2012 at 06:56 PM.

@Jupp3

Yes, there is the MMC 64, FPGA 64 and so much other stuff.

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@AmigaBlitter

I have to admit that Terminator 3 image looks pretty good. You could mistake it for a HAM like digitised image. Wonder if Voyager had the same kind of engine? That was good at rendering to lower palette sizes.

I also wonder how the technique would look with a larger palette, say eight times the size? That would give quite a good realtistic image.

@Hypex

Have a look at the other Algorithm code: there are plenty of formats, and many with very low CPU usage.

Last edited by AmigaBlitter on 05-Jan-2012 at 03:30 PM.

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@Jupp3

Yeah I got 1541 Ultimate II and Mssiah, really good high quality products!


Edit
@AmigaBlitter
Yeah that Terminator 3 pic looks outstanding!

Last edited by khayoz on 05-Jan-2012 at 06:04 PM.

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@AmigaBlitter

the c64 is awesome but moreover are the coder!!! i could only imagine what a coder could do in asm with the little sam440ep mini-itx and its M9 128bit Bus..

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@Jupp3

I am not going to give up telling ppl an fpga implementation IS NOT emulation!

please kindly update ur data banks,
and thankyou for shopping at Amigaworld.net :) have a nice day.

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@Barana

I agree, the Chameleon is a C64 clone, not an emulator. It's main component is hardware that can be reconfigured from data files, but it's not a computer that's emulating another one. Otherwise, one could say that a Core i7 (which runs microcode that can be updated using System Management Mode on any modern PC) is an emulator for a Pentium. No-one says that

@Barana

How is it different to a hardware emulator? The FPGA is programmed to rewact and act the same was as the orginal did but it uses other means. AFAIK an FPGA doesn't exactly duplicate the orginal chips and clone them but performs the same function as many chips with one programmed IC. That pretty much looks like a hard emulator to me.

Not the same as a software emulation but still it acts the same in hardware.

Last edited by Hypex on 06-Jan-2012 at 07:59 AM.

@CodeSmith

But isn't a modern Intel CPU simply a RISC CPU that emulates a CISC instruction set through some kind of hardware translation layer?

@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote: @CodeSmith But isn't a modern Intel CPU simply a RISC CPU that emulates a CISC instruction set through some kind of hardware translation layer?

That's pretty much true

Of course in such "emulate one chip, which can run at any variable speed" cases, it's probably harder to get "wrong", than in cases, where one must emulate all the logic chips, that make a full computer system. Also, obviously companies like Intel and AMD have way more money to put into this than f.ex. Individual Computers.

Basically "No-one cares how it's made, as long as it's faster and works."

Last edited by Jupp3 on 06-Jan-2012 at 05:29 PM.

@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote: @CodeSmith But isn't a modern Intel CPU simply a RISC CPU that emulates a CISC instruction set through some kind of hardware translation layer?

True, but what I was referring to was people who keep saying that FPGA based clones of older computers are emulators, and use the fact that one loads a stream of bytes into the FPGA as proof. Modern CPUs are internally RISC cores that run microcode, but no-one nowadays would claim that a modern AMD CPU is an Alpha running a cut down version of Bochs (AMD hired a lot of DEC engineers, this was quite obvious in the first AMD64 designs)

Last edited by CodeSmith on 07-Jan-2012 at 01:51 AM.
Last edited by CodeSmith on 07-Jan-2012 at 01:49 AM.

@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote: @Barana How is it different to a hardware emulator? The FPGA is programmed to rewact and act the same was as the orginal did but it uses other means. AFAIK an FPGA doesn't exactly duplicate the orginal chips and clone them but performs the same function as many chips with one programmed IC. That pretty much looks like a hard emulator to me. Not the same as a software emulation but still it acts the same in hardware.

Well... I guess one could call it that, but no-one really uses that term; it's usually referred to as being register level compatible with the older hardware. Eg one doesn't say "AGA has a hardware emulator for ECS", but rather "AGA is register compatible with ECS" - the AGA chipset wasn't just ECS with some extra chips to handle the newer graphics modes, but rather a whole new design that "emulates" ECS.

Last edited by CodeSmith on 07-Jan-2012 at 02:08 AM.

@CodeSmith

Quote:

True, but what I was referring to was people who keep saying that FPGA based clones of older computers are emulators, and use the fact that one loads a stream of bytes into the FPGA as proof.

gz codesmith, i think you covered the bases. software emulation in the personal computer world is commonly refered to as 'emulation' whereby some software running on an os is supplying another systems' os with what it expects.Its a dynamic thing, changeable

fpga's use a 'configuration' file to set the configurable chip as a cpu etc at boot time, unmodifyable after boot.once it boots, it behaves as requested rigidly with none of the 'rubber band effect' of software emulation of a system that is inherant in software emulation/

im slightly ####ed atm, so i think i did well tonight after 3 wines!

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@Barana

It's a pet peeve of mine