There's something completely wonderful about the retro computing cottage industry that these sorts of ultra niche devices exist, and that talented, creative folks are dedicating their time to produce them. Thanks for showing us, Neil.
Greetings frim Chicago...49 year old here and love your stuff...Your passion is amazing and I wish we were on the same side of the water...Keep up the great stuff fella!! 👍🙏
Nice new toy. I'll bet you has some fun. The version 2 board in the original case with the floppy drive port containing a GoTek right there. Sounds like a winner. 👍😊
Absolutely love the merging of old and new - Goteks are a godsend for sprucing up old retro hardware, now if they'd only make such an emulator for optical media too... Then we're not even getting into the M4 board - I take it the name comes from it running a Cortex-M4? SoCs, FPGAs and SBCs based on them (along with the various ASICs doing all sorts of fun stuff) are such a treat to explore and tinker with!
CPC 464 with a green screen was our first proper computer, which was an interesting choice from our mothers part, as here in Finland Commodore 64 reigned supreme. Anyhow, I have many fond memories of gaming with it and something like this is pretty interesting.
6128 was my first computer. Everyone else had either C64 or 464 (tape), felt alone, but enjoyed the loading times for the limited games I had. Ah, the good old days
Amstrad CPC-464 and Green Screen was my first computer as well. They had their issues, but mostly worked okay. The PSU being built into the monitor was a great advantage as it needed one less power outlet :)
Always good to see the ol' Wide Boy get some attention. I have Zaxon's DDI-3, which 30+years ago would've been the stuff of dreams. It's still pretty good now!
What a smart form factor. Loving the idea of getting a custom modern mechanical keyboard built with the correct coloured keycaps, maybe it's something Zaxon could offer as an add-on purchase in future. And loading tapes over Bluetooth - what a time to be alive! 🙂
Having lived thru the 8-bit era of home computers (and everything else & enjoyed it), I never realised that there'd be a market for 8-bit machines when we're in the 64-bit era, 30-40 years later. I am grateful for it tho, as I can show my daughter games I played long ago and show her that playability was of greater importance when graphics & audio were limited back in the 80's.
Oh wow, not heard about this beast before. I guess it's the closest we'll get to ever having a "mini CPC". Incidentally, I have the M4 board too (plugged into my original 6128), and it's a great bit of kit. I used it to transfer the files from all of my old 3" floppy disks to my PC. I can't recommend it enough for its versatility. However, it's not always so great for running games from, the Gotek is usually more successful due to its emulation of a floppy drive. So glad to see you have both, Neil. 👍
@@RMCRetro It's all good lol only I can't stop buying one more thing on ebay lo got myself an ST and a blitter for it they're so rare when I saw one on ebay I had to buy it, a satan disk loads of extras along with a couple of spectrums and soooooooo many upgrades for them happy days. I can't wait to play some of the old ST stuff. Loving the channel also :)
Oooh ! The 464 with a green screen brings back memories ! I also bought the floppy drive later on, which was a real game changer ! Not sure about the ATX thing though. Although the internals are the same as a real CPC, a lot of the nostalgia is linked to the tactile feel of the keyboard, the plastic, the clunkiness of the tapes and 3" floppies.
I've had the m4, gotek, and extra memory for my 6128 plus for a few years now. They're a great addition to the cpc/plus range. I highly recommend them!
Wow! We had such trouble getting our CPC464 to work. It's exactly like you said. Aging components and dying media. We're sometimes too frightened to turn it on. What a great alternative this is.
:O My CPC464 still works flawlessly. Never had to be fixed. Still in use. Even fell off the desk once when I was trying to make some space. Still works. :)
Emulators are amazing I had an Amiga 1200 which I had stored away for around 20 to 25 years and decided to give it a try, the entire motherboard had eaten itself some how while in storage, but amazingly the ancient 80mb hard drive still worked and thanks to WinUAE and an adapter I was able to save everything especially my childhood. Absolutly priceless.
The CPC6128 is also a big favourite of mine. Originally my brothers it came to me as a hand me down and I loved it. We played loads of games on it, but it as also programmable by a kid like me! I’d love to get hold of one of these. Awesome.
Really neat little design. I would like to see a lot more 8bit and 16bit systems re-designed to fit into mini itx or similar small form-factor enclosures. The expansion options are the icing on the cake. You have me thinking about the lack of authentic keyboards now, that could be a good problem to solve.
Amazing solution - I personally don’t have issues with fpga (hardware based emulation) of Software based emulation but this gives just another option. So in order of options 1) real computer 2) this ‘clone’ 3) FPGA 4) emulation
Great video and what an interesting machine. When I saw the notification I thought this would be hardware emulation so really interested to see that it isn't. What a great little machine and a nice demo. It was interesting to see how comparatively easy it was to get online.
The 464 was my first ever computer ... man, this brings back memories. Like most 464 users I pined for a 6128 but it was never to be! This was a really cool video for me - it's somewhat odd to see a 464 connected to a WiFi network!
Understanding computers like I now do? I think I'd of been really happy with an Amstrad - yeah the C64 is iconic - but not for any reason that the Amstrad can't also claim - other than sales figures ;)
I am a bit bias, but I think the C64/C128 despite it's flaws was the best all around 8-Bit machine of it's day with the unique color(yes I'm American) pallet, hardware sprites, that lovely SID chip for sound, and just how far the community has been able to push the humble C64/C128 over the years. I also had an Apple IIe at the same time with dual disk drives, and outside of a handful of programs like Print Shop Deluxe, and the expansion slots on the Apple, the C64, and later C128 where miles ahead of any 8 bit computer here in the US.
@@CommodoreFan64 - it's worth noting the the CPC had more capable graphics, more memory and a faster CPU - but yeah - it could never match the C64 on music or the sheer number of programmers that released stuff for the C64. it's arguably the best because of what's available - but from a pure technical standpoint? the C64 and even the CPC - were far from the most powerful home computers at the time in terms of raw power. Things like hardware sprites skewed the perception of the machine - the SNES was dramatically less powerful than the Genesis for example - but its hardware accelerated features meant that the games as people perceived them? were on par.
@@Retrocomputernerd no its not actually listed, I have messaged the website but I fear a language barrier. I'm quite excited to get one and design and print my cpc464
All I can say is wow. I don't think I've ever seen such a monster hit of nostalgia as this and I didn't even own a CPC. I just used to look over these things in Argos catalogues and wonder.
I have a faux Beats speaker gifted to me a while ago that has the same bluetooth audio circuitry inside - I'd recognise that sound clip at 8:30 anywhere >> "the bluechoof dewise is connect ehh successfully"
Cool test with the tape read speeds. I guess with floppies etc the computer would only read at a speed it could handle but in the world of tapes it was basically: "hi im a tape, im going to send you this data at this speed, you can either read it or not, neither of us are in control here, take it or leave it".
Interesting. I have used BT for over 15 years for loading (more so now that most cell phones don't have headphone jacks) and my Spectrum OPC project has BT built in too.
Getting old machines online is awesome. You should build the open source Pluscart for the VCS in a video. The Fujinet for the Atari 8 bit is pretty awesome, I need to get one of those.
This is a revolution in retro-computing, with that wifi option! Wouldn’t call it a clone, more like semi-clone or rebuild. If only i had the time to discover all this beautiful stuff!
I did an experiment loading to my Colour Computer (TRS-80) over bluetooth, with a couple of speed pokes I got the loading time reliably to double speed on original hardware!
Nice to see some cpc love, great to see a propper revision made with no emulation. Only criticism really is, that maybe a more traditional gotek incorporated with a display to simplify adding the games without adding menu software or using wifi, or maybe making that SD card more accessible with a custom slot on the back maybe.
I used to play something similar at the arcade. Been looking for something like this for ages, it's still fun to play today. Wonder if this was out on the C64 and 800XL.
Looks like a great product but it is not listed on the Zaxon website? Also, how is keyboard mapping handled as a modern PC keyboard (as used in the video) does not have the same layout as an Amstrad CPC?
I hope they make an m4 card for every single micro and console ever produced that doesn’t already have online capabilities. Imagine being able to switch your nes on and use a text menu to type in an address to a rom online and play it. It could even be officially licensed by people like sega and Nintendo and connect to their own servers giving them the ability to grant access and get money for their old titles. Just pay some small fee every month for access to the service. Make it cross platform so that people with emulators on other devices can pay to use the libraries too. Genius idea.
That's actually awesome about Tape Drive emulation over Bluetooth. Makes sense, but would've never considered it. I haven't seen any C64 tape adapters on ebay doing that. Looking forward to those coming out eventually.
Beyond 10% increase in playback speed, you can start to induce problems caused by the frequency response capability of the audio modulator/de-modulator in the CPC.
Neil, I’m looking for info on the latching relay on/off switch mod on this. I want to use a similar mod for a build with the MiSTer Multisystem board I bought. Would it be possible to see how it’s done?
The "Grand Prix" game was interesting. It reminds me of "Super Sprint" which was on NES back in the day. At least that's when I first played it. Nice to see there was an earlier concept.
Funnily enough Atari tried to sue Codemasters for making the game, but Codemasters pointed to their earlier game "BMX Simulator" and said it's just that game with cars. It went no further!
I am going to be assembling an ATX 64 board next week. it's an M-ATX format C64C with expansion, dual sid and many improvements to display. It's going into a beige desktop case and I plan to design a 3d printed front that looks like a 128D and then making wireless keyboard adapters for it.
A couple of years ago I thought of something like that for an Amiga 1200 or 500. So you can use a bluetooth keyboard etc and have the brains in a small box out of the way.
My first Micro was the Dragon 32, and of course the game of choice was Chuckie Egg, saw you loading it, brought all sorts of memories back. I like the CPC4ATX, but the originals look so much better, in my opinion anyway. Just a thought, wouldn't a bluetooth hifi adapter work in the line in socket of say a spectrum etc?
When speeding up the audio for loading, did you also change the pitch? I'm not sure if audacity does that for you, but i think that would help. speed up and pitch down.
Won't work, I'm afraid. The CPC adds "precompensation" to the signal when recording, to increase the difference between a "1" bit and a "0" bit ( 25 uS added to high bit cycle, and subtracted from low bit cycle). Precompensation needs to be increased with higher write speeds. Speeding up playback will cause both high and low bits to have the wrong cycle durations.
That is a cool piece of kit, especially for people with short desks. One thing I was wondering: is there a replacement ULA available for the CPC? Wouldn't want to cannibalise a working system
now need a hardware recreation of the Dragon; and a physical enclosure recreation of the Acorn Risc PC could be powered by a modern Pi and it wouldn't be emulation
I don't think you actually need much to do a hardware recreation of the Dragon. It's literally a clone of the coco, and THAT was pretty much all off-the-shelf Motorola parts. You could literally go and do it all now, and probably even simplify the mainboard to a ridiculous degree by using a microcontroller in place of the original video chip and modern s-RAM.
and make it 100% TRS-80 Color (COCO) compatible as well!, :-) I think a emulator, would do, I remember using a TRS-80 Emulator one time, I now think was much cooler now, than then , I now more about How PC's, work I've lost the details of what it was, but what was cool about it was it seem to boot from the (486) PC bios , from a only a floppy disk, with out any PC OS, needed, like It was a PC OS, the display would look that of an TRS-80 Color, at that time I was new to PC's, it may of been just small Linux OS distro, only auto boot an emulator, of some sort, But what I remember, it seemed to fast, functional, lost the disk and never found a replacement so could never fully test it. that was the end of that :-(
@@TheTurnipKing Well, there was the CoCo3 that had a pretty cool custom GIME video chip (which also had a fantastic MMU too - which enthusiast have used to map up to 2MB of memory even though Tandy only intended it for supporting up to 512K); However, the CoCo community is very active and there has been this project to recreate the GIME chip - the GIME-X project: thezippsterzone.com/2019/03/27/gime-x/ And I believe the Hitachi 6803 is still to be had as a superior drop-in replacement of the MC6809 - so a new board design would get some kudos from enthusiast if it went with the Hitachi CPU - and there's a NitrOS-9 implementation that takes advantage of its instruction set additions
@@dh2032 the best software emulators for retros that run on Raspberry Pi boards are the bare metal implementations (they don't boot any manner of Linux OS or otherwise); there's essentially now a library and framework for rolling bare metal emulators to run on the Pi. Believe the Commodore 64 already has great implementations, but would certainly be cool to see a bare metal Raspberry Pi emulator that well supported the Dragon, CoCo1, CoCo2, and CoCo3 - but maybe the CoCo3 should be combined with the GIME-X project so as to take advantage of that project's FPGA re-implementation of Tandy's custom GIME graphics chip that was rolled out on the CoCo3 (that chip also serves as a rather advanced MMU - to map up to 512K memory, but enthusiast have got it to map up to 2MB)
@@TheTurnipKing Strictly speaking, the Dragon ISN'T a clone of the CoCo. They're both pretty much Motorola's reference design for a color 6809 micro, so they come out almost the same (with only some relatively small hardware differences and a ROM swap needed to convert one into the other).
Isn't part of the fun the hardware? From CPC464 onwards I was soldering (notice the "l" N America), adding upgrades, expanding Frankensteining (even a word?) etc. I have an Amiga 1200 for Xmas off my kids. The most fun I am having is the hardware. I could easily have ran WINUAE etc, not the same for me. Is this just me though?
Very cool. :) By the way, the Oliver Twins didn't make that 'Robin Hood - Legend Quest'. They made the 1986 game 'Super Robin Hood' which was also released by Codemasters and is a decent lil game for it's time. This Legend Quest is a 1993 game that is way below 1993 standards and somehow even has ZX Spectrum 'colour clash' which I don't even understand how it does since the CPC doesn't do it's graphics with atttributes the way the Spectrum does. :O
nice to see that the ESP8266 is used for the wlan functionality. Given that this is a full blown MCU, does anyone know if this can be accessed in a similar style to the GPIO ports on a rPi?
yes, my emotions are mixed too ... actually a no-go to butcher working machines for the gate array. Hope there'll be a replacement soon! All the remaining ICs are still available, though (I would even have a full set of ICs for a CPC replica, but no spare Gate Array, as there are no spare Gate Arrays - nowhere!)
The speed experiment is really fascinating. Could you overdrive your tape player to speed up loading as well? Or perhaps the pitch change will cause errors past a certain rate.
Just needs a flashing red LED on the top. "This Jen, is the Internet..."
My exact thought on seeing the casing 😁
Don’t drop it
*audience screams and panics*
Assuming this is a comment which relates to The It Crowd, haha!
Problems with the edge connectors...
Most of us: Fiber glass pen, contact spray, prayer.
That Zaxon dude: Imma design a whole new mainboard!
Yup, sorry.... i'm lazy boy ;) Edge slot It was also primary reason wy i do JS128 , ZX Spectrum clone... ;)
@@zaxoniec Absolutely fantastic work!
I just love hearing about the 8 bit micros that were never popular over here across the pond in the US.
There's something completely wonderful about the retro computing cottage industry that these sorts of ultra niche devices exist, and that talented, creative folks are dedicating their time to produce them. Thanks for showing us, Neil.
Another excellent video!!! Normally I have no interest in retro computing, but RMC makes it fascinating!!!
Greetings frim Chicago...49 year old here and love your stuff...Your passion is amazing and I wish we were on the same side of the water...Keep up the great stuff fella!! 👍🙏
Thanks Richard!
Nice new toy. I'll bet you has some fun. The version 2 board in the original case with the floppy drive port containing a GoTek right there. Sounds like a winner. 👍😊
8:50 that bluetooth mod is wild. Very good idea.
Absolutely love the merging of old and new - Goteks are a godsend for sprucing up old retro hardware, now if they'd only make such an emulator for optical media too...
Then we're not even getting into the M4 board - I take it the name comes from it running a Cortex-M4?
SoCs, FPGAs and SBCs based on them (along with the various ASICs doing all sorts of fun stuff) are such a treat to explore and tinker with!
CPC 464 with a green screen was our first proper computer, which was an interesting choice from our mothers part, as here in Finland Commodore 64 reigned supreme. Anyhow, I have many fond memories of gaming with it and something like this is pretty interesting.
6128 was my first computer. Everyone else had either C64 or 464 (tape), felt alone, but enjoyed the loading times for the limited games I had. Ah, the good old days
Amstrad CPC-464 and Green Screen was my first computer as well. They had their issues, but mostly worked okay. The PSU being built into the monitor was a great advantage as it needed one less power outlet :)
Always good to see the ol' Wide Boy get some attention.
I have Zaxon's DDI-3, which 30+years ago would've been the stuff of dreams. It's still pretty good now!
What a smart form factor. Loving the idea of getting a custom modern mechanical keyboard built with the correct coloured keycaps, maybe it's something Zaxon could offer as an add-on purchase in future. And loading tapes over Bluetooth - what a time to be alive! 🙂
i dislike, wheres the retrofeeling if you use cheap china products
Having lived thru the 8-bit era of home computers (and everything else & enjoyed it), I never realised that there'd be a market for 8-bit machines when we're in the 64-bit era, 30-40 years later.
I am grateful for it tho, as I can show my daughter games I played long ago and show her that playability was of greater importance when graphics & audio were limited back in the 80's.
Oh wow, not heard about this beast before. I guess it's the closest we'll get to ever having a "mini CPC". Incidentally, I have the M4 board too (plugged into my original 6128), and it's a great bit of kit. I used it to transfer the files from all of my old 3" floppy disks to my PC. I can't recommend it enough for its versatility. However, it's not always so great for running games from, the Gotek is usually more successful due to its emulation of a floppy drive. So glad to see you have both, Neil. 👍
The 8bit guy and this channel have caused me to spend a small fortune on ebay over the last two weeks ah happy days
I hope you're having fun! And sorry I guess :D
@@RMCRetro It's all good lol only I can't stop buying one more thing on ebay lo got myself an ST and a blitter for it they're so rare when I saw one on ebay I had to buy it, a satan disk loads of extras along with a couple of spectrums and soooooooo many upgrades for them happy days. I can't wait to play some of the old ST stuff. Loving the channel also :)
Can't wait to see a follow-up video of any more experiments you run on this.
Oooh ! The 464 with a green screen brings back memories ! I also bought the floppy drive later on, which was a real game changer ! Not sure about the ATX thing though. Although the internals are the same as a real CPC, a lot of the nostalgia is linked to the tactile feel of the keyboard, the plastic, the clunkiness of the tapes and 3" floppies.
Oh, man; that is an impressive piece of kit. Newly-engineered retro computers never cease to amaze.
I've had the m4, gotek, and extra memory for my 6128 plus for a few years now. They're a great addition to the cpc/plus range. I highly recommend them!
Wow! We had such trouble getting our CPC464 to work. It's exactly like you said. Aging components and dying media. We're sometimes too frightened to turn it on.
What a great alternative this is.
:O My CPC464 still works flawlessly. Never had to be fixed. Still in use. Even fell off the desk once when I was trying to make some space. Still works. :)
Emulators are amazing I had an Amiga 1200 which I had stored away for around 20 to 25 years and decided to give it a try, the entire motherboard had eaten itself some how while in storage, but amazingly the ancient 80mb hard drive still worked and thanks to WinUAE and an adapter I was able to save everything especially my childhood. Absolutly priceless.
The CPC6128 is also a big favourite of mine. Originally my brothers it came to me as a hand me down and I loved it. We played loads of games on it, but it as also programmable by a kid like me! I’d love to get hold of one of these. Awesome.
That's an amazing piece of hardware. Love where things are going with the old machines.
Really neat little design. I would like to see a lot more 8bit and 16bit systems re-designed to fit into mini itx or similar small form-factor enclosures. The expansion options are the icing on the cake.
You have me thinking about the lack of authentic keyboards now, that could be a good problem to solve.
I love all the old 8-bit systems, the Atari 800 was my favourite. Thanks for the very interesting video.
Amazing solution - I personally don’t have issues with fpga (hardware based emulation) of Software based emulation but this gives just another option.
So in order of options
1) real computer
2) this ‘clone’
3) FPGA
4) emulation
Great video and what an interesting machine. When I saw the notification I thought this would be hardware emulation so really interested to see that it isn't. What a great little machine and a nice demo. It was interesting to see how comparatively easy it was to get online.
Mindblowing and just awesome
Oooh well done on the sponsorship goodies!
The exact opposite of a sleeper PC build. Gorgeous.
Really looking forward to see what they do DIY wise with this, Great upload :)
ALL HAIL TREVOR - at rmcretro.store
Thanks very much.
ALL HAIL @@trevypoos
ALL HAIL TREVOR
That is awesome. I need one! I so miss my CPC 6128 of my youth... 👍
Where do I go to find out about price etc ?
The 464 was my first ever computer ... man, this brings back memories. Like most 464 users I pined for a 6128 but it was never to be! This was a really cool video for me - it's somewhat odd to see a 464 connected to a WiFi network!
I have an original 464 with an M4 card, and it's awesome!
I wanted the amstrad as a kid just because of the colours lol
Got a C64 instead. No regrets.
Understanding computers like I now do? I think I'd of been really happy with an Amstrad - yeah the C64 is iconic - but not for any reason that the Amstrad can't also claim - other than sales figures ;)
I am a bit bias, but I think the C64/C128 despite it's flaws was the best all around 8-Bit machine of it's day with the unique color(yes I'm American) pallet, hardware sprites, that lovely SID chip for sound, and just how far the community has been able to push the humble C64/C128 over the years. I also had an Apple IIe at the same time with dual disk drives, and outside of a handful of programs like Print Shop Deluxe, and the expansion slots on the Apple, the C64, and later C128 where miles ahead of any 8 bit computer here in the US.
I had a CPC464 as a kid (as well as Atari 400, Atari ST, PC) and became a coder. Loved the C64 sounds and sprites.
@@CommodoreFan64 - it's worth noting the the CPC had more capable graphics, more memory and a faster CPU - but yeah - it could never match the C64 on music or the sheer number of programmers that released stuff for the C64.
it's arguably the best because of what's available - but from a pure technical standpoint? the C64 and even the CPC - were far from the most powerful home computers at the time in terms of raw power.
Things like hardware sprites skewed the perception of the machine - the SNES was dramatically less powerful than the Genesis for example - but its hardware accelerated features meant that the games as people perceived them? were on par.
except if you tried to play something like Chase HQ which was great on CPC/Spec and crud on C64. :P
cousin had a cpc464 with color screen.... Whilst I have my commodores... Loved the cpc464 design.
The moment you opened the lid, I knew I wanted one but my wallet ran off when it saw me looking at the website
I can't even find the product or the price on that blog. ¬.¬
Can’t find it either
@@Retrocomputernerd no its not actually listed, I have messaged the website but I fear a language barrier. I'm quite excited to get one and design and print my cpc464
They are about 300 UK Pounds for the base config and probably about another 100 for the upgrades neil has here.
wow the new cave is awesooome < 3
What a nicely designed machine!
When modern meets retro it is a glorious thing
All I can say is wow. I don't think I've ever seen such a monster hit of nostalgia as this and I didn't even own a CPC. I just used to look over these things in Argos catalogues and wonder.
Growing up in the states, I have to ask, what was Argos? Never heard of that. I would assume some sort of mail order catalogue.
So, you've overclocked a computer audio tape? Good stuff! Love your channel, keep up the good work.
That's a nice project! I'm not into 8 bit micros but this makes me excited nonetheless!
Unless you grew up with one? only history buffs would really care
loved my CPC464 - Get Dexter was great. It also got me hooked on Elite.
There is a similar solution for the Atari 8-bit family, called 1088XEL. Glad to know the same approach is being used in other retro systems, too!
I have a faux Beats speaker gifted to me a while ago that has the same bluetooth audio circuitry inside - I'd recognise that sound clip at 8:30 anywhere >> "the bluechoof dewise is connect ehh successfully"
Is that the "Billboard" brand? Because I recognized that sound too.
same audio connection as all bluetooth boards from china, as we have an in car audio setup the same
Zaxon made my wonderful floppy drive sd adaptor/took, amazing device. He is right of course that the def connector can kill it at any time
Cool test with the tape read speeds. I guess with floppies etc the computer would only read at a speed it could handle but in the world of tapes it was basically: "hi im a tape, im going to send you this data at this speed, you can either read it or not, neither of us are in control here, take it or leave it".
This is amazing, still have my CPC 464.
Get an M4 card for it, you won't regret it!
Don't know why but it reminds of the Praemus unit from the IT Crowd. It's not the same shape and doesn't ruin your life, I guess it's just the colour.
Interesting. I have used BT for over 15 years for loading (more so now that most cell phones don't have headphone jacks) and my Spectrum OPC project has BT built in too.
Getting old machines online is awesome.
You should build the open source Pluscart for the VCS in a video.
The Fujinet for the Atari 8 bit is pretty awesome, I need to get one of those.
So in short, CPC fans are just about as mad as Amiga fans.. Got it!
@Duncan Woodward Perhaps dangerously so!
Loved my CPC464 with the colour monitor .
This looks so cool, I've checked the website couldn't see a price for the kit.
Great vid! and lol, somebody bought a Bluetooth speaker on ebay.. I have one with that same pairing message.
Zaxon, zaxon, oh! He also made a ZX Spectrum clone and more. Time to visit his website :)
This is a revolution in retro-computing, with that wifi option! Wouldn’t call it a clone, more like semi-clone or rebuild. If only i had the time to discover all this beautiful stuff!
This made me smile. Love the CPC. Now could this be enhanced in a Spectrum Next way?
Otla has an option for Amstrad too
I did an experiment loading to my Colour Computer (TRS-80) over bluetooth, with a couple of speed pokes I got the loading time reliably to double speed on original hardware!
Nice to see some cpc love, great to see a propper revision made with no emulation. Only criticism really is, that maybe a more traditional gotek incorporated with a display to simplify adding the games without adding menu software or using wifi, or maybe making that SD card more accessible with a custom slot on the back maybe.
That modern OS looks great, similar to old Windows, so much better than GeOS.
Grand Prix Simulator one of my favourites on my 6128!
I used to play something similar at the arcade. Been looking for something like this for ages, it's still fun to play today. Wonder if this was out on the C64 and 800XL.
Looks like a great product but it is not listed on the Zaxon website? Also, how is keyboard mapping handled as a modern PC keyboard (as used in the video) does not have the same layout as an Amstrad CPC?
Zaxon? Who else?
Well done old chap!
I hope they make an m4 card for every single micro and console ever produced that doesn’t already have online capabilities. Imagine being able to switch your nes on and use a text menu to type in an address to a rom online and play it. It could even be officially licensed by people like sega and Nintendo and connect to their own servers giving them the ability to grant access and get money for their old titles. Just pay some small fee every month for access to the service. Make it cross platform so that people with emulators on other devices can pay to use the libraries too. Genius idea.
Why did the Amstrad kids all become the coolest grown ups?
The interweb connection seems like a perfect way for some developers to release new software without having to deal with physical packaging.
That's actually awesome about Tape Drive emulation over Bluetooth. Makes sense, but would've never considered it. I haven't seen any C64 tape adapters on ebay doing that. Looking forward to those coming out eventually.
I saw a BT put into C= tape drive for that line.
Renzi has it through the cart port Remziload64
Remzi load64 BT C64
Beyond 10% increase in playback speed, you can start to induce problems caused by the frequency response capability of the audio modulator/de-modulator in the CPC.
Did Zaxon pull the product from their website? I cannot find any links to it.
Neil, I’m looking for info on the latching relay on/off switch mod on this. I want to use a similar mod for a build with the MiSTer Multisystem board I bought. Would it be possible to see how it’s done?
The "Grand Prix" game was interesting. It reminds me of "Super Sprint" which was on NES back in the day. At least that's when I first played it. Nice to see there was an earlier concept.
Funnily enough Atari tried to sue Codemasters for making the game, but Codemasters pointed to their earlier game "BMX Simulator" and said it's just that game with cars. It went no further!
You have to admire the ability of some people!
A CPC with WIFI and bluetooth, what year is it indeed!
I am going to be assembling an ATX 64 board next week. it's an M-ATX format C64C with expansion, dual sid and many improvements to display. It's going into a beige desktop case and I plan to design a 3d printed front that looks like a 128D and then making wireless keyboard adapters for it.
A couple of years ago I thought of something like that for an Amiga 1200 or 500. So you can use a bluetooth keyboard etc and have the brains in a small box out of the way.
My first Micro was the Dragon 32, and of course the game of choice was Chuckie Egg, saw you loading it, brought all sorts of memories back. I like the CPC4ATX, but the originals look so much better, in my opinion anyway.
Just a thought, wouldn't a bluetooth hifi adapter work in the line in socket of say a spectrum etc?
When speeding up the audio for loading, did you also change the pitch? I'm not sure if audacity does that for you, but i think that would help. speed up and pitch down.
Won't work, I'm afraid. The CPC adds "precompensation" to the signal when recording, to increase the difference between a "1" bit and a "0" bit ( 25 uS added to high bit cycle, and subtracted from low bit cycle). Precompensation needs to be increased with higher write speeds. Speeding up playback will cause both high and low bits to have the wrong cycle durations.
That is a cool piece of kit, especially for people with short desks. One thing I was wondering: is there a replacement ULA available for the CPC? Wouldn't want to cannibalise a working system
now need a hardware recreation of the Dragon; and a physical enclosure recreation of the Acorn Risc PC could be powered by a modern Pi and it wouldn't be emulation
I don't think you actually need much to do a hardware recreation of the Dragon. It's literally a clone of the coco, and THAT was pretty much all off-the-shelf Motorola parts. You could literally go and do it all now, and probably even simplify the mainboard to a ridiculous degree by using a microcontroller in place of the original video chip and modern s-RAM.
and make it 100% TRS-80 Color (COCO) compatible as well!, :-)
I think a emulator, would do, I remember using a TRS-80 Emulator one time, I now think was much cooler now, than then , I now more about How PC's, work I've lost the details of what it was, but what was cool about it was it seem to boot from the (486) PC bios , from a only a floppy disk, with out any PC OS, needed, like It was a PC OS, the display would look that of an TRS-80 Color, at that time I was new to PC's, it may of been just small Linux OS distro, only auto boot an emulator, of some sort, But what I remember, it seemed to fast, functional, lost the disk and never found a replacement so could never fully test it. that was the end of that :-(
@@TheTurnipKing Well, there was the CoCo3 that had a pretty cool custom GIME video chip (which also had a fantastic MMU too - which enthusiast have used to map up to 2MB of memory even though Tandy only intended it for supporting up to 512K); However, the CoCo community is very active and there has been this project to recreate the GIME chip - the GIME-X project:
thezippsterzone.com/2019/03/27/gime-x/
And I believe the Hitachi 6803 is still to be had as a superior drop-in replacement of the MC6809 - so a new board design would get some kudos from enthusiast if it went with the Hitachi CPU - and there's a NitrOS-9 implementation that takes advantage of its instruction set additions
@@dh2032 the best software emulators for retros that run on Raspberry Pi boards are the bare metal implementations (they don't boot any manner of Linux OS or otherwise); there's essentially now a library and framework for rolling bare metal emulators to run on the Pi. Believe the Commodore 64 already has great implementations, but would certainly be cool to see a bare metal Raspberry Pi emulator that well supported the Dragon, CoCo1, CoCo2, and CoCo3 - but maybe the CoCo3 should be combined with the GIME-X project so as to take advantage of that project's FPGA re-implementation of Tandy's custom GIME graphics chip that was rolled out on the CoCo3 (that chip also serves as a rather advanced MMU - to map up to 512K memory, but enthusiast have got it to map up to 2MB)
@@TheTurnipKing Strictly speaking, the Dragon ISN'T a clone of the CoCo. They're both pretty much Motorola's reference design for a color 6809 micro, so they come out almost the same (with only some relatively small hardware differences and a ROM swap needed to convert one into the other).
Isn't part of the fun the hardware? From CPC464 onwards I was soldering (notice the "l" N America), adding upgrades, expanding Frankensteining (even a word?) etc. I have an Amiga 1200 for Xmas off my kids. The most fun I am having is the hardware. I could easily have ran WINUAE etc, not the same for me. Is this just me though?
I'm a bit surprised to see some RAM from the former GDR/DDR in here. There was someone taking it serious putting some real DDR RAM in here.
That's Brilliant.
Very cool. :)
By the way, the Oliver Twins didn't make that 'Robin Hood - Legend Quest'. They made the 1986 game 'Super Robin Hood' which was also released by Codemasters and is a decent lil game for it's time. This Legend Quest is a 1993 game that is way below 1993 standards and somehow even has ZX Spectrum 'colour clash' which I don't even understand how it does since the CPC doesn't do it's graphics with atttributes the way the Spectrum does. :O
can the M4 board be purchased yet?
Really good video. Are there links or credits for the music somewhere? Enjoyed the tracks but couldn't find mention of them in the description.
nice to see that the ESP8266 is used for the wlan functionality.
Given that this is a full blown MCU, does anyone know if this can be accessed in a similar style to the GPIO ports on a rPi?
Well, you forgot to test FutureOS for CPC. Any idea if the machine is good enought to support it?
So is it using newly manufacturered chips or chips harvested from old CPC's?
Question is, how did they get those chips, did they sacrifice real hardware to source them? In that case I have a real problem with this :/
yes, my emotions are mixed too ... actually a no-go to butcher working machines for the gate array. Hope there'll be a replacement soon! All the remaining ICs are still available, though (I would even have a full set of ICs for a CPC replica, but no spare Gate Array, as there are no spare Gate Arrays - nowhere!)
I've always wanted to carry a CPC on my shoulder like a boombox. Does it got a piezo on the tape data?
What's about FutuereOS? Does it run on it?
The speed experiment is really fascinating. Could you overdrive your tape player to speed up loading as well? Or perhaps the pitch change will cause errors past a certain rate.
This is brilliant. Does anyone know if something similar exists for the ZX Spectrum +3 ?
Bluetooth streaming cassette data audio. Who ever would have imagined.