I don't think I have the need for one but I've only got to the part where we've first seen the box and I immediately got the same sensation of excitement as receiving a new computer in similar packaging back in the 80s. Today's PC's just feel like any other piece of electronics, not the beginning of a whole journey of discovery. Edit: the bad apple demo shows the power of this thing but it really does feel like it's been released in a buggy, unfinished state
@dyscotopia I agree it's definately a long forgotten sensation unboxing this computer, Not so sure about buggy but it is actively being worked on and improved, the underlying architecture is superb and many enhancements are their that go beyond the original 65, like the vic4 etc.......
Enjoyed the vid, great to finally see a batch#3 machine unboxed and what the day one experience felt like :-) There were a few moments for probs you faced where they were "hope he reads the manual to learn what's up there", but that's ok, and to be expected for a day one experience, more mysteries will unravel over time :-) There were a few moments while you were testing titles where you felt things weren't working, but they actually were, and it'll probably require reading the instructions for those titles and getting familiar with how they work. Again, understandable that such things get overlooked on day one, where users will be craving instant fun and gratification, but when/if time suits, you can dive into the details of such titles and learn more about how they work :-)
@IshiTheLastYihi I absolutely will read the manual, but even as a kid when I got my c64 the first thing I did was power it up, I have had a small play with the alt c64 core and that's very nice but I'm hoping to convert the C16 core to the mega65 ...... After waiting so long I just had to unbox it on camera, and the strange thing 8s it felt just like getting a new machine back in the day
Thank you for also showing my demo (15:13 - 15:38), although the choice was probably more of a random one. 😁 About the other programmes: Unfortunately, it is necessary to read the instructions on the info screen before loading the programme itself. With the MEGA65, many things are not as intuitive as on a modern PC. I think that's also the fun of it.
@@lazysunbather0 I have a RUclips Channel with the recordings of some of my demos. For the 2023 Christmas Demo see ruclips.net/video/v_8K4jXde7Q/видео.html
Congrats its a beautiful machine! Ive started playing with sprites again after all these years and its been a blast with the speed if basic on the MEGA65💪💾👍
@SJSsesco I havnt had much chance to play with it since this video but the enhancements the mega65 team have made are superb, The alternative C64 core is very *very* nice too
If you experience problems with the eject button mechanism of the floppy drive, unscrew the casescrew nearest to the floppydrive just a little bit. I inserted the clock battery and had problems because I tightened the screw to strong. Have fun with that beauty!
I got mine delivered recently and had the same issue with the RTC date not saving during the initial setup. To fix it, start it up with ALT pressed and access the setup from there. Then set the date and time again, but immediately press RETURN after setting it. Then Save and Exit the settings
@CaptainCommodore I received my MEGA65 around the same time as you. The outer box shipping box for mine had a dirty boot print on it. I see that your MEGA65 box also suffered from a bunch of deep creases on the outside and tears in the inner cardboard as well. I agree with you that the sliding cardboard sleeves were a bit too tight. Enjoy your beast of a machine!
clearly @ 01:50 the cardboard ripped due to poor packaging design - the surround isn't strong enough to support the contents which have moved during shipping. Spectrum Next KS1 had a similar issue (although packing far more superior than this disappointing effort from mega) Spectrum Next KS2 the ripping issue was resolved.
The internal cardboard is not strong enough. I did a complain about this . Probably the transport pressure damaged the internal cardboard. It happened to me too. The internal supercap (R6 only) needs to load first. Or place a battery for the clock.
@@CaptainCommodore I found a few irritations. What i do not like is the diskette mechanism always kicks in , even when you use an SD card disk image. I was under the impression that the floppy sound was digital, but it is not. You can not turn the mechanism off. When you press the freezer key (restore) the mega65 makes a popping sound each time. This might not happen on HDMI audio. On first power on you get the sound test with the A button. On mine it was only on one speaker and very soft. On certain key combinations you get a weird color pattern on the Mega65 video output and I had no idea where it came from. In your test you had a weird distorted border, that happened to mine too.
My unit's outer brown box was damaged in transit. The colour inner box was also a little bit crushed / damaged, including like the inserts shown in this video. I contacted Trentz to say "Hey ship these in a larger outer box with more padding" and they said they are revising the packaging and sent me a new box free, even though I wasn't asking for one.
@@bonno666 I also wish that the diskette tie-in could be disabled from interaction with the SD card. I am OK with it when the 3.5-inch floppy drive is actually interacting with a real floppy disk, but not when it is reading from the SD cards. I suppose there could be a hidden benefit, if regularly activating the floppy drive helps to keep the mechanical parts from freezing up.
It's a nice looking design, I wonder what's behind those knockouts on the back... Were those demos on the SD card? if so, why did it keep graunching the floppy drive? that would annoy the hell out of me! Not sure it's worth the high asking price and long wait though...
@TimsRetroCorner the demos were on the sd already installed , I'm not sure why the drive noises are happening but will look at turning them off...... the knock outs on the back are for a set of expansions which add a tape and user port along with the jtag connector
I noticed when you set the date and time at the beginning of the setup the seconds were skipping every so often, look closely you’ll see them miss a second here and there
@Regaljester75 I am waiting on a jtag interface so I eill be adding the proper battery then too , hopefully this will resolve the issue as it has for others
Incorrectly written title! It's not a replica computer, it's a new computer that's backwards compatible with the C64. It would have been better to call it a new retro computer. And man was this frustrating to watch, I was almost yelling at the screen "RTFM"! 😂
@j.tann1970 well I, like many others read the manual AFTER playing around with it....... I still havnt read the manual and have installed a couple of cores on there........
Yep, I bought my C64 2 weeks after release, have 4 here, plus Vic20's & Amiga's, was a Commodore Dealer, BUT they sit on shelf Now as I run all the software in Linux Emulators, its Easier & Cheaper ... This C65 looks cool, but it lives by emulation & C64 software base ...
@James_T_Quirk I love emulation, this isn't that, it's a hardware recreation ( fpgas execute in parallel ) and are not the same, although the core is "source code" it is compiled into a parallel hardware implementation. On top of recreating the original prototype this also has a whole load of enhancements, a truly amazing amount of work has gone into this
@@CaptainCommodore Yeah Nice 10 years ago, but the Ryzen 12 core I use gets the job done in emulation.. As I mentioned I bought my C64 2 weeks after its release, So I have "sucked the marrow from that bone", that's why my Vic20's, C64's.Amiga 500's & 2000's sit on a shelf, if I need a reminder I can have it, but as Lightwave runs on this AMD machine at 300 times faster than my 68040 equipped Toaster A2000's, using a cluster of Raspberry PI's, with Amiga Emulation you can have a 6 node Video Toaster Render Farm, on desk instead of 2 car Garage like mine, so they are relegated to museum pieces ... I can see the C65 as "experience" of those days, I liked the manual (but you put it back in box, that just about took dynamite to get out, is it going on a shelf?), having a 3.5 floppy is good, but for me, it has got nothing I want or need, but I do not wish to stop others playing with it .. If you want MY take on them with built in Ethernet&HDMI video & Storage onboard, a portable &or Secure network, none of current crop of virus's/trojans/worms would run under its OS I suspect, making immune to lot of attacks ....
@@James_T_Quirk You really aren't the audience for this, the ones who are like me, want real SID, OPL2/3, MIDI, that sounds completely different to even the best implementation of nuked soft audio emulation, which will go out of key so many times, jitter, bend and stretch, the Mega65 sounds incredible, night & day difference. Then there is the real beam racing chip for CRTs, 0ms latency, X86 on Windows & Linux has so much latency even on a RAM Disc and SLC SSD with an X3D Ryzen. Admittedly, DynaRes 1.0 is pretty decent, and DynaRes 2.0 will be interesting.
@michaelhill6453 depends, the go64 on the mega65 core isn't 100% havnt personally tried a lot on that yet, but the alternative C64 core ( which comes from the mister core ) is superb
Jesus, I haven’t seen the word “snowflake” used since 2019. Maybe getting a human friend or two would be a better idea than backing rebuilds of old computers just to feel their keyboards from different angles.
@jediknight2350 very true, but today I installed the alt c64 core, it's very nice and I will show that in another video, I was conscious of the time of the vid at 30+ mins already
@speedbird737 the case is a replica of the original mega65, but yes I do agree that the drive sticking out is ugly, they keyboard however on this unit, is absolutely superb......
14:00 Of course, it's not a proper retro device until someone ports "Bad Apple!!" to it. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Apple!!#Use_as_a_graphical_and_audio_test). The lyrics are in Japanese ("Touhou Project" is a Japanese danmaku game, and the video is for the Alstroemeria Records arrangement of the Stage 3 Theme from "Lotus Land Story"). Although properly done on vintage/retro computers, it's supposed to use the machine's native sprites and sound chip. Simply playing the original NicoNico video is actually cheating.
I don't think I have the need for one but I've only got to the part where we've first seen the box and I immediately got the same sensation of excitement as receiving a new computer in similar packaging back in the 80s. Today's PC's just feel like any other piece of electronics, not the beginning of a whole journey of discovery.
Edit: the bad apple demo shows the power of this thing but it really does feel like it's been released in a buggy, unfinished state
@dyscotopia I agree it's definately a long forgotten sensation unboxing this computer, Not so sure about buggy but it is actively being worked on and improved, the underlying architecture is superb and many enhancements are their that go beyond the original 65, like the vic4 etc.......
Enjoyed the vid, great to finally see a batch#3 machine unboxed and what the day one experience felt like :-) There were a few moments for probs you faced where they were "hope he reads the manual to learn what's up there", but that's ok, and to be expected for a day one experience, more mysteries will unravel over time :-)
There were a few moments while you were testing titles where you felt things weren't working, but they actually were, and it'll probably require reading the instructions for those titles and getting familiar with how they work. Again, understandable that such things get overlooked on day one, where users will be craving instant fun and gratification, but when/if time suits, you can dive into the details of such titles and learn more about how they work :-)
@IshiTheLastYihi I absolutely will read the manual, but even as a kid when I got my c64 the first thing I did was power it up, I have had a small play with the alt c64 core and that's very nice but I'm hoping to convert the C16 core to the mega65 ...... After waiting so long I just had to unbox it on camera, and the strange thing 8s it felt just like getting a new machine back in the day
Thank you for also showing my demo (15:13 - 15:38), although the choice was probably more of a random one. 😁
About the other programmes: Unfortunately, it is necessary to read the instructions on the info screen before loading the programme itself. With the MEGA65, many things are not as intuitive as on a modern PC. I think that's also the fun of it.
Lol it was random, this was literally my very first powerup of the machine so I decided to film it nice demo though
Great demo! - can we watch this on RUclips? - it really deserves a wider audience.... and I would love to see it in full!
@@lazysunbather0
There are videos of my demo on my channel.
My Christmas demo is under
ruclips.net/video/v_8K4jXde7Q/видео.html
@@lazysunbather0 I have a RUclips Channel with the recordings of some of my demos. For the 2023 Christmas Demo see ruclips.net/video/v_8K4jXde7Q/видео.html
Enjoyed that buddy nice looking machine. Loved the fraggle rock them lol. Can’t wait to see more on this. Keep up the great work
@Retro4u yeah gotta give it a proper go yet but the keyboard is superb
Glad you finally received it mate. Definitely a sweet looking machine. Thanks for sharing. :)
Congrats its a beautiful machine! Ive started playing with sprites again after all these years and its been a blast with the speed if basic on the MEGA65💪💾👍
@SJSsesco I havnt had much chance to play with it since this video but the enhancements the mega65 team have made are superb, The alternative C64 core is very *very* nice too
@@CaptainCommodore agreed the newest C64 core is rock solid👍
Love the disclaimer!
@EgoChip some of my language gets a bit questionable in some videos
@@CaptainCommodore I subscribed because of that.
great machine. Worth it's money
If you experience problems with the eject button mechanism of the floppy drive, unscrew the casescrew nearest to the floppydrive just a little bit.
I inserted the clock battery and had problems because I tightened the screw to strong.
Have fun with that beauty!
That should not happen on the R6 model. They said.
Will bear that in mind , cheers
I got mine delivered recently and had the same issue with the RTC date not saving during the initial setup. To fix it, start it up with ALT pressed and access the setup from there. Then set the date and time again, but immediately press RETURN after setting it. Then Save and Exit the settings
fun fact , the paper for the manual was sold to them by Dwight k shrutt , for all your paper needs
Looks like a very versatile machine. The demos look amazing (the ones that work). Have a fun time with Mega65 :) Cheers!
It is a very nice machine
@CaptainCommodore I received my MEGA65 around the same time as you. The outer box shipping box for mine had a dirty boot print on it. I see that your MEGA65 box also suffered from a bunch of deep creases on the outside and tears in the inner cardboard as well. I agree with you that the sliding cardboard sleeves were a bit too tight. Enjoy your beast of a machine!
@@tonedef71 cheers chap, I guess a little extra padding at this price point is definitely needed
Captain gets a brand new ship ! Sweet sailings.
Hoping to get mine with the next batch in October 👋 Nice machine.
@@RainerK. I'm very happy with it, I'm sure you will be too
Very nice system, enjoy it ;)
clearly @ 01:50 the cardboard ripped due to poor packaging design - the surround isn't strong enough to support the contents which have moved during shipping. Spectrum Next KS1 had a similar issue (although packing far more superior than this disappointing effort from mega) Spectrum Next KS2 the ripping issue was resolved.
The internal cardboard is not strong enough. I did a complain about this . Probably the transport pressure damaged the internal cardboard. It happened to me too. The internal supercap (R6 only) needs to load first. Or place a battery for the clock.
@bonno666 you must be correct, I was playing with the machine today and the time did infact stick
@@CaptainCommodore I found a few irritations. What i do not like is the diskette mechanism always kicks in , even when you use an SD card disk image. I was under the impression that the floppy sound was digital, but it is not. You can not turn the mechanism off. When you press the freezer key (restore) the mega65 makes a popping sound each time. This might not happen on HDMI audio. On first power on you get the sound test with the A button. On mine it was only on one speaker and very soft. On certain key combinations you get a weird color pattern on the Mega65 video output and I had no idea where it came from. In your test you had a weird distorted border, that happened to mine too.
My unit's outer brown box was damaged in transit. The colour inner box was also a little bit crushed / damaged, including like the inserts shown in this video. I contacted Trentz to say "Hey ship these in a larger outer box with more padding" and they said they are revising the packaging and sent me a new box free, even though I wasn't asking for one.
@@matthewhoare1614 yes they do that but this is allready batch 3. Didn't they know this since 2022.
@@bonno666 I also wish that the diskette tie-in could be disabled from interaction with the SD card. I am OK with it when the 3.5-inch floppy drive is actually interacting with a real floppy disk, but not when it is reading from the SD cards. I suppose there could be a hidden benefit, if regularly activating the floppy drive helps to keep the mechanical parts from freezing up.
It's a nice looking design, I wonder what's behind those knockouts on the back... Were those demos on the SD card? if so, why did it keep graunching the floppy drive? that would annoy the hell out of me!
Not sure it's worth the high asking price and long wait though...
@TimsRetroCorner the demos were on the sd already installed , I'm not sure why the drive noises are happening but will look at turning them off...... the knock outs on the back are for a set of expansions which add a tape and user port along with the jtag connector
$1300AUD, they must be effin joking! I can build a modern PC for that!
@geofftottenperthcoys9944 yes you can, but I guess it depends what you want to do with it
Ah ya I'm sure the majority of us watching are fully aware of that and that's not why we're watching this vid eh😂
Hardly as unique but I hear what you are saying
But in the end you don't have a Mega65. ;)
They are not making any money off of it so that's what it costs to produce.
They didn't jam pack the manual, You can see it was taped one side lol
@@CodyTheBeerBear I meant it was jammed into the cardboard sleeve very tight
I noticed when you set the date and time at the beginning of the setup the seconds were skipping every so often, look closely you’ll see them miss a second here and there
@Regaljester75 I am waiting on a jtag interface so I eill be adding the proper battery then too , hopefully this will resolve the issue as it has for others
spectrum next packaging was much better. looks like a great machine thoughj
@@rogue-p1h yea, the keyboard is superb too
Did you manage to find what's wrong with the spacebar? It is higher on the left.
@Nostromo1869 nah, I'm not sure that it is compared to the other keys, just looks it compared to the case
Blue screen of death, what a weird choice.
the weight moving around in transit could have ripped the box
Yea thats the most likely explanation definitely
Your monitor sounds arghhh… please treat him a pair of external speakers 🙂
@@fairlightmusic lol
Incorrectly written title! It's not a replica computer, it's a new computer that's backwards compatible with the C64. It would have been better to call it a new retro computer.
And man was this frustrating to watch, I was almost yelling at the screen "RTFM"! 😂
@j.tann1970 well I, like many others read the manual AFTER playing around with it....... I still havnt read the manual and have installed a couple of cores on there........
Look inside. It's just a software emulator running on a hardware platform.
It really isn't.......
Yep, I bought my C64 2 weeks after release, have 4 here, plus Vic20's & Amiga's, was a Commodore Dealer, BUT they sit on shelf Now as I run all the software in Linux Emulators, its Easier & Cheaper ... This C65 looks cool, but it lives by emulation & C64 software base ...
@James_T_Quirk I love emulation, this isn't that, it's a hardware recreation ( fpgas execute in parallel ) and are not the same, although the core is "source code" it is compiled into a parallel hardware implementation. On top of recreating the original prototype this also has a whole load of enhancements, a truly amazing amount of work has gone into this
@@CaptainCommodore Yeah Nice 10 years ago, but the Ryzen 12 core I use gets the job done in emulation.. As I mentioned I bought my C64 2 weeks after its release, So I have "sucked the marrow from that bone", that's why my Vic20's, C64's.Amiga 500's & 2000's sit on a shelf, if I need a reminder I can have it, but as Lightwave runs on this AMD machine at 300 times faster than my 68040 equipped Toaster A2000's, using a cluster of Raspberry PI's, with Amiga Emulation you can have a 6 node Video Toaster Render Farm, on desk instead of 2 car Garage like mine, so they are relegated to museum pieces ... I can see the C65 as "experience" of those days, I liked the manual (but you put it back in box, that just about took dynamite to get out, is it going on a shelf?), having a 3.5 floppy is good, but for me, it has got nothing I want or need, but I do not wish to stop others playing with it .. If you want MY take on them with built in Ethernet&HDMI video & Storage onboard, a portable &or Secure network, none of current crop of virus's/trojans/worms would run under its OS I suspect, making immune to lot of attacks ....
@@James_T_Quirk You really aren't the audience for this, the ones who are like me, want real SID, OPL2/3, MIDI, that sounds completely different to even the best implementation of nuked soft audio emulation, which will go out of key so many times, jitter, bend and stretch, the Mega65 sounds incredible, night & day difference. Then there is the real beam racing chip for CRTs, 0ms latency, X86 on Windows & Linux has so much latency even on a RAM Disc and SLC SSD with an X3D Ryzen. Admittedly, DynaRes 1.0 is pretty decent, and DynaRes 2.0 will be interesting.
Congrats on the cool new toy! Looks like it could be a lot of fun to hack around with.
@3vi1J absolutely, I'm looking forward to getting back into learning fpgas
Ah ok
To what degree is it compatible with C64?
@michaelhill6453 depends, the go64 on the mega65 core isn't 100% havnt personally tried a lot on that yet, but the alternative C64 core ( which comes from the mister core ) is superb
Jesus, I haven’t seen the word “snowflake” used since 2019. Maybe getting a human friend or two would be a better idea than backing rebuilds of old computers just to feel their keyboards from different angles.
@mechamania lmao, your comment certainly made me smile, Although I'm wondering why you stopped by to watch it ??
You say "okay" too many times...
@DubitoErgoSum-pd6cr yep...and also 'so' ...... guess its just how I talk, but cheers for pointing it out
$666 bucks huh? Mister clone coming out soon with a 3D printed wedge case is going to blow this out of the water imo.
@samuelbanya I have a mister, they are very nice, but that is not the point of this unit
I'm glad you finally got it mate .. the clock issue pops the top off and sort the cr2025 out 😉.. Looks awesome. I need one
@@CaptainCommodorewhat would you say is the point of this machine?
666 the number of the beast ! 😮
@@CaptainCommodore So what is?
well you didnt play any games .
@jediknight2350 very true, but today I installed the alt c64 core, it's very nice and I will show that in another video, I was conscious of the time of the vid at 30+ mins already
poor packaging design - don't like the drive sticking out of the keyboard like that - looks ugly
It was designed in 1991. As a replica of the Commodore 65, this is spot-on.
@speedbird737 the case is a replica of the original mega65, but yes I do agree that the drive sticking out is ugly, they keyboard however on this unit, is absolutely superb......
14:00 Of course, it's not a proper retro device until someone ports "Bad Apple!!" to it. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Apple!!#Use_as_a_graphical_and_audio_test). The lyrics are in Japanese ("Touhou Project" is a Japanese danmaku game, and the video is for the Alstroemeria Records arrangement of the Stage 3 Theme from "Lotus Land Story").
Although properly done on vintage/retro computers, it's supposed to use the machine's native sprites and sound chip. Simply playing the original NicoNico video is actually cheating.
@@SenileOtaku I have only seen it once before and that was on the vectrex