The Commodore 65 - A Rare Prototype

Just to share some of the back-story on the c65-support vs MEGA65-support of the MEGA65 rom. Firstly, I was happy to see Bit Shifter's name on the rom chip 🙂 I take it as a good sign that c65 owners got some benefit from Bit Shifter's efforts 😄 I remember a time in the past, a few years back, when the MEGA65 discord community was discussing whether to focus on maintaining c65 support or focusing more on making use of the mega65's own capabilities. I think I remember Bit Shifter being very keen to make use of the mega65's hardware capabilities so that the rom could benefit from them, in both the saving of rom space (make the rom code smaller) and performance. (Up until that point, he had preserved a sense of c65-backward compatibility). He had held back from adding MEGA65-specific logic for quite a while, until things built up towards that discord conversation. I think by that point, at least batch1 of the MEGA65 was out in the wild, so it meant a larger community could benefit from those mega65-specific enhancements. On our discord, there were opinions moving in both directions, my gut feeling is that c65 owners would have preferred we keep assuring c65-compatibility, though many of the mega65 development team didn't own c65's, and a larger community of mega65 owners was taking shape, and so the decision was made to support the larger community that was growing. That being said, the mega65-project and Bit Shifter, did push forward the state of the c65 rom further, and that is still a good thing for c65 owners, as the label on Bo's rom chip shows. Could things be improved for c65-users? Potentially, though I feel like c65 owners would be the ones putting on their developer hats, cherry-picking parts of the latest rom they can benefit from, while omitting MEGA65-specific logic. Should MEGA65-developers of software consider c65 backwards compatibility? I guess it'll be up to each individual developer. I sense most will cater for the bigger MEGA65 audience. On the other hand, if a C65 developer wants to build a program and share it with the MEGA65 community, there's a good chance their work can be enjoyed by the MEGA65 community.

The commadore 65 name just sounds like those kids that thought super mario 65 would come out

That topless demo is making this more like 8-bit fans.

I have an even more rare prototype in my barn. I built prototypes for Commodore. Tom Hilltine was the head of R&D. I was given an NEC computer, like the TRS100, and a Commodore 64 and was told to take the display out and hook it up to the 64. The graphics of the 64 was about double the graphics of the display, so I put in a joy stick to move the window around so you could see the whole display. You could play games on it if you were fast at moving the joystick. They used it for a boardroom display and then gave it back to me.

He was looking at a picture of a topless woman for “research purposes” and wasn’t even lying 😂

8:56 8-Bit Guy’s wife walks in: “DAVID WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

I'm Very glad that you are able to borrow this prototype, Well Done! Also, Thank you Bo Zimmerman, for lending David the Prototype!

$20,000 to $80,000! Wow. Very nice of Mr. Zimmermann to let you review it and show it to all of us that would never have the opportunity to see this machine

There IS an official C65 PSU and it's more common than you think. They obviously made lots of them in preparation for the C65 but when it was canned the PSU was re-purposed for the CD32. For anyone who owns a CD32 check the bottom of the PSU and you will see a sticker that says "PSU C65" ^_^

This takes me back to happy days when between my friends and I we owned C64’s, a plus 4, C128, Amiga 500, Amiga 500+ & Amiga 600 a some stage or another. Great days!

It even has a German labeling. Stating "Funkentstört", which translates as "fitted with noise supression". So it should not interfere with Radio or TV broadcasts or other devices that use radiocommunication. DBP is the Deutsche Bundespost, German Federal Post, which was responsible for such tests and certifications at that time. It was a public administration and privatised in 1995 and splitted into several companies like the Telekom, Deutsche Post and the Postbank.

"I did find this one demo that um... Did show off the 256 colour graphics capabilities, unforutnately it's a picture of a topless woman so...." Best sentence ever in a technical breakdown of an old computer. ...Also we know what teens in the know were doing with these things back in the day now! lol Love the videos, always look forward to the next!

“There isn’t any demos!” David turn seriously to the camera, “but here is a port of Petscii Robots !”

The 1571-II was introduced in the German Forum64, and you can build them, as Commodore would have brought it on the market, it is based on the C128DCR 1571 with the MOS 5710 chipset, you can build a 1570-II, 1571-II or 1571-II+ depending on the equipment. I built one to fit the 1541-II case with PC drive Chinon F502, and it works great.

Fun fact: back in I think 1994 I was on a trade fair here in Germany with my parents and they sold C65 prototypes for around 480 USD (adjusted to current value). I always think about that when seeing these are sold for more than 25k USD - of course I didn't get one then 😉

Shame they didn't go for four more generations, then we'd have got the C69 🤣

Found this video randomly while searching for the Commodore playlist. It is 1 A.M.; aka a fine time to watch a new video!

Kudos for actually opening the unit up for us all to see! I would never have dared tinker with a machine this expensive :)

I get such a big, dumb smile when I see a new video from The 8-Bit Guy in my subscription feed. Thanks, David, for making such an excellent channel. I can't wait to watch this one!

while not related to the video, i love your closed captions ironically you're one of the few youtubers i don't need captions for! these old computers are so neat, i love seeing how to worked with what they had