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Multiple Classic Computer (MCC) Plays Commodore 64 and More
I received an interesting e-mail yesterday from the folks at Arcade Retro Gaming regarding their Multiple Classic Computer (MCC), which is an Altera Cyclone 3 FPGA in a tiny box, which essentially goes one step beyond traditional emulation with a full simulation of the Commodore 64 (C-64) hardware. Commodore Amiga support will be added soon. The device has full Micro SD support and has a plethora of connection options, including joystick, mouse, and keyboard. It also connects directly to your TV via a high quality s-video connection, which is perfect for classic platforms such as the C-64 and Amiga. Of course, being a programmable FPGA design, future support for additional systems should be trivial.
There are many more details, so I suggest you check out their Website. It sounds like our own Mark Vergeer may be the first out of the gate to procure one, so we look forward to his impressions!
Comments
Thanks for letting us all know about this. It's very tempting as it is, if/when Amiga support is added, I will certainly be getting one of these!
I love seeing new products for classic gamers, especially that use newer technology to deliver the experience though like others not to sure about the price. IF it delivers all it promises I may consider it at some point.
I love seeing new products for classic gamers, especially that use newer technology to deliver the experience though like others not to sure about the price. IF it delivers all it promises I may consider it at some point.
The price is definitely a limiting factor and that is pretty much stopping me in my tracks as well, but from what I've seen, programmable FPGA devices have never been cheap, and in actuality, for all this offers (even if it's straight C-64 at this point), the price is actually quite competitive. Consider the price of say, a real Commodore 64, s-video cable, and a 1541 Ultimate II with SD card, and you're actually already in the ballpark of this, particularly if you're a US buyer. However, as this adds systems to the mix, as you say, it suddenly becomes VERY interesting, even for those of us with the real systems.
Very interesting item. For NON-US Customers they refer to the Ebay webshop and lo and behold 'ships to US' to indication of shipping to
other parts of the world so I made a kind inquiry asking them if I could obtain a unit with extras from the Netherlands. Would be very
interesting to check this out.
With the 'extras' I mean the special C64 keys keyboard etc.
Interesting....yes...pricey....also yes.
As of now, it seems that it only emulates the C-64, and is thus a very costly C-64 emulator. That might make this device, as cool of an idea as it is, not worth it for the average collector.
However, if they follow through with other emulators for other machines, such as the Amiga and Atari 2600, then the value becomes much more attractive! If they manage even more emulators (Apple, Atari 8-bit, Sega, Nintendo, etc.) then this device will be truly amazing!
Neat, but s-video hasn't been "high quality" since 1992. (And it wasn't even then, if you had access to RGB and/or SCART.)
Neat, but s-video hasn't been "high quality" since 1992. (And it wasn't even then, if you had access to RGB and/or SCART.)
Again, it's all relative. For those systems (C-64, Amiga, Atari 2600, etc.), S-Video is perfectly appropriate as a top tier connection. For all but the Amiga, composite would have been perfectly fine.
Neat, but s-video hasn't been "high quality" since 1992. (And it wasn't even then, if you had access to RGB and/or SCART.)
Again, it's all relative. For those systems (C-64, Amiga, Atari 2600, etc.), S-Video is perfectly appropriate as a top tier connection. For all but the Amiga, composite would have been perfectly fine.
Exactly. Not like one needs HDMI or component or whatever is the current HD specification for these platforms, that would add nothing except cost.
I'm not sure the Cyclone 3 can support the Amiga. The Cyclone 3 spec claims up to 200k gates, the Minimig (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimig) uses most of a 400k gate FPGA. Also, the Cyclone 3 supports up to 1 MB of memory, which would limit the games to 512k, with a rom loaded. And, ADF files would have to be accessed directly from the SD card. My guess is that this will be limited to 8 bit systems.
It would be nice if they could adapt the 1chip MSX software to work on this.