BASIC is Back

[Chris Savage]

Have any of you seen this? So tempted...SOOOOO tempted!!!

Build a C64U

[JKnightandKARR]

Have any of you seen this? So tempted...SOOOOO tempted!!!

Build a C64U

I've seen these. Made me wonder, if I had the ability, I'd bring back ZX-81 or ZX Spectrum. Waay beyond my abilities, but still cool that Commadore is back

[granz]

Pretty cool - but $300 is a bit above my interest level. Even with the HDMI output and the USB drive capability.

I am much more interested in the Commodore CallBack (https://commodore.net/callback/.) Unfortunately, that is $500 - still too high.

[granz]

Interestingly, immediately after posting this, Hack-A-Day had an article about the CallBack:
https://hackaday.com/2026/06/18/commodore-unveils-linux-powered-flip-phone/

[MicroNut]

If I were to buy a retro system I'd go for the Mister. It is a generic FPGA (DE10-Nano) board that can run almost all the game consoles, arcade games, and old 80's computers. It does C64, ZX81 etc. You can pick up a kit on AllieExpress for $600. You can also search the web and buy the parts individually to customize it for your needs. A bit pricey. I have a DE10-Lite which can do only one system at a time. The DE10-10 has a arm soc that is programmed to do a menu interface to load various systems into it and the DE10-Lite does not have the soc

[Chris Savage]

Pretty cool - but $300 is a bit above my interest level. Even with the HDMI output and the USB drive capability.

In all fairness, $300.00 is half of what the original C=64 sold for at release in 1984, without HDMI or USB. 

I am much more interested in the Commodore CallBack (https://commodore.net/callback/.) Unfortunately, that is $500 - still too high.

It's...a phone?!? 

[Chris Savage]

If I were to buy a retro system I'd go for the Mister. It is a generic FPGA (DE10-Nano) board that can run almost all the game consoles, arcade games, and old 80's computers. It does C64, ZX81 etc. You can pick up a kit on AllieExpress for $600.

For that price, I'll keep my Raspberry Pi running RetroPie. 

[MicroNut]

I do have a Raspberry Pi 3 with Retropie and it's own 7" touchscreen. I filled up a 128GB SD card with thousands of Mame, consoles, and 80's computers that I'm very happy with.

My last post got me daydreaming though. I do have a STM32 Arm development board with a SD card reader and touch screen. If I program a menu system in it to download soc files (compiled FPGA files) into the DE10-lite it'll almost be a Mister system. Just dreaming....... 

[Jeff_T]

The computers I bought back then I bought for my son but I admit I got my fair share of time also. The first was a TI 99/4A which used software on really expensive cartridges and I never really got into it, then an Amiga 500 which was really close to being a PC and one of my favorite machines of all time, we would spend hours playing Monkey Island. Next came the Spectrum with a tape loader and our favorite game on that was Rapscallion, the machine and games were affordable and we had a lot of fun with it.

The early 90's are when we bought our first PC, it was a tower with a 386DX, Sim City was only just playable if you modified the config.sys and autoexec.bat files. We spent the next few years rapidly upgrading and building new systems. It was insane how quickly things moved during that time, everything needed a card and a driver, SoundBlaster or CD drive. A month later it was outdated lol.

I don't have much time for games but occasionally I will play Civ IV and I remember playing the original on that first PC so that game has been around 30+ years.

[granz]

Pretty cool - but $300 is a bit above my interest level. Even with the HDMI output and the USB drive capability.

In all fairness, $300.00 is half of what the original C=64 sold for at release in 1984, without HDMI or USB. 

Fully agree - and that was in 1980s dollars, much more than the same amount in 2020s dollars, in fact, I mentioned that to Marilyn. It's just that I am still not into games enough to justify that. Maybe for doing control work through the I/O, but I have too many microcontrollers to want a C-64.

I am much more interested in the Commodore CallBack (https://commodore.net/callback/.) Unfortunately, that is $500 - still too high.

It's...a phone?!? 

Yep, and it looks pretty good. Although I would prefer a much larger screen. And a browser is not so much of a life-distraction as the social media is.