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Saxonia Issue 02 Part 027
Commodore One
by Bregade11/Details
[l
No more jack-in-a-box, but soon a standard-looking PC ATX-case can surprise
you at a demoscene party. It might not carry a boring P4 in it, instead it
could house Jeri Ellsworth's new Commodore One motherboard. Against some
common misconception, the C=1 is not just a Commodore 64 and a SuperCPU
fitted onto an ATX motherboard. The C=1 is a fully reconfigurable computer
produced for the limited amount of people who want more from their computer
than just the usual salesman GHz-Gb-DDR crap. I had a chance to do a
little e-mail interview with the mastermind, Jeri Ellsworth herself and
some, mostly non-technical things were clarified.
For those of you who have no idea, of what the Commodore One is all about,
here's a little (and I do mean little, I'm not by far a technical genius..)
introduction to the new scene-machine. First of all, Commodore One is not a
complete computer like Commodore 64 was. C=1 is just a highly integrated
ATX-motherboard. Besides the C=1 board, you need to have a PS/2 mouse and a
keyboard, a standard SVGA monitor, micro ATX case and power supply with
the mass storage drives the user prefers (IDE).
The motherboard, the throbbing heart of the machine has a 20MHz 65c816
processor with 24bit address range. This CPU is however completely
compatible with c64's 6502 on the hardware level. C=1 has a processor slot
that can house any 8bit processor, ie. real 6502, Z80 or 6809. There are
32MB of RAM on-board, half of which is used by CPU and the other half is
meant for Video Controller.
Jeri and Mr. Chip
The motherboard has an integrated circuitry for graphics handling called
the SuperVIC. The output can be 1280x1024 at max, with the maximum of 256
colors onscreen from a palette 65,535 colors. Chunky video modes and
Blitter functions are available (these are also known from the Amigas),
and the video memory of 16MB should be enough for a while. Tunes will be
played via the new MonsterSID chip, which also emulates the classic SID
chip. There are 16 stereo SID voices, 8 normal stereo voices, access to
the main CPU memory for playing DMA clips, and two sockets for classic SID
chips.
The expansion possibilities are fine. There's a C64 compatible cartridge
slot, PCI connector, A1200 compatible clock-ports, IDE interface, compact
flash media slot (houses the BIOS), 3.5" floppy connector and a special
geek port, for some homemade expansions. Besides the PS/2 mouse & keyboard
connectors, there's also a serial connector that supports the vic/64 drives
and printers, 2 joystick ports and pc-style parallel port.
The last technical thing I will write here is what tries to describe the
"reconfigurable computer" part. As Jeri told me in her mail, the C=1 is
totally a programmer's computer, as you can use the CPU to configure one
of the fpga's to do special tricks whatever is currently needed. You can
make an fpga to fetch, roll over and play dead. Besides these, you can for
instance make one of the fpga's to decompress JPEGs on hardware, so no main
CPU time is needed. Or you can make it to have 30 voices if you need a
better sound for some part of a demo for instance. Jeri's future plans are
to document the hardware so that programmers can take full advantage of
this computer.
Now more or less we're hopping out of the cage of technical data. Phew.
When I asked Jeri about where she got this rather crazy idea in the first
place, she replies that originally she wanter to build a Palm Top c64 just
for her own amusement. But as she shared this idea with her friends, she
got flooded by emails asking her to make an ATX board, and so the
development began. The biggest difficulties during the development was with
keeping the C=1 totally compatible with the classic c64. After three
designs that got thrown right down to garbage, she finally found a good
compromise between compatibility and the enhancements.
Besides documenting the hardware, Jeri sets a high priority on making more
cores for machines like Atari and CoCo. And ofcourse she promises to fix
the bugs in the current cores. There is also a project that is being
developed in parallel called the Giddeon 6502. It's a 32bit risc 6502
compatible CPU that will interface to the C=1's PCI slots and busmaster to
the system. The C=1's cores will be constantly under work and as the bugs
are ridden, Jeri hopes to gain more support and interest from the hardcore
democoders.
The Commodore One (naked)
Jeri feels confident about her C=1, since the first round of 300 boards are
not seeming to meet the demand at all. She also doesn't think that there is
going to be any competition between the old Amiga 500 and the new C=1,
instead she posts a mysterious "A=1... Hmmm..." after a question about
future models. ;) The C=1 is believed to take it's place in the
demosceners' hearts, although Jeri doesn't expect it to become a new
Commodore 64. Especially when the only marketing strategy is called "word
of mouth" and no dollars are wasted on magazine advertisements.
Even if there are a fistful of true hardcore fans around the world, Jeri
says that the demoscene coders haven't really shown a warm welcome to her
C=1. Also there aren't too many dealers to sell the new machine,
personally I don't wonder much about this, since in the eyes of a modern
computer salesman, the C=1 is quite freakish machine.
Playstation kids will run away in terror and salesmen are placing crosses
with Intel Inside signs on them above their cargo doors. Luckily there are
some dealers that still consider it a fact that some people have a computer
as a hobby, not just as a game-station or a office-pack. All those who are
interested in the Commodore One in Finland should check out Gentle Eye
(http://www.ge.vip.fi), also selling the Amiga One and other underground
computer equipment. Anyway, I wish that atleast the demoscene would be
openminded towards this new kid in the block. Who knows, it might even
be fun to make demos again on this machine.
Last of all, here's Jeri's short greets to her fav sceners: "I want to send
Gr33tz to dW and Burning Horizon the best NTSC sceners. (Well Ok. Really
they're the only ones we've got!)" The NTSC scene gets the greets, where's
the missing support from the PAL-scene boys and girls, in just a few weeks
the new Commodore One is out and tested, get yours now, and start a new
golden era of the scene!
For more information, visit http://www.commodoreone.com
(The writer of this article did not get any money, or royalties from the
developers of Commodore One, but all the enthusiasm towards the new
computer came purely from heart of a scener.)
