The Commander X16 Is a Brand-New Computer Built From 1980s Technology

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Ай бұрын

The Commander X16 is a microATX computer developed over the last few years and modeled on the 8-bit computers of the 1980s, specifically the Commodore 16. This computer is manufactured of all-new parts but runs on a version of the 6502 microprocessor that powered so many of the 8-bit devices of the eighties, from the Nintendo Entertainment System to the Atari 800 and many more in between.
The CommanderX16 is the "dream" computer of "The 8-bit Guy" David Murray, a KZfaqr, game designer, and arcade owner. Murray's love of vintage computer hardware led him to develop a modern computer with the same functionality as those classic beige boxes of yore.
With no formal training in computer science or engineering, Murray created the CommanderX16 with the help of a passionate community of like-minded vintage computing enthusiasts. The result is a throwback experience that brings users closer to the code than you can possibly get on today's modern and infinitely more complex systems.

Пікірлер: 102

@djstyles97 Ай бұрын

After all these years it's great to see The 8-Bit Guy finally get more mainstream recognition.

@vivastar2231 Ай бұрын

oh yea its great, been watching him for a few years now :).. was interested in his restoration videos at first, but now anything goes :)

@GimmeTOKYO Ай бұрын

Right? Been loving his videos for 7 or 8 years now and it’s just been amazing seeing the recognition that he deserves.

@jonathanarras1281 Ай бұрын

8 bit guy is the real OG, so cool to see this

@JustWasted3HoursHere Ай бұрын

This computer has been many years in the making. The end goal, not mentioned, is to get the price down to as little as possible, perhaps even less than $100 eventually. But these first few iterations will be around $400 or so. One thing that was really cool about those old 8 bit computers like the VIC-20 and C64 (and Atari 400/800/etc) were that they came with a spiral-bound user manual that showed you how to program in BASIC so you could start making your own games right away. Many legendary programmers got their feet wet doing just that.

@DavidGalich77 2 күн бұрын

What a throwback to the day.

@TalynWuff Ай бұрын

Proud of David getting mainstream eyeballs.

@calledout4437 Ай бұрын

Atari 800 here. It was magical haha. Nostalgia from those days.

@LordXsi Ай бұрын

Programming was anything but “basic” in those times. You had to actually know the hardware and really understand a lot of algorithms to get anywhere serious. And there were very few (if any) prebuilt libraries. And no stackoverflow or anything like that. Real programming was an art back then.

@doltBmB Ай бұрын

no, that stuff is simple, it's having 100 million lines of code on top that nobody can understand that makes it hard

@c0d3warrior Ай бұрын

Blindly typing in a listing from a print magazine was a thing back then, too. Understanding what that listing did was an entirely different thing however.

@benbreeck3363 Ай бұрын

For follows up, you should next profile the C256 Foenix series by Stefanie Allaire and the MEGA65.

@gabor222 Ай бұрын

Yeah, both has beautiful and more retro design and the Mega has the C64 compatibility too.

@RaymondHulha Ай бұрын

Thank you for this great video! ❤

@TheRafaelRamos Ай бұрын

THE 8-BIT GUY MENTIONED, LET'S GOOOOO

@TheMitoSan Ай бұрын

It's awesome to see David on IGN. Amazing! 💜

@mikeuk666 Ай бұрын

Congratulations to the 8bit Guy & the team 🕹 👍

@eduardoADSL Ай бұрын

Congratulations David, nice to see you here.

@greatwhiteretro Ай бұрын

The Commodore 16 wasn't the inspiration, rather the VIC 20 was. The C16 and its TED counterparts took a very different direction.

@mrsupertash Ай бұрын

If you say dream computer I'm thinking about the one in Weird Science.

@DougDingus Ай бұрын

Thanks IGN. This project deserves a little mainstream recognition and it's great to see.

@Elibbb-sx3kg Ай бұрын

But can it run crysis ?

@batterypwrlow Ай бұрын

I'd be surprised if it could run Doom

@Jos3phIVIasucci Ай бұрын

Some men just wanna watch the world burn.

@TheLastLineLive Ай бұрын

It would be great if they could convince Crytek to make a Commodore 64 version of Crysis (probably a top down run and gun shooter like Commando would be appropriate) so they could say yes, it runs Crysis!

@uziel900able Ай бұрын

😂😂😂 that's rich!@@TheLastLineLive

@mikeuk666 Ай бұрын

@batterypwrlow there are toothbrushes that can run doom

@jengelenm Ай бұрын

Great video guys, alongside David’s supergreat project, there’s also Stefany Allaire’s Phoenix Systems 16bit retro computers. Surely deserves a spotlight as well !!! Cheers

@markododa Ай бұрын

What is the game at the beginning of the video, Shadow something?

@_yatte Ай бұрын

The parallels with synthesizers and music studio/mixing gear 😂 you have no idea yall 😅

@jc33353 Ай бұрын

Love to see this. It can be really fun trying to figure out how far you can take a system with intentionally limited capabilities like this one. Plus it has those big chonky chips!

@johnmckown1267 Ай бұрын

Ah, my TRS-80 model 1 with 56K and an 80 track single sided 5.25 inch floppy powered by a Z-80 processor.

@sherekhangamedev Ай бұрын

One of the magnum opus from 8-bit guy. A really solid "what if" system.

@Tarodenaro Ай бұрын

Can you guys please pass this to the IGN France: "Back then, in the 80's, you can connect up two IDE devices, with either "primary" or "slave" in one ribbon connectors"

Ай бұрын

So Great to see the 8 bit guy in IGN.

@mrelba9176 Ай бұрын

WAIT...This was an unexpected feature. Go The 8-Bit Guy!

@Khaostheory1980 Ай бұрын

2:49 was not actually screwing any screws...

@sn0n Ай бұрын

^ this

@DaftRebel Ай бұрын

the 8 bit guy is the best!

@trippg3261 Ай бұрын

Just FYI folks, learning to program on this, or learning how this relatively simple CPU works will actually let you understand a lot about the current hardware. In my opinion more people learning to code on this will be the breakthrough needed for the US to excel in hardware design.

@DarkZenith Ай бұрын

pretty sure the wood grain veneer reached its height in the 70s. 80s people started wanting to go black/silver/etc

@neuralwarp Ай бұрын

A desktop VAX cluster please.

@TGAProMKM Ай бұрын

wow!!

@SpaceGringos3D Ай бұрын

8-Bit guy!!!!!!!

@HumanityAsCode Ай бұрын

Is this thing really $350?

@EvelynRamos2 Ай бұрын

Interesting

@alexbedel6320 Ай бұрын

Can it run dwarf fortress

@awedelen1 Ай бұрын

Nice

@kingshadow8782 Ай бұрын

Nice.

@scottiepal3029 Ай бұрын

How to purchase it. How much? For a complete system

@Bobbias Ай бұрын

Currently they're selling the developer edition, which is about 400 USD. They hope to reduce prices over time, as the intended price is 100 USD, but the price of electronics has overseen a fair bit since the project began development making that price point quite difficult to hit.

@toplist4944 Ай бұрын

nice...

@AnnatarTheMaia Ай бұрын

1970's technology had wood veneer; in the 1980's plastic was the new cool.

@AS-oz6ep Ай бұрын

For what it is.. the price is much too high for me to consider buying one at this time.

@the_otamatone Ай бұрын

They hope to reduce the price, and there is a clone called the otter, which is about half the price right now

@throwaway6478 Ай бұрын

@@the_otamatone They throw a fair bit away to hit that price point though. 512KB RAM instead of 2MB, a single expansion slot instead of four, and several of the chips aren't genuine parts - they're emulations based on modern microcontrollers/FPGAs, which would upset some of the target demographic for a machine like the X16. Having said that, from what I've seen, the Otter is pretty close to what 8-Bit Guy envisages for the "cost reduced" second version of the X16, plus he wants to go surface-mount to reduce cost even more.

@stuartleckie Ай бұрын

Seth the right guy to bring this to the IGN audience! Awesome.

@COMATRON. Ай бұрын

dope! MiSTer core would be even more dope

@ignaciosalia1952 Ай бұрын

I'm not crying you are crying

@valentinoesposito3614 Ай бұрын

8 bit guy

@hi2chan Ай бұрын

My dream PC is a Mac Pro

@toma01001 Ай бұрын

Keep dreaming

@juniorxranger Ай бұрын

My mind is blown right now. IGN!!

@jazzlover10000 Ай бұрын

The Commander X16 made so many of us very very sad. This project could have been really great but because of the stubbornness and the way it rolled out, it's only interesting to a very small group of people. Needs a modular design with the backplane on a daughterboard so that it can be small and forged into a laptop with a display. Think Model 100 / NEC PC8201a if ANYONE had listened this could be selling a million. A real lost opportunity it's just sad, really. Also needs to be open-source instead of this ridiculous cagey "we mock you with our non-openness" kind of bzi.

@johnhunt1725 Ай бұрын

But, WHY?!?

@Iamallwaysright1 Ай бұрын

Cool concept but idk how useful it is. Can't this just be emulated?

@DanteS-119 Ай бұрын

No, clocks run different, not completely accurate

@batterypwrlow Ай бұрын

@@DanteS-119correct. Some games heavily depended on the cpu clock speed for the game speed. Goof example is if you get the OG Xbox and did an overclock on the cpu, some games will go faster like the speed of characters, npcs, attacks, ect. Can cause game breaking glitches sometimes too. It's kind of interesting.

@jc33353 Ай бұрын

There is already an emulator, which is how X16 games can be played on Steam. This is all discussed in the video.

@gormondprecursor3525 Ай бұрын

@@DanteS-119 Even on something like a MiSTer?

@novh4ck Ай бұрын

It's like asking why somebody would want a simple car build like in the old times when they can buy a Tesla. Some people just want to drive cars from the 60's because it's fun.

@bbuggediffy Ай бұрын

Uhhh its been ready for a year already

@Adam-jw3uz Ай бұрын

I'm already a longtime fan of 8BG and his work, I'm just here to read the normie reactions to the video and laugh at the ignoramuses.

@claudioexplica Ай бұрын

The 8-bit guy boss

@MS-eb8cf Ай бұрын

Yeah but.. why though?

@novh4ck Ай бұрын

Why not? It's fun.

@mikeuk666 Ай бұрын

If you have to ask you will never understand 😂

@Wythaneye Ай бұрын

Because there is a huge community of enthusiasts who want such a thing to exist.

@moe47988 Ай бұрын

Did you just say that one SSD has to be dedicated to games? People still do this crap? Why?

@mrsupertash Ай бұрын

A vibrant facebook (!!1!1!1??9) community? first of all this makes no sense, second of all, it clearly says 11 members. why lie about his?

@crescentmoon256 Ай бұрын

somepeople will stay in the past forever

@TheSulross Ай бұрын

Teenagers (and even younger) can master the assembly language of the 6502 CPU and learn to write games for a computer such as the Commander X16. Look at game development for modern hardware - no place for the single individual - producing modern games is more akin to producing films. The coolness factor here is that its entirely possible to get in there and learn to program the video and the sound hardware and do nifty things. David's games (The 8-Bit Guy) are proof of what can be done.