| To be clear, the value (to me) of the MEGA65 is not that its CPU is superior. It's that the developers of the project are spending a lot of time on the hard part: cases, keyboards, software, and tooling. They have GEOS running on it, they have backwards compat with the C64, they have games modified to use its extra capabilities, they have injected molded plastic cases, they have keyboards and keycaps manufactured, they have a version of the Kernal and BASIC ported and expanded, they have a user manual, etc. And it's a) open source and b) open. And b) is key because they're also making it possible for their hardware to be used with other FPGA bitstreams, including ones developed for the MiST/MiSTer. They demoed their hardware being used with a GBA core running a GBA game. Further, they seem to have a CC65 backend -- I don't know of what quality -- but it seems C based software is running on it. That makes it an interesting and more complete platform and consumer product. And if I want a better 6502 variant on it, I could do that myself and use one of the various 65xx variant cores out there, or write my own. EDIT: And, yeah, from my perspective from just casually reading their docs is that the CPU in the MEGA65 is an 8-bit CPU with bank switching and a couple weird 32-bit ops. It's not a 16-bit machine despite. But the thing about the 816 is that it's only _sort of_ a machine with a 24-bit address bus. It effectively just has a bank switching mechanism, but not external. Mensch really just bolted some stuff onto the front of the 65C02 and widened the accumulator and registers by 8 bits. But the 16-bit registers are a pain. I just wish he'd added some new registers (and a way of combining them) instead of having the mode switch. |