Heaven On Hearth-MEGA65 DevKit

The MEGA65 project has been thoroughly covered on this blog since last year. A first article was published to introduce the topic, then a second one refocused on the subject when donations went over the top and allowed for the case injection mould tooling to be financed. Now, in less than a year, the development kits have been sent to the devs. Courtesy of Stefan Vogt, we are here for an up-close and personal look at this beauty.

For those new to the scene, the MEGA65 is the attempt to relive the Commodore65 computer, a machine that was meant to be the last and most powerful of the entire Commodore’s 8-bit range but that never saw the light, let aside for a handful of prototypes. This new implementation of the original prototype, built around a FPGA-based computer, promises to take us back to the future exactly like the Spectrum Next is currently doing for the other end of the barricade (just kidding. I will buy both!).

Without further ado, let’s delve into the kit and let’s have fun!

Here are the bottom plate and the drive …

Mainboard and its case, with drive mounted …

Details of the board and of the keyboard. Actually, that keyboard is really something!

Finally, the devkit completely assembled. It looks ACE!

And now, let there be light! I am so envious … 🙂

Now, if you think that all of this is just an expensive toy for geeks and nerds (which I proudly am, by the way) let me point out that Tristam Island by Hugo Labrande is already running on a MEGA65 (article here), and so will Hibernated2 by Stefan Vogt. I cannot close this article without thanking Paul Gardner-Stephen and everyone else at MEGA65.org for making this possible.