Category Archives: News
MEGA65 8-bit computer
MEGA65 is an open-source new and completely open C65-like computer. Hardware designs and all software are open-source (LGPL). The core is programmed by MEGA member Paul Gardner-Stephen from Australia. MEGA65 is more than a retro computer, it is the 21st century realization of the C65 heritage. It is a complete 8-bit computer running around 50x faster than a C64 while being highly compatible. HD output, SD card support, Ethernet, extended memory and other features increase the fun without spoiling the 8-bit feel. You can build the hardware (apart from the FPGA) at home or you can get it from us. You can enhance it yourself or together with the community.
Hamster Hipster Handy Program
In addition to displaying exhibits MEGA will teach you how to program your first game: The mobile phone classic SNAKE. On Saturday 16th of May the Programming Basics team will teach two groups of people of any age in a two hour workshop. Please also find the program to the exhibition, the invitation to the grand opening and the poster.
Exhibition: Hamster Hipster Handy
April 25th – July 05th 2015, Museum Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt: Under the Spellbound of the Mobile Phone.
Many people can no longer imagine everyday life without a mobile phone, or “Handy”, as it is fondly called in the German-speaking world. Within this context, Hamster and Hipster will serve as two contradictory leading characters. In the exhibition, Hamster and Hipster will represent the two extremes of the object cosmos of the cell phone, which is as complex as it is ambiguous. The objects on view will offer a visual foray into the universe of the mobile phone as a culture and consumer object. They will include photographs, interactive installations, video art, painting and street art by artists and designers, enhanced by artefacts of everyday material culture (from the Jugendkulturarchiv Frankfurt, the private Birgit Richard collection at the Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main) and a collection of cell phones (MEGA).
DIY: TeleBall
TeleBall is an Arduino based “retro” handheld game console you can build by yourself. It lets you play BreakOut in single-player mode and Pong in multi-player mode. All necessary files for 3D-printing the housing, the PCB schematics and the source code are available at the TeleBall repository. A little project by MEGA to teach how to build your own handheld game console.
Lost Gems: Videoton TVC (1983)
The rare and beautiful “TV Computer” was built by hungarian company Videoton in 1983. It is a licensed and modified version of the also not-so-popular Enterprise 64. The first version, pictured below, has 32 Kilobytes of RAM and was built just 3000 times. This one came with an even more rare 32 KB RAM extension, the most beautiful looking expansion we have seen on an 8-bit machine. In addition to this one, which is working great, we are proud to add the second model (64 KB, 9000 units built) to the MEGA archive.
How to BANG!
Our friend Sv0lli from CCC explained at Hackover 2014 how he coded the Atari 2600 demo BANG! which shows lots of graphics and some coding ideas by MEGA. If you always wanted to learn how to code a demo for an oldschool platform, if you want to find out what makes a demo tick or if you simply wonder what a demo is, please check out the video.
MEGA in Berlin
In the night from 12th to 13th November MEGA presented a unique exhibition for SAP at Berlin City Cube. Next to classic sports games on Atari 2600, C64, Amiga and N64 we showed the newest technology involving an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Hundreds of people lined up to enjoy this truely stomach-twisting experience.
