#MEGA65: Part 1 (Unboxing)
46My MEGA65 arrived today.
There is some disagreement in the community about it - an extravagant waste of money for a C64 emulator, etc. I'm not interested in all of that ... our Amstrad CPC464's coloured keyboard was a cause for much amusement (for others) at high school ... so whatever.
It cost €646.66 (€20 pre-payment discount) + €108.80 shipping from Germany to Australia - this €755.46 equated to AU$1176.00 in Oct 2021 (paid via XE.com with no fee). No GST or import duties were levied on its arrival in May 2022.
For me this is an interesting machine. It feels well-made and the keyboard is nice to type on (in my opinion). It comes with a rather large 12V/2.5A power supply that'll hog your outlet space - in Australia and NZ it'll take up lots of space to the right of your outlet.
I've got a few other little projects on the go at the moment - experimenting more with the Intel SDK-85, finishing off the COMIX-35 and finally putting my Japanese Commodore PET back together with the MiniPET-40/80D board - so this video is a (ahem) "quick" unboxing as that is the done thing apparently.
There's a bit of "dead air" as I search in vain for a ... any ... 3.5" disk ... plenty of 3" disks, 5.25" disks, 8" disks ... but no 3.5" disks. Hmmm.
Like the ZX Spectrum Next it appears to have quite a good manual so I'll be reading through that before trying the machine out more. Unlike the ZX Spectrum Next you can actually buy one.
One thing to note - to power the RTC when not plugged into power you will need to open up your machine and install a CR1220 battery.
Little River Band's "Love Is A Bridge" from their 1988 "Monsoon" album:
https://youtu.be/NDIaHL9RpqM
A much more thorough introduction to the MEGA65:
https://youtu.be/P_PGa0J9FPA
MEGA Museum of Games and Art:
https://www.m-e-g-a.org/
MEGA65 Project:
https://mega65.org/
Pre-order 2nd batch:
https://shop.trenz-electronic.de/en/Products/MEGA65/
MEGA65 Development blog:
https://c65gs.blogspot.com
MEGA65 Discord server:
https://discord.com/invite/5DNvESf
My other MEGA65 videos:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5pwokf56wMIMv3O143Oeu3543Wx3jpF5