In a message of 31 Aug 94 Russell Alphey wrote to me:

 Hey there Russell,

 Firstly thanx a million m8, i shall pass this info on.

 >>  Sorry to be such a pain in the ASS, but can the person with the C65
 >>  please give me some details about it ???? from memory the guy was
 >>  showing it at some user groups around melbourne. ???
 RA> Correct, and he will hopefully be showing it next Tuesday (the 6th) at
 RA> the Doncaster C64 user group.

 Cool, an address would have been nice. 8-)
 
 >>  All i know is that its able to display 256 colours (i think) and
 >>  has a 8/16bit 6809 CPU in it maybe ??
 RA> Close...

 RA> What is a C65?  A product that almost made it out the door.  What
 RA> you're seeing are "alpha" pilot-production units.  There were only
 RA> something like 50 units made, and a dozen or more of these were
 RA> distributed around engineering, system developers, etc.  Obviously, they
 RA> were never meant to be sold to the public, but...

 I heard the figure was a little higher ..a couple of hundred . (100-200)
 no big deal all the same.

 RA>  CPU CSG65CE02, running at 3.54MHz

 I take this is still a pure 8bit chip then, unlike the 6809's ???
 or does it have 16bit on chip registers ? and an 8bit data bus ??
 
 Nice clock speed for a machine with a chr map display but.
 
 RA>  RAM 128K, expansion to 8MB
 
 8MB Paged of course ??

 RA>  ROM 128K, including C65 mode (v10.0), C64 (v2.2) mode, & DOS

 So it has some type of C64 fall back ??

 RA>  Video CSG4567 "VIC-III"
 RA>    analog RGB with composite sync on each primary,
 RA>    separate active-high digital sync,
 RA>    composite chroa/luma,
 RA>    digital fgnd/bgnd control (genlock)
 RA>    all original C64 video modes (40x25 text, 320x200 bitmap)
 RA>    new modes (80x25 text, with blink, bold, underline attributes)
 RA>    true bitplane graphics (VGA resolution):
 RA>      320, 640, 1280 horz. pixels in 8, 4, or 2 planes
 RA>      200, 400 vert. pixels, non-interlaced & interlaced
 RA>      DAT "display address translator" to access display memory
 RA>    standard 16-color C64 palette
 RA>    programmable 256-color palette with 16 intensity levels per primary
 RA> color.

 So its got a 12bit palette then.

 hmmm 1280*400 in 8 planes in only 128k .. rather pointless and impossible
 dont ya think ??
 
 1280*200=256000 bytes = 256K unlikely on the stock machine. unless they
 use sometype of hybrid planar system or maybe a compressed pixel
 mode ?? whatever.

 Did they update the hardware sprites ?? kill off multi colour and introduce
 a real planar system ?.. are 256 coloured sprites possible ??

 RA>  Audio Stereo SID chips

 3 channels ?? samples ?? or just chip effects ?

 RA>  Keybd 77 keys, including separate cursor keys, ALT, ESC, etc.

 RA>  Disk Built-in 3.5" double-sided, 1MB MFM (1581 format)
 RA>   custom 4191 controller with 512 byte buffer and  parallel bus
 RA>   external mini-DIN for one A1011-type expansion drive.
 RA>   accepts CBM serial drives (1541,1571,1581), fast/slow/burst

 RA>  I/O Built-in DMA/blitter
 RA>   Built-in 6511-type UART, supports MIDI data rate.
 RA>   All C64 ports: parallel, expansion, etc.
 RA>   new RAM expansion port, accessible by DMA and video chips.

 Ahh OK then maybe the above res is rather possible and useful then.

 Blitter as well hey, sounds interesting.
 (block tranfers / line drawing / filling)  

 Do ya think it might have taken off ?? if ever brought to mass production.

 Do C= still own the CHIP sets/roms etc ?

 What do you have that runs on it ?? has anybody worked out the hardware
 registers yet ??

 I know this is a rather old thred but its intresting to us so please
 continure if you can be bothered.

 Many thanks, C ya 

 Kevin Picone,
 Underware Design

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