Are we seeing the end of innovations on 8 bit machines?

[potatohead]

I've been watching the breakthroughs over time. Seems there are dry spots, then something happens and there is a new way to get color, or multiplex sprites, or interlace, or...

 

You get the idea.

 

Several times I thought it was over, then there it was. We didn't know everything, and somebody exploits that and off it goes for another round.

[Keatah]

doubt it.. just another lull in the cycle. As a matter of fact I was wondering about building a co-processor card with 4 6502's to do some extremely rudimentary 3-d acceleration for the apple II series. I may of course, come up with something entirely different perhaps 2 z-80's or a modified pc-transporter card. Something! I just got this idea a few weeks ago. The software would be a bitch though.. the hardware, phaaagghh - that's easy!

[Noelio]

When I look at the AMAZING mods to date I wonder how it's even possible to find anything else to conquer in the 8 bit arena.

The next giant leap forward is going to be convergence of all these mods/features maybe in a new retrofit board to squeeze into existing cases.

 

"Atari 8-bit on a chip!" will likely open another can of worms altogether.

 

I think every possible and feasible function has been explored already by someone, somewhere but when we see a single chip atari, with all mods converged on the one mini board, I think retrofitting is going to be HUGE@!

 

Some of you people blow me away with your dedication. Innovation is far from over as I see it.

 

I'd personally love to see a single chip (+ mem, ide, os) mods board that I could slap into an 130, 600 or 1200 case!

Edited March 1, 2009 by Noelio

[Video]

Doubtful, you can technically do anything on an 8 bit you can on bigger processors, you just gotta do more trickery in the codeing, just look at what the 2600 does in relation to what it was designed to do...and it still has surprises even today.