037 - Commodore & MiSTer Updates, and John's Japan Experience

<p>In this episode, Dave leads off on the revived Commodore: the C64C Ultimate and the story of the original 1986 injection molds, and the brand-new &quot;Made For U(ltimate)&quot; software initiative. The block closes on the Callback flip phone, its wildly unstable pricing, and Dave&#39;s argument that nobody agrees on what a &quot;dumb phone&quot; actually means. </p><p>John brings a MiSTer update — DreamSTer, running Dreamcast on a DE10-Nano by putting the PowerVR2 on the FPGA and everything else on the ARM cores, plus MiSTer Monitor, an ESP32 companion display for artwork and system stats. </p><p>John also unpacks his recent travel experiences to Japan, including Nintendo, Super Potato and other fun places he visited.</p><p> Dave signs off with the 486 he rescued from his parents&#39; house, and a plea for a keyboard with a five-pin DIN connector.</p><p><strong>Topics discussed in this episode</strong></p><ul><li>Commodore announces the C64C Ultimate using the rediscovered original 1986 injection moldshttps://commodore.net/c-you-soon-commodore-64-ultimate-line-up-expands-with-c64c-edition-later-this-year/</li><li>Time Extension: the revived Commodore&#39;s next FPGA recreation, complete with the original 1986 imperfectionshttps://www.timeextension.com/news/2026/04/the-revived-commodore-just-announced-its-next-fpga-recreation-complete-with-the-original-1986-imperfections</li><li>Time Extension: Commodore celebrates its first birthday with the &quot;Made For U(ltimate)&quot; game initiativehttps://www.timeextension.com/news/2026/08/what-a-year-its-been-commodore-celebrates-its-birthday-with-a-new-game-initiative-for-the-c64-ultimate</li><li>Commodore gets transparent on the Callback flip phone pricinghttps://commodore.net/commodore-gets-transparent-on-callback-flip-phone/</li><li>Tom&#39;s Hardware: Callback drops to $399 by defaulting to recycled memory chipshttps://www.tomshardware.com/phones/commodore-drops-callback-flip-ohine-to-399-by-defaulting-to-recycled-memory-chips</li><li>Time Extension: the &quot;impossible&quot; Dreamcast core comes to MiSTer, but it&#39;s very early dayshttps://www.timeextension.com/news/2026/07/the-impossible-dreamcast-core-comes-to-mister-but-its-very-early-days</li><li>DreamSTer on GitHub — skmp&#39;s Dreamcast project for the DE10-Nanohttps://github.com/skmp/DreamSTer</li><li>MiSTer Monitor — ESP32 companion display for artwork, system stats and RetroAchievementshttps://github.com/chipster6502/MiSTer_monitor</li><li>Super Potato, Akihabarahttps://www.superpotato.com/</li></ul><p><br></p>