I have been hearing of the release of a new Commodore 64 (if I should call it that). Having HDMI out, SD card capability, amongst other things. I wonder, as an assembly programmer, what differences one might expect as far as memory mapping, I/O, plus a number of other questions that would make a decision to even bother buying one worth the money.
Has anyone done any in depth research into this new "Wonder Machine" the THEC64?

I almost certainly know less about THEC64 than you, but a quick browse of the sizable software library that's apparently "ready to go" indicates to me that it must be very faithful to the original from a software standpoint. Either that, or massive effort has gone into porting all of those games.

I owned an original C64 back in the mid-1980s, and enjoyed playing with it and learning a little about it. To me though, it always looked and felt more like a toy than a tool (not that there's anything wrong with that). My Apple ][+ was first, and its more solid "feel" enabled it to remain my favorite, despite its more primitive nature. I did all of my school work and most of my hardware and software experiments on the Apple ][+. Nowadays, AppleWin and VICE fulfill most of my 8-bit needs well enough, and the idea of purchasing a modern hardware version of either of those classics, although interesting, doesn't really flip my switch. But I digress ... sorry.

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Got a kilobyte lying fallow in your 65xx's memory map? Sprinkle some VTL02C on it and see how it grows on you!

Mike B. (about me) (learning how to github)

THEC64 is just the VICE emulator running on a custom ARM board. If you use VICE on PC, then you're working with the same emulation model, which is accurate. The SD card and all that jazz is not available to code running on the emulated 64, but only available to the host Linux OS.

If you're interested in a hardware recreation of the actual Commodore 64 whose many extensions are visible to the 6502 end of things itself, there's the Ultimate 64 motherboard.

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WFDis Interactive 6502 Disassembler
AcheronVM: A Reconfigurable 16-bit Virtual CPU for the 6502 Microprocessor

I think I will wait until more reviews are out about THEC64. I use Commodore MADS and Merlin for assembly language and am familiar enough with the old 64 system that I will just stick with my old machine (bought in '84) until it gives up the ghost.
Thanks again.