by MikeJ | Apr 1, 2009 | News
Here is a picture of the Replay board mid assembly. The BGA has been mounted as well as all the small capacitors and most of the ICs. I have all the parts now, so I hope to have the board fully built for the weekend.
by MikeJ | Mar 28, 2009 | News
The first four prototype boards have had the FPGA BGA mounted. I’ll assemble the rest of the parts during the week, so we are aiming for a fully assembled Replay board for power on test by the end of the week. All the connectors and components I have tried so...
by MikeJ | Aug 31, 2008 | News
There may be some disruption over the next few days as we are moving to a new server.
by MikeJ | Jan 12, 2008 | News
I have updated the VIC-20 code to run on the Xilinx Spartan 3E board. It now supports cartridge images held in the on board flash memory. I have fixed a timing error in the T65 code and this has been updated also (Library page).
by MikeJ | Dec 23, 2007 | News
Well, it’s been a little while since I last posted any news. I have completed the four Atari ST ASICs and am co-simulating them. I am in final stages of designing a low cost FPGA platform which will be ideal for the games, but also for running the Atari and...
by MikeJ | Jul 1, 2007 | News
I survived the mud at Glastonbury Festival! Had a superb time, met lots of great people. Right, there is no way round it, I am going to have to write a DDR memory controller for the Spartan3E board. The ones that are out there are not flexible/high performance enough...
by MikeJ | Jun 13, 2007 | News
At long last (almost two years) I have completed the Scramble / Frogger code – I am easily distracted! The hardware is very similar, so I have added a compile time switch to allow it to run both games. Many other games can be run on this hardware, so I am sure a...
by MikeJ | Jun 10, 2007 | News
The Philips Videopac G7000 (or Odyssey2 as it was known in America) was released in 1978 to compete with other cartridge based systems such as the Atari VCS. Powered by an Intel 8048 CPU and a custom Intel IC known as a Video Display Controller (VDC) generating all...
by MikeJ | Jun 5, 2007 | News
Finally got Frogger sound working !!! There are many small differences between Scramble and Frogger boards – mainly address pin swaps, but there are a few hard to find ones. In Scramble one of the AY3-8910 sound chips uses bits 7,6,5 & 4 as inputs, but in...
by MikeJ | Jun 2, 2007 | News
Oh, I forgot to say I have put up Sean’s Multipac on the Pacman page. You can now dynamically switch between Pacman, Pacplus, Pong, MrTNT, MsPac, Crush Roller, Eyes and Lizard Wizard. Enjoy.
by MikeJ | Jun 2, 2007 | News
I have ordered more of the 28pin Namco custom replacements, so these will be back in stock shortly. I’ve also got my hands on the very nice Xilinx Spartan3A board (thanks Eric) and it is pretty ideal for our gaming needs. I have Frogger and Scramble running but...
by MikeJ | Feb 15, 2007 | News
Well, hello again. Is it too late for Happy New Year? Well Happy Chinese new year at least then. I have been spending quite a bit of time in China lately, which is one of the reasons for not updating this website so often. I have been working on Wolfgang...
by MikeJ | Oct 25, 2006 | News
Minor update, I have released the Pacman code for the Xilinx Spartan3E Starter Kit board. Available on the Pacman page.
by MikeJ | Oct 17, 2006 | News
Sean Riddle has been working on extending the Space Invaders implementation to support multiple games, and this is now released on the Space Invaders page. A total of 16 different games are supported running from the Strataflash on the Spartan3e starter kit.
by MikeJ | Oct 1, 2006 | News
At long last I have completed the Bally Astrocade Hi-Res additions. It is available for download on the Platforms\Bally Astrocade page. Hopefully somebody will write some software to use it :).
by MikeJ | Sep 27, 2006 | News
Well, the summer holidays are over, the annual get (very) drunk at IBC been survived (just) so it is time for some new stuff. I have released the Spartan3E port of the Bally Astrocade, you can get that on the Platforms page. Sean Riddle found and fixed a bug in the...
by MikeJ | Jun 25, 2006 | News
I was a bit upset that the Spartan3E starter kit from Xilinx has only single bit RGB on its VGA connector. This is a real limitation when running the games on the board – so I have modified it. I have documented the changes required, and have released some VGA...
by MikeJ | Jun 20, 2006 | News
Arnim Läuger has updated some of the projects. Adventure Vision has been updated with a new T400 core. Colecovision and LadyBug have had the SN76489 audio chip updated. The SN76489 and VDP19 (TMS9918A, TMS9928A,TMS9929A) cores from the designs have been repackaged and...
by MikeJ | Jun 13, 2006 | News
I came across some work by Peter Wendrich www.syntiac.com where he has implemented a Commodore 64 including a rather neat 6502/6510 processor. I have not tested it, but it looks very good and correctly implements decimal mode arithmetic – something I am going to...
by MikeJ | Jan 16, 2006 | News
Arnim Läuger has completed his implementation of Coleco’s third generation video game console from 1982. This was the first console to feature Donkey Kong and sold over six million units. Arnim has tested the code with more than 50 games, so head over to the...
