5 ms·

CPU - WDC 65C02S @ 8 MHz - 40-pin DIP package

blickentwapft 6y ago
Oh ok that’s encouraging. It does use an fpga for graphics. That’s kinda surprising I would have thought there’d be a suitable graphics chip off the shelf.
- gecko 6y ago
  He’s looked at a few on his YouRube channel and discussed what his issues were with them. Basically, the existing ones made trade-offs he’s wasn’t super excited about, and he needs some modern chip due to HDMI and the like.
- 0xTJ 6y ago
  If you can find a suitable graphics chip, please let me know, but I've been casually looking for the past few years for a chip that can connect to a parallel bus, and output VGA and/or composite. There http://www.vlsi.fi/en/products/vs23s040.html http://www.vlsi.fi/en/products/vs23s040.html, but it requires SPI to configure video, on the same pins used for the parallel bus.
  - pantalaimon 6y ago
    I mean you can bit-bang SPI. But from the features it sounds like it’s really just a frame buffer/RAMDAC, no sprites or other fancy features.
- phire 6y ago
  The problem is that there are no off the shelf chips that feel anything like the video chips of the late 8bit or 16bit eras. You can do a bitmapped or character displays with just a bit discrete logic. The graphics chips that do exist these days are all focused at driving LCD touchscreen interfaces with the cheapest microcontroller possible. They communicate over quad spi (not an interface that works with classic 8bit CPUs) and support 24bit color with complex modern drawing primitives like "draw line, draw box, draw circle and decode jpeg". Sadly, if you want a sprite and tilemap video chip for your modern 8bit computer without resorting to old stock, an FPGA is about your only option. Which isn't that inaccurate. Most video chips of that era were custom designs themselves, and FPGAs can be though of as just a simple way to achieve custom chip design on a hobbyist budget.
  - fanf2 6y ago
    It was common to use ULAs which were effectively FPGAs that we’re not field-programmable but with something like a ROM mask instead

Oh ok that’s encouraging. It does use an fpga for graphics. That’s kinda surprising I would have thought there’d be a suitable graphics chip off the shelf.

gecko 6y ago
He’s looked at a few on his YouRube channel and discussed what his issues were with them. Basically, the existing ones made trade-offs he’s wasn’t super excited about, and he needs some modern chip due to HDMI and the like.
0xTJ 6y ago
If you can find a suitable graphics chip, please let me know, but I've been casually looking for the past few years for a chip that can connect to a parallel bus, and output VGA and/or composite. There http://www.vlsi.fi/en/products/vs23s040.html http://www.vlsi.fi/en/products/vs23s040.html, but it requires SPI to configure video, on the same pins used for the parallel bus.
- pantalaimon 6y ago
  I mean you can bit-bang SPI. But from the features it sounds like it’s really just a frame buffer/RAMDAC, no sprites or other fancy features.
phire 6y ago
The problem is that there are no off the shelf chips that feel anything like the video chips of the late 8bit or 16bit eras. You can do a bitmapped or character displays with just a bit discrete logic. The graphics chips that do exist these days are all focused at driving LCD touchscreen interfaces with the cheapest microcontroller possible. They communicate over quad spi (not an interface that works with classic 8bit CPUs) and support 24bit color with complex modern drawing primitives like "draw line, draw box, draw circle and decode jpeg". Sadly, if you want a sprite and tilemap video chip for your modern 8bit computer without resorting to old stock, an FPGA is about your only option. Which isn't that inaccurate. Most video chips of that era were custom designs themselves, and FPGAs can be though of as just a simple way to achieve custom chip design on a hobbyist budget.
- fanf2 6y ago
  It was common to use ULAs which were effectively FPGAs that we’re not field-programmable but with something like a ROM mask instead