Yeah, I already have another ongoing project based on a cheap FPGA board with a Cyclone II (quite old but it does the job), the idea is to keep it cheaper and much less complex.
The FPGA has a Z80 implementation, video, sound and handle the game controllers. An external Atmega328 is used to handle the SD Card and then just RAM, an ICs for composite video and an op-amp.
I also have some ideas for a better console, maybe a generation forward and an 8-bit computer, but...these are just ideas, I doubt I'll actually get around to do them.
Unfortunately, the physical hardware and later the code were both stolen in separate incidents. I was able to recover some version of the latter I had shared with a peer. It's posted in the same repo but probably not worth reviewing as it's from my college days and a total mess.
Thanks :)
Yeah, I already have another ongoing project based on a cheap FPGA board with a Cyclone II (quite old but it does the job), the idea is to keep it cheaper and much less complex.
The FPGA has a Z80 implementation, video, sound and handle the game controllers. An external Atmega328 is used to handle the SD Card and then just RAM, an ICs for composite video and an op-amp.
I also have some ideas for a better console, maybe a generation forward and an 8-bit computer, but...these are just ideas, I doubt I'll actually get around to do them.
I also made a Cyclone II FPGA implementation :] It looked like this and supported very primitive line rendering:
https://github.com/niedzielski/swankmania/blob/master/DSC057... https://github.com/niedzielski/swankmania/blob/master/DSC057... https://github.com/niedzielski/swankmania/blob/master/DSC057...
Unfortunately, the physical hardware and later the code were both stolen in separate incidents. I was able to recover some version of the latter I had shared with a peer. It's posted in the same repo but probably not worth reviewing as it's from my college days and a total mess.
It looks awesome, congrats :)
I'm sorry the hardware and code were stolen.
And of course it's always worth reviewing, I got inspiration out of projects just like that and besides my code is a mess too, don't worry about that.
Have you seen Project IceStorm? I don't know if ICE40 FPGAs would be good fit here, but they could definitely be more hobbyist friendly.
http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/
I've found it pretty easy to use the IceStorm toolchain. You can do everything from the command line without a funky proprietary IDE.