MegaWang 2000 Turbo Edition hardware

Devlog

• SDK V1.0.0.7 available for download
  September 27, 2023 by Martin Piper

  3

  This is an overview of what to expect in the SDK release... Continue reading

  
• New audio board and backplane
  November 09, 2022 by Martin Piper

  1

  #Music, #Backplane

  A new audio board and backplane were tested recently: Different music test:... Continue reading
• VideoHardwareSDK 1.0.0.6
  October 05, 2022 by Martin Piper#Commodore 64

  New VideoHardwareSDK 1.0.0.6 released. This includes lots more demo code and audio hardware fixes... Continue reading
• Audio hardware with all video layers
  September 24, 2022 by Martin Piper#RetroTTL, #RetroTTLVideoCard, #C64, #Commodore64, #electronics, #electronicsproject

  Audio board working with all the other video layers, scaled sprites, sprites, tiles, characters, and video generation layer. The Commodore 64 controls all the graphics and audio updates via the user p... Continue reading
• Debugging scaled sprites hardware
  May 22, 2022 by Martin Piper#Commodore 64

  Sprite scaling board debugging completion and full technical demo. Back in the old days of classic retro arcade games, scaled sprites were used to great effect in the likes of Outrun, Thunder Blade ,... Continue reading
• New tiles and sprites boards
  February 05, 2022 by Martin Piper#RetroTTL, #RetroTTLVideoCard, #C64, #Commodore64, #electronics, #electronicsproject

  Two new PCBs arrived from PCBWay, the tiles board and sprites board. While the sprites board worked first time, the tiles board needed some solder bridge fixups... Continue reading
• Debugging second characters board
  January 29, 2022 by Martin Piper#RetroTTL, #RetroTTLVideoCard, #C64, #Commodore64, #electronics, #electronicsproject

  I go into quite some detail about debugging a second character generation layer board, from a different factory, that was initially delivered not working. Several issues were found and fixed. The same... Continue reading
• New V8.0 build and test
  December 24, 2021 by Martin Piper#RetroTTL, #RetroTTLVideoCard, #C64, #Commodore64, #electronics, #electronicsproject

  This version 8.0 build demonstrates the new video and chars board with a larger horizontal resolution and larger chars scrollable area, being controlled by a Commodore 64... Continue reading
• Second character layer on C64
  October 26, 2021 by Martin Piper#RetroTTL, #RetroTTLVideoCard, #C64, #Commodore64, #electronics, #electronicsproject

  An extra character layer added to the video hardware connected to a Commodore 64. This new layer uses ICs soldered to the board with their own decoupling capacitors, no more expensive sockets with int... Continue reading
• Experimenting with scaled sprites
  October 13, 2021 by Martin Piper

  Recently I've been experimenting with scaled sprites using TTL logic. It turned out to be not that complex: https://twitter.com/MartinPiper/status/1448298427142402051... Continue reading

  
• New hardware demos on C64
  August 15, 2021 by Martin Piper

  1

  #RetroTTL, #RetroTTLVideoCard, #C64, #Commodore64, #electronics, #electronicsproject

  This video shows several demos of the new hardware version using the video, chars, sprites, and tiles boards all connected via a new backplane. These can now have 16 colours per char/sprite/tile and t... Continue reading
• Amiga Turrican graphics on a Commodore 64
  April 19, 2021 by Martin Piper#RetroTTL, #RetroTTLVideoCard, #C64, #Commodore64, #electronics, #electronicsproject

  This uses Amiga Turrican graphics on the video hardware and shows a simple demo executed by the Commodore 64... Continue reading
• Tiles board testing
  January 24, 2021 by Martin Piper#RetroTTL, #RetroTTLVideoCard, #C64, #Commodore64, #electronics, #electronicsproject

  This video shows several demos using the new 16x16 pixel tiles board and how it can be used for scrolling and animation. This started life as a working schematic for the video display portion of the o... Continue reading

  
• VideoHardwareSDK 1.0.0.4 available
  January 03, 2021 by Martin Piper

  The releases have been updated with new conversion tools and demonstrations sources in VideoHardwareSDK 1.0.0.4.zip This includes source for the Arkanoid style demo:... Continue reading

  
• New character board debugging
  January 02, 2021 by Martin Piper#commodore64, #c64

  This video shows improvements after rebuilding the character screen board with a more interactive Arkanoid style game demo... Continue reading

  
• Bat and ball game demo
  December 21, 2020 by Martin Piper#Commodore64

  This video shows a quick game demo using the video hardware with char and sprites layers. The Commodore 64 runs the game logic code and during the vblank send the updates sprite positions to the hardw... Continue reading

  
• Sprites and background screen
  December 14, 2020 by Martin Piper#commodore64

  This video shows the sprites board and background character screen board working together to produce an animated display with two layers. This boosts the graphical capability of the host retro machine... Continue reading

  
• Testing the faster user port interface
  November 26, 2020 by Martin Piper#RetroTTL, #RetroTTLVideoCard, #C64, #Commodore64, #electronics, #electronicsproject

  This video reviews the delivered components and PCBs, reviews logic analyser tests, and then tests video output on a Commodore 64. The user port interface has an auto-increment memory address, which m... Continue reading
• Commodore 64 char graphics
  November 22, 2020 by Martin Piper

  In this video the hardware is tested with a much more complex character screen graphics test running on a Commodore 64... Continue reading
• Commodore 64 display tests
  November 18, 2020 by Martin Piper#RetroTTL, #RetroTTLVideoCard, #C64, #Commodore64, #electronics, #electronicsproject

  In this video, I test some assumptions about the Commodore 64 user port to drive a simple demuxer and LEDs. I then create a quick prototype 4-bit wide simple memory bus protocol to map the user port 8... Continue reading
• Character screen memory display test
  November 17, 2020 by Martin Piper#RetroTTL, #RetroTTLVideoCard, #C64, #Commodore64, #electronics, #electronicsproject

  In this video the character screen board is connected (and worked first time!) then some quick memory bus tests by hand... Continue reading
• Debugging digital electronics and EMI
  November 16, 2020 by Martin Piper#RetroTTL, #RetroTTLVideoCard, #C64, #Commodore64, #electronics, #electronicsproject

  In this video I spend a long time debugging what looks like signal or electromagnetic interference issues. Eventually narrowing the problem down to a long ribbon cable... Continue reading
• Character board construction and display test
  November 15, 2020 by Martin Piper#RetroTTL, #RetroTTLVideoCard, #C64, #Commodore64, #electronics, #electronicsproject

  In this video I (almost) finish constructing the character board, discover I'm missing a couple of RAM chips and find a socket the wrong size. But in the end I stack the two boards and see a successfu... Continue reading
• Testing the pixel inputs and palette memory
  November 14, 2020 by Martin Piper

  In this video I start testing the pixel input headers and palette memory for correct behaviour. The character screen generation board work has started as well... Continue reading
• Populating the video generation board and display test
  November 12, 2020 by Martin Piper#RetroTTL, #RetroTTLVideoCard, #C64, #Commodore64, #electronics, #electronicsproject

  Working through populating the video generation board and testing the display for expected behaviour... Continue reading
• Soldering sockets and testing the crystal timing circuit
  November 11, 2020 by Martin Piper#RetroTTL, #RetroTTLVideoCard, #C64, #Commodore64, #Electronics

  Updates while soldering the PCB sockets and testing the crystal timing circuit with a logic analyser... Continue reading
• Bomb Jack 01 PCBs and components have arrived
  November 10, 2020 by Martin Piper#RetroTTL, #RetroTTLVideoCard, #C64, #Commodore64

  Talking about construction plans for this project... Continue reading
• Setting character data and testing flips
  October 31, 2020 by Martin Piper

  This slow BASIC code sets the palette, character colours, character screen, then sets character bit plane data. It demonstrates how the colour bits can be used to flip the characters horizontally, ver... Continue reading

  
• C64 user port to 24 bit address and 8 bit data
  October 29, 2020 by Martin Piper

  This prototype maps the C64's 8 output bits from the user port to 8 data bits + 16 address bits + 8 extended address bits. The Proteus schematic file is: https://github.com/martinpiper/BombJack/blob/... Continue reading

  
• VideoHardwareSDK 1.0.0.3 available
  October 22, 2020 by Martin Piper

  Video Hardware This SDK contains the minimal set of files needed to build, test, and execute emulated video hardware that uses 5V TTL chips. These chips were common in arcade machines before the 1990s... Continue reading