Crazy little idea for new console

Sounds fun...

 

I think you've been on more than just clove cigarettes or coffee :lol: Still, it is a cool idea.

Yakumo

 

Sounds like great fun, I would love to design it
Are you sure that you need dual z80's ? im sure 1 would be powerful enough

edit-01 how about using the hitachi 64180 which is z80 compatible but has some useful additions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD64180 (512K MMU version shown, 1M MMU version is better)

edit-02 would bit-mapped 256x256 pixel graphics be ok ? (easier to design than hardware sprites but heavier load on cpu, not a problem for the 64180 built in dma channels)

 

judging by the frequency of "lol" in the thread, I think a certain green herb has a hand in all this!

 

See this is what happens when you wake up and drink Earl Grey tea.

Dual Z80s.... lol

This being a 'sort of' joke, I think you should have Floppy Disc or Zip Disc as the storage media...

...and it should have built in controller.

 

Hmm trying to design a console with parts that could be bought easy (as I'm sure we aren't going to get anyone mad enough to design a Graphics chip that can support tile mapped screens, lots of sprites and hardware scrolling...) could be a challenge, how about...

Twin Z180 running at 10Mhz (Z80 compatable, 1MB Addressable, Twin timers, Twin UARTS, available in DIP)
Yamaha V9938 Graphics chip (there are suppliers that have quanities of these for about $15 each).
Yamaha YMF795 Sound Chip
Twin 8 Bit DACs
SD Card Reader to run software.

Should be enough to make a super 8 bit console. Twin CPUs are always fun to play with, even if you just make the other CPU do audio stuff.

 

using the 9938 is a great idea

datasheet can be found here (35MBytes) http://www.uswingnuts.com/9640News/mdos/v9938.pdf

 

And what about using a MC68000?

 

I'm no hardware designer, but if you guys make it easy enough to build, I'll build one. Keep her cheap.

 

Way too powerful

 

Nice idea!

Unluckily I don't know a lot about electronics and programming for this kind of stuff, but I'd like to help in every way I can. It's a really good idea to let it die...

 

Look, if you're going the "256x256 bitmap" route, why not just do some programming on the Hydra or something like that? Using a Z-80 or other 8-bit CPU practically demands a tile-based scrolling background PPU with sprites, or at least a bitmap display with some coprocessors to take the load off the poor old CPU.

But any hardware project's intriguing, so good luck with your prolonged acid trip. :-D

 

I pretty much like the idea actually! Even if this isn´t serious..

 

Actually the 256x256 bitmap would work ok using the hd64180's built in dma devices to transfer the sprites / tiles from main ram/rom to screen ram with little cpu overhead but I like jamtex's idea of using the 9938 graphics chip which does handle tiles/sprites/bitmaps although I have never seen it used well in msx systems I have just been looking at the datasheet and it seems like it could look pretty good if used correctly

Ok this post may have started as a joke but it is do-able, I would be happy to help with the design / pcb

 

I think that we would have to go about it in a different way. I have actually thought about how something like this would work for releasing an custom arcade board into the wild. If you are looking for cost and ease of setup, then the system would almost need to be an off the shelf board (think mini-ITX) with a certain hardware configuration. The cost of creating or assembling a custom board would probably be prohibitive. Effectively, the consolization "problem" would be in the software, not the hardware.

A custom Linux OS would be suitable for such an application. Games could be loaded onto USB/SD sticks or CD/DVD for plug and play, but also allow the user to store the games directly on the "console". If we want to "lock" the console (i.e. the console must be properly purchased from the group, common with arcade boards), then a cheap internal USB dongle could be used in addition to limiting root access to the OS. A game compiler would be trivial at this point, either using existing languages or a new language.

Finally, let's talk about the case. This would be were the "console" would stand out. I know there are more than a few people here with modeling/CAD skills, so a mock up would be easy. Fabrication could be where the site would stand out (i.e. you have to buy the official case here), even if the plans for the "console" were freely released.

Optimal build in my mind for something like this:
Mini-ITX with integrated everything
SSD/CF hard drive for noise reduction
Custom case with front loading media (CF, SD, USB, CD/DVD)
Custom Linux OS built specifically for just the game environment

 

A little history:
Way back I did make a system based on dual 65C02 processors

Luckily these processors have an input which allows them to tristate their address and data busses so what I did is run both cpus from the same clock but inverted it to the second processor, as the 65C02 only accesses the bus when the clock is high I was able to tristate it when the clock was low and this is where the second 65C02 was in control (inverted clock). This way I was able to tie both cpus directly to the same bus without the need for extra tri-state multiplexing

I also ran both cpus from the same 64K eprom by feeding the clock signal into the highest address line so that the first cpu got the top 32K half second cpu got the bottom 32K half

The only thing I had to be very careful with was the stack, the 6502 only has a 256byte stack at a fixed location of 0x0100-0x01ff so what I did there was initialize the stack pointer in the first cpu to 0x01ff and in the second cpu to 0x017f giving both cpus 128bytes of stack

I had to be very careful with my jsr's and pushs so that I didnt blow out the other cpus stack !

Was a lot of fun

 

The V9938 is a nice little GPU, however it does suffer from 2 problems...

1 - Programming it involves writing lots of OUTs as you have to tell the GPU what to do and set registers. You also have to wait 7 T-States between outs or the thing will get confused, and you will litter your code with DI and EI to make sure that a Z80 interupt doesn't mess up timing.

2 - The MSX always had a weedy 3.5Mhz Z80 running things, the R800 used in the Turbo R was better but sooooo little software used it but the ones that did were amazingly different (it used a V9958 but that really just adds a few more graphics modes which aren't a great deal of use).

On the positive side, the GPU can do things like Sprites and moving things reasonablely fast and it has it's own RAM (all 128K of it).


Yes the Hydra is a nice product but using a chip that is a 32 Bit RISC microcontroller with multiple cores isn't a easy chip to start to play with. The Z80 although CISC is still a nice processer to use and the fact Zilog are still going and making chips that are Z80 compatable just shows how great the design was and it has probably been used in more consoles and arcade boards then most others.

 

Would also be a small job to *cough port *cough those 80's arcade games to the console

 

Name it ZAX, and then when you sell it you can call yourself a ZAX reseller..