| Question: About hardware techniques, for game cartridges, to make a 128 color bitmapped mode, better sound, and SD card/USB through a misc CPU. [message #414430] |
Mon, 09 May 2022 06:55  |
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Originally posted by: Wayne morellini
Hi,
I like to consider how various retro hardware could have been designed and run better, in the past. Some, "what if' design proposal experiments, and some that I wouldn't mind seeing crowd sourced. The other night, I thought of the possibility of a cheap compact enhanced cga (16 colour graphics modes, as used on PC Jr and Tandy) PC game console and PC, using a multi chip module approach and NEC V series of chips and maybe NEC graphics technology, latter adopted into the PC standard, to reduce costs, and a cheap high capacity rom cartridge alternative I came up with years back. Where, such a system could have gone up against the Commodore 64/128 market, just above them, but below the Amiga and ST.
Another one, I wouldn't mind seeing done crowd sourced, was a redesign of the Sinclair ZX-81/Timex hardware, as a computer console, to see how much extra they could have done with the doable technology back then, even in 1977.. A redesign with simple graphics architecture adjustments to give up to 512x384 2-256 colours character tile graphics, plus pixel based vector graphics. Not much ram memory would have been needed to do 1970's game graphics with a better playfield of tiles in rom, and more colourful, higher resolution, game characters. With vector graphics, it could be even less. In the 1980's, it could remain until the Mega Drive.
I personally want to do my own retro chip with new graphics and processing concepts, useful for many low end devices a thumb based ARM would go into.
Looking back in time, and doing the calculations last night, virtually none of these "what if" improvements would matter as much, as the overwhelming performance that could have been seen in the 8 bit era, if the systems had used 16 bit Misc processor technology instead (Minimal Instruction Set Computer, which maybe 4000 transistors with simple architecture, allowing a reduction in energy and increase in performance per unit of energy), for similar or less chip size, cost, and energy usage. Using some simple enhanced graphic techniques, you have the full package. Games quality 5 years ahead. Upgrading technique, and Operating System features, which processors like the 68000 had, you would have a 32 bit version in the 16 bit age at higher clock rates. The display lists, like in the 7800, would have been good. The 7800 chip was well designed for the time. You could have something which could do anything extra the Amiga 1000, SNES or Mega drive, could do just out of raw power.
Due to bad health in the past, I have to concentrate my time on rebuilding my life, and a career. However, why not share the fun, if there is anybody out there who is interested in this stuff.
The following idea, if possible, would give an Atari 2600 cartridge, Sega Master System, or Genesis/Megadrive like capability (be it, at lower resolution and lower sound quality). The creator of Sonic the Hedgehog did a version for the Commodore 64, and it lacked the colour and the power most likely (not a player of that, to know exactly how it should look). Now, imagine something like that on this, at 1/8th VGA resolution+ and 128 colours.
I wanted to do this long ago, but it was not commercially viable and I got very sick. I had an interest in doing this on the Sinclair ZX81/Timex and 7800 also, as an enthusiast experiments.
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I want to find out if it's possible, to control the Atari 2600's graphics through the cartridge bus, to produce a true colour graphics bitmap, say by toggling the Atari 2600's graphics registers on the fly as it draws to the screen?
This is really a hardware development question rather than a programming question, as some systems would allow this, but only those people would know. It's likely there is some limitation, even if you can reach the registers on the bus.
Long ago, I wanted to connect a top performing Forth microprocessor through the cartridge bus, to do this, and act as a fast games processor. The 16 bit Novix 4000 processor (also available as the redesigned Harris RTX2000) was the top, or second highest, performing CPU on release. The subsequent original Shboom 32 bit (never released, but replaced by another similar design of the same name), was also a projected top performer, built for graphics workstations, and then the Misc series was leading low energy 80-100mips technology with a graphics processor. Then, a later 500 mips version did not turn up.
The current misc is a hard to program 144 processor array. No graphics chips, but the array itself is fast enough to draw video directly.
There are FPGA versions of various forth/Misc chips, some are the Offete Enterprise's open source ones, up to 64 bits.
There is a 6Ghz forth chip coming in, and maybe a 32 bit one from greenarrays.
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| Re: Question: About hardware techniques, for game cartridges, to make a 128 color bitmapped mode, better sound, and SD card/USB through a misc CPU. [message #414444 is a reply to message #414430] |
Tue, 10 May 2022 12:59  |
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Originally posted by: Wayne morellini
Here is an old list of such Forth and Misc chips, that could be suitable in enhancing the Atari 2600. This is the Jeff Fox, who was arranging the 500 mip Forth Misc processor I had been waiting for. It never came out fur various non technical reasons, and latter Jeff passed away. However, his site contains a lot of information and he was an extremely good person to learn off of.
http://www.ultratechnology.com/chips.htm
On Monday, May 9, 2022 at 8:55:20 PM UTC+10, Wayne morellini wrote:
> Hi,
...
> I want to find out if it's possible, to control the Atari 2600's graphics through the cartridge bus, to produce a true colour graphics bitmap, say by toggling the Atari 2600's graphics registers on the fly as it draws to the screen?
>
> This is really a hardware development question rather than a programming question, as some systems would allow this, but only those people would know. It's likely there is some limitation, even if you can reach the registers on the bus.
>
> Long ago, I wanted to connect a top performing Forth microprocessor through the cartridge bus, to do this, and act as a fast games processor. The 16 bit Novix 4000 processor (also available as the redesigned Harris RTX2000) was the top, or second highest, performing CPU on release. The subsequent original Shboom 32 bit (never released, but replaced by another similar design of the same name), was also a projected top performer, built for graphics workstations, and then the Misc series was leading low energy 80-100mips technology with a graphics processor. Then, a later 500 mips version did not turn up.
>
> The current misc is a hard to program 144 processor array. No graphics chips, but the array itself is fast enough to draw video directly.
>
> There are FPGA versions of various forth/Misc chips, some are the Offete Enterprise's open source ones, up to 64 bits.
>
> There is a 6Ghz forth chip coming in, and maybe a 32 bit one from greenarrays.
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