Jump to content
IGNORED

7800 System Specs (VHDL Project Proposal)


caffeine43

Recommended Posts

Is there any place I can get complete or nearly complete system specifications for the Atari 7800? I would need documentation on the processor, interrupt methods, etc...

 

I recently learned VHDL (Hardware Description Language) and I'd like to put my new knowledge to use by writing code for the Atari 7800....possibly with USB controller support. I have a Xilinx Spartan2 100,000 gate FPGA at my disposal. It has 256k flash memory, 16mb RAM, VGA out, and a prototyping board for whatever other I/O I need. It also has a chip to handle low-level USB connections, along with some other gadgets and gizmos...

 

The ultimate goal for this project is to build a 7800 replica with all ROMs built in, USB support, VGA and/or RCA out, and have it fit in the palm of your hand. Perhaps with the use of the display/buttons off of a gameboy color it could even be made into a hand held module.

 

Oh yeah...Are the ROMs public domain?

 

If you are interested in helping me out with this project, please let me know.

 

Take care,

Tom Lutz

Comp. Eng. Major @ Stevens Institute of Technology

 

p.s. If you would like to see the FPGA board, it's the XSA-100 and XST-2 boards found at www.xess.com.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Another interesting model would be to create a VHDL model of the Lynx. There is a free 6502 CPU core available. It only lacks BCD arithmetic instructions. The core should run at 39Mhz on a Xilinx accoring to their web-site.

 

The Lynx Suzy chip has hardware 16-bit multiply and divide, the sprite engine with collision detection and a 512 byte ROM.

 

And the Mike chip has a simple sound engine.

 

There is a good emulator (Handy) available. From the source it should be possible to make models of one feature at a time and still be able to run the code while the project goes on.

 

The final goal could be to create a GameBoy Advanced cart where you could download Lynx-games using a serial port.

 

A cart like this might be doable with

- Intel Strataflash memory

- Xilinx FPGA

- 64k static RAM

- a few chips for clock and serial level-shifting

 

--

Regards,

 

Karri

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...