Portable ColecoVision: Would you buy this?

[omne]

It's beautiful. I think DoubleDown and I are of the same mind when we look at it.

 

I'm thinking, "Wow. No one could (would?) pay me enough to do that."

 

Way to go Ben!

[Jess Ragan]

Oh yeah, that's a spicy handheld! Love the semi-transparent, Xbox-like buttons and the clever use of the system's numeric keypad.

 

Personally, though, I'll probably just hold out for a ColecoVision emulator for the PSP. Someone's already got MSX games running on the ColecoVision, and it can't take much effort to tweak that emulator to support CV games as well.

 

JR

[Bruce Tomlin]

Weren't the Japanese working on a MSX-on-a-chip? Since the technology is so similar, could that technology be modified to play Colecovision games? Then, it could possibly be stuffed into a handheld device.

 

If a portable could play both Colecovision and MSX games, that would be fantastic! That would open up the library to a thousand plus games.

The problem is that an MSXoC would probably have the I/O ports and memory map set to the MSX locations, and there would be no way to intercept them.

 

If I were to do one of these, I'd be really tempted to just make a brand new circuit board, with a few tweaks to the design, like a full 8K or more SRAM, a pair of 4416 chips for the video DRAM, and a GAL chip or two to replace the glue logic. And no expansion port. If someone had made an expansion port EEPROM game save thingy, I'd build that in, too.

[doubledown]

You really have to admit that Ben does do amazing work!!!

[Cheese007]

Now for a portable gamecube

no seirously

portability+gamecube=awsome

Edited January 1, 2006 by Cheese007

[jsoper]

If I were to do one of these, I'd be really tempted to just make a brand new circuit board, with a few tweaks to the design, like a full 8K or more SRAM, a pair of 4416 chips for the video DRAM, and a GAL chip or two to replace the glue logic.  And no expansion port.  If someone had made an expansion port EEPROM game save thingy, I'd build that in, too.

992263[/snapback]

I've been thinking along the same lines as you Bruce. Dropping the expansion port support lets you throw out a couple chips. Replace those memory chips and update the controller for schottky diodes and you only need a 5v supply. Replace the tms9928 with a tms9918 from a junker TI 99/4a and you have direct composite, don't need the RF board. Update most the other chips with cmos versions, it becomes low power.

Wish I had the free time to play with it

[Atari Dogs]

Back in the early summer I was talking with Ben to have him make me a portable Colecovision like the one he presented here. Our schedules did not match, so we did not reach a deal. I am thinking of contacting Ben again, but first I wanted to know if there is any updates on the Colecovision-on-a-chip. It would be a lot smaller and cheaper if that existed.