Denial

Hi,

During my introduction (http://sleepingelephant.com/ipw-web/bul ... &start=315) I mention my newfound interrest in the VIC-20 together with my son, and ideas on a hardware project.

Don't really know where this will land but feedback is always welcome.

Anyway it has been changed a bit, still overkill gargantua, but.

# 64k - 1024k SRAM. No Flash. With the usual banking, write protect, individual enable/disable. All banks including 3k.
# 8k Kernal, Diskmanagement, Basic extensions with fullscreen editor.
# A specific block can be mapped during NMI assertion. This is used to call up the main menu and monitor ... among other things.
# Up to 32GB SD managed by a co-processor. It will load data as fast as the VIC can receive them. D64 support and ordinary files. TAP support would be cool perhaps? Little of on how to handle the UI with this mix though.
# Audio decoder for MIDI, MP3, FLAC, WAV, OGG, etc. Can play directly from disk ... which is probably the only viable option anyway.
# RTC with battery backup.
# WiFi. FTP to the SD card. NTP client (which nearly defeats the purpose of backed up RTC). Kernel will understand URI sort off. As in ...

LOAD "http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/ ... a.prg",8,1
RESET

# Also ... if there will be room in the CPLD a really good hardware random generator.
# 3 Buttons (RESET, NMI, DISK).
# 0.96" OLED Display for text, icons etc.

So far the hardware for a prototype is almost finnished.

Xilinx CPLD, Audio Codec VS1053b, PIC24, WiFi from Microchip.
4 layer board.



Regarding Software the kernel is half there. Most MP3 and SD for the PIC stuff is recycled, and most of the BASIC and Diskmanager will be recycled from really old code I wrote in the 80's.

Interesting project Thomas! From what I see, it's more similar to the old MMC64 cart for C64 than to a Final Expansion, having direct file load from the SD card, no drive emulation (no multi-file games etc.) and a plethora of decoders which support most modern multimedia files. This fills a gap in VIC's modern hardware. Oh, and TAP support would be absolutely welcome .

Hi Thomas

Very cool cart, please feed us with information as you got news.

I will follow close, very interesting project.

Thanks!

I am a bit rusty regarding the VIC Kernel and how multi part games actually work, so I do not really understand "no drive emulation". My thought was that you would mount a URI towards a drive 8,9, whatever. Or a TAP towards 1. Then Open, input#, print#, load, save, verify etc would work as normal. So as long as the game / program uses the kernel routines it should work with multi-part. OR do these games use special tricks and/or routines? The save/load could of course be optimized perhaps for speed.

The thought was ...

MOUNT "ftp://www.mysite.com/myprograms/utilities.d64" TO DRIVE 8
LOAD "myprogram.prg",8
RUN

or

MOUNT "sd://programs/taps/gauntlet.tap" TO TAPE
LOAD

etc
The Little OLED could then contain the simulated 3-digit counter. Etc so on. Here it is a bit uncertain so far.

Almost there with the hardware ...

6 more nets to be routed. So perhaps prototypes can be ordered next week.

Hi Thomas

Thanks for the view, I am very facinated.
Looking forward to se the prototype in action

Very cool project! WiFi sound great, too.

Hi Thomas

Will your new Vic-20 cartridge be up for sale?

Kananga: Thanks for the feedback.

Joshuadenmark: Lets see how it turns out when it is somewhat more finished. However, I am all for it if the interest is there.

The board is all routed and I am just putting the finishing touches on it.

... then there is software ...

Hi Thomas

I guess there is interest for new vic20 hardware, buy I really don't know the atual numbers of vic-nerds out there. I will buy one if the price comes up right

Please keep us informed and please post pictures if you have the time.

Have a nice evening.

I will keep pictures and information coming as long as there is any interest, and time permits.

There is also a add-on project called GCart 8k Internal. Also a remake from the 80's. However beefed up with new technology and features (16 color ram banks inspired by the VFLI graphics http://sleepingelephant.com/ipw-web/bul ... php?t=4882).

It basically is a 3k internal expansion for RAM1,2 and 3. It sits on the right side of the buffers between CPU and VIC so it is accessable for the VIC chip and thus can be used for hires graphics or Mikes eminent work.

It has a number of banks for character ROM at $8000 in RAM.

It also has 16 banks of color ram (for Mikes VFLI graphics in 16 colours) or other tricks.

It plugs in to the character ROM socket, so if you have the character ROM already in a socket it is one cut on the mainboard and 2 solderings for the 3k expansion. 4-5 more wires if you want the extended color ram option and 2 more if you want to be able to turn the expansion totally off under software control.



GCart 2011 will recognize the internal add-on and adapt. It will also has GUI for its control.



It is possible to use it without GCart, but then with poke and peeks ... or any software that take advantage of the features.

Fantastic, this is a cool add-on, thanks for sharing.

How do you get the GCart 2011 to recognize the internal add-on?

There is a register for status that flips the bit7 on each consecutive read. I simply will read it a number of times and see that it do flip. Think that would be good enough.

Wow!

I think this is the coolest hardware ever seen for the vic