Muito bom! I'm not sure I understood more than 10% of this but I love the concept and the determination to follow through on it.
Show HN: A retro video game console I've been working on in my free time
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Re: Show HN: A retro video game console I've been working on in my free time
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks :) I've kept this project to myself and would only describe it occasionally to some coworkers and friends. I never thought that many people would find it cool. And always thought that people with more knowledge than me would find a lot of flaws. So it's really awesome to read yours and all the other comments. :) I don't think I could write a book, but I have though in writing other posts, giving more detail in…
Just adding to the chorus saying they’d buy a kit and/or book. For branding, play on your introduction for PGG: Portuguese Guy Gaming. Either way though, you definitely should write more posts if it’s something you’d be interested in, you definitely have an excited and willing audience.
Thanks a lot :).
A kit for this console would be crazy though, too many components, too much complexity. But for a smaller version, it could be done.
Branding...yeah, I could never get a name for it, til this day I don't know what to call it, I'm terrible with names. Maybe I'll take your suggestion :).
Re: Show HN: A retro video game console I've been working on in my free time
#43Great work! I wondered what resource you have used when you started learning electronics. I'd be really appreciated if you share them
Like I wrote in another comment.
There's a great book called "Make: Electronics".
And you can get started with an Arduino kit, it comes with a book and several components. After this when you feel comfortable, you can move one to more advanced stuff, depending on what you're interested in.
There are plenty of videos online for almost any topic in electronics, and projects online using all kinds of components and for all kinds of purposes.
Check out EEVblog, the forums are good, and there are some videos for beginners and also the Youtube channel GreatScott!.
And thanks :)
Re: Show HN: A retro video game console I've been working on in my free time
#44This is outstanding work. You should feel proud that you created something this complex from scratch over a number of years and did not give up! I'm in awe
Re: Show HN: A retro video game console I've been working on in my free time
#45I'm surprised you didn't implement a simple 8k bank switching scheme to utilise the rest of the 128K chip, it's really just a handful of 74 244 buffers and a 74 138 decoder stuck on an IO port.
I thought about it, I really did, however, I really felt I didn't need the extra RAM, especially for the kinds of programs and games I was aiming for.
And in this case "a handful of 74244" is a lot more complexity and it got a to a point where I really wanted to minimize the amount of ICs I used.
Also I was felt bank switching added complexity when developing for it. This way I can write a C program have it access data and I don't have to worry about the code being split in more than one bank or having the data be in a different bank than the code, etc.
It's a nice catch though, thanks for the comment.
Re: Show HN: A retro video game console I've been working on in my free time
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I totally agree. The reason I stuck to DIP ICs was because I could fit them into breadboards and I thought that was easier than any alternative. I was incredibly lucky on how all the breadboards were functional. And there were a few times where I would accidentally disconnect a wire and spend the next 2 hours trying to figure out what was wrong. All this without having a logic analyser and not even an oscilloscope un…
More power to you for being patient enough to fight through! I’m nowhere near that good.
I'm really not that special, don't sell yourself short.
And thanks :)
Re: Show HN: A retro video game console I've been working on in my free time
#47This is something I wish I'd be able to do one day, but every time I look into getting into electronics I get overwhelmed. Can you recommend the materials you used when learning? Books or resources etc. This was a really interesting read, thanks for sharing.
The first half of nand2tetris[1] (projects 1-6), which corresponds to their first Coursera course[2] is a great introduction to the digital side of electronics. The second half is more general purpose computer and OS specific but probably still pretty useful. I've only finished up to chapter 5 as of right now, so I can't say anything definite.
Re: Show HN: A retro video game console I've been working on in my free time
#48As much as I enjoy quickly building circuits on a breadboard like in many of the photos, they’re hell to debug, because there’s so much that can go subtly wrong. It’s much easier with digital than analog circuits, of course, but it still can be crazy hard to logic-probe every connection to get it all to work. I have spent far too much time fixing little bugs in breadboarded circuits. The toughest issue I encountered…
When I was a lad, wirewrap was the thing. You can prototype quickly, and make changes easily too.
(It seems like it's still a thing in fact http://www.nutsvolts.com/magazine/article/wire_wrap_is_alive...)
Re: Show HN: A retro video game console I've been working on in my free time
#49As much as I enjoy quickly building circuits on a breadboard like in many of the photos, they’re hell to debug, because there’s so much that can go subtly wrong. It’s much easier with digital than analog circuits, of course, but it still can be crazy hard to logic-probe every connection to get it all to work. I have spent far too much time fixing little bugs in breadboarded circuits. The toughest issue I encountered…
When I was a lad, wirewrap was the thing. You can prototype quickly, and make changes easily too. (It seems like it's still a thing in fact http://www.nutsvolts.com/magazine/article/wire_wrap_is_alive... )
I would love to try this at some point: http://cpuville.com/Projects/Z80-wire-wrap/Z80-wire-wrap-hom...
Re: Show HN: A retro video game console I've been working on in my free time
#50If you wrote a book explaining how to do this, teaching the concepts, etc... I think a lot of people (or at least me) would be very interested!!! Great job
I can highly recommend nand2tetris. It doesn't go as far as this post but it covers a lot and is a ton of fun to work through.