Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: A retro video game console I've been working on in my free time

internalregister.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 214 posts

Re: Show HN: A retro video game console I've been working on in my free time

#51

Post by mysterydip »

pkiller wrote: post #3
kgwxd wrote: post #2

This is the coolest thing I've seen posted on HN in years, very cool work. I've been playing with Atari 2600 programming on and off for the past few years and it is so fun programming directly against the specific hardware. I can't help but occasionally wonder if I could piece together a similar system, but I have 0 experience with electronics. I can only imagine how satisfying it must be to actually pull it off.

Thanks a lot :) It really is super satisfying to get this far, I still turn it on sometimes just to check if it really works. And I also had zero experience with electronics (and I still don't know as much as I should...), so yeah I think you could piece together something like this. :)

Wow! Thanks for making such an interesting and detailed writeup! And using my favorite CPU too :) Definitely bookmarked to read through more times.

Re: Show HN: A retro video game console I've been working on in my free time

#52

Post by pkiller »

mysterydip wrote: post #51
pkiller wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks a lot :) It really is super satisfying to get this far, I still turn it on sometimes just to check if it really works. And I also had zero experience with electronics (and I still don't know as much as I should...), so yeah I think you could piece together something like this. :)

Wow! Thanks for making such an interesting and detailed writeup! And using my favorite CPU too :) Definitely bookmarked to read through more times.

Z80 rules!

Thanks :)

Re: Show HN: A retro video game console I've been working on in my free time

#53

Post by octorian »

pkiller wrote: post #33
snazz wrote: post #28

As 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…

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…

I had a few interesting experiences breadboarding for a project of my own, for a 6502-based project. Most notable were:

- Being able to detect noise from the system clock crystal oscillator all cross the breadboard (using my oscilloscope)

- Seeing certain I/O pins float to a bit too high of a voltage, when they were supposed to be "low", probably due to breadboard capacitance

- Accidentally making an AM radio when I forgot to connect a wire on an LM386 I was testing as an audio amplifier

Things got a lot cleaner when I went to a PCB, but I did make it all work on breadboards first.

Re: Show HN: A retro video game console I've been working on in my free time

#55

Post by bluedino »

kotrunga wrote: post #20

If 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

Check out the XGameStation that Andre Lamothe created about 15 years ago. There’s an eBook that goes along with it.

He wrote a handful of game programming books in the 90’s as well.

Re: Show HN: A retro video game console I've been working on in my free time

#56

Post by ChuckMcM »

kotrunga wrote: post #20

If 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

It is sad that TAB books is no longer a thing, they totally would have published the "BUILD YOUR OWN VIDEO GAME" book. That said, I bet that you could get NoStarch Press to publish it.

Re: Show HN: A retro video game console I've been working on in my free time

#58

Post by allenu »

bluedino wrote: post #55
kotrunga wrote: post #20

If 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

Check out the XGameStation that Andre Lamothe created about 15 years ago. There’s an eBook that goes along with it. He wrote a handful of game programming books in the 90’s as well.

He wrote a great, thick book called The Black Art of Video Game Console Design. It walks you through making your own game console from scratch. It's a mini EE/CE program in a book. Definitely a great jumping-off point for those looking to learn this stuff.

Re: Show HN: A retro video game console I've been working on in my free time

#60

Post by bredren »

kgwxd wrote: post #2

This is the coolest thing I've seen posted on HN in years, very cool work. I've been playing with Atari 2600 programming on and off for the past few years and it is so fun programming directly against the specific hardware. I can't help but occasionally wonder if I could piece together a similar system, but I have 0 experience with electronics. I can only imagine how satisfying it must be to actually pull it off.

Agreed, this is dank. The successful wiring alone is noteworthy.
Post reply on HN