New years resolution 2015

General Chit Chat about Sinclair Computers and their Clones
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nollkolltroll
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New years resolution 2015

Post by nollkolltroll »

I intend to code and build more for the zx81, compared to 2014.
/Adam
sirmorris
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Re: New years resolution 2015

Post by sirmorris »

(y) ! :D
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RetroTechie
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Re: New years resolution 2015

Post by RetroTechie »

Finally (sigh...) learn some Verilog. Or VHDL. Or both. :geek:

Then port my ZX81 ULA design onto the Altera DE2 board I aquired :D :D :D a few days ago. And maybe make some improvements / additions to that, or port to other FPGA boards?

And of course best wishes to you all for 2015! The past year has been a bit of a roller coaster ride for me. Not so much in the sense of 'bad', but more... lacking direction, leaving little results for the work I put in. I'm hoping 2015 will be more 'smooth sailing' for me.
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Andy Rea
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Re: New years resolution 2015

Post by Andy Rea »

Not been so lazy and do more zeddy stuff
what's that Smell.... smells like fresh flux and solder fumes...
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PokeMon
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Re: New years resolution 2015

Post by PokeMon »

Finishing the new ZX80CORE. And some more. Hopefully. ;)
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blittled
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Re: New years resolution 2015

Post by blittled »

Retrotechie, any progress on the porting to the DE1? If so I'd like to correspond with you since porting it over to the DE0 Nano should be relatively easy.
2X Timex Sinclair 1000, ZX81, ZX80Core, 5X 16K Ram Pack, ZXBlast, ZX P file to Ear Input Signal Converter, Elf II
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RetroTechie
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Re: New years resolution 2015

Post by RetroTechie »

It's a DE2 I got here, which is far from a 1:1 'porting vehicle' from/to boards like the DE1. For example VGA output goes through a triple 10-bit video DAC (vs. 4-bit resistor networks on the DE1). Obviously that translates into code differences, but lacking experience with Verilog/VHDL I don't know how difficult such differences are.

Ran into this DE2 board used/cheap, and jumped on it for the features/price ratio. Tried a few sample projects that were already ported to this board, but haven't done any development on it so far.

Given the simplicity of the ZX81 hardware vs. other systems, it shouldn't be difficult to put together a ZX81 clone on a board like the DE1 or DE0 Nano. But the best route to get there? Dunno.. there's multiple roads to Rome... ;) For starters: last time I checked there were 4 FPGA-based Z80 implementations to choose from. :shock: Anyway you're very welcome to use my CPLD design where it suits you! One possible starting point could be the 1chipMSX, which was ported to the DE0-Nano recently. Another option is to take a Z80 implementation, bring control/data signals out to a bunch of LEDs, single-step the clock, add ROM / RAM / bits of ULA logic until you've got a working ZX81, then run it @ full clock speed.
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