Would it be horrendously expensive to recreate the CPC from the 664 onwards with the plus capabilities built in and with all the expansion boards that have come out recently, and to have it all in one box?
It depends of what you want to do to recreate the machine. If it is something like a super-emulator running in a small device it would not be expensive at all; if it is with a FPGA I guess that it would be reasonably cheap but a lot of effort would be needed in order to make it to behave 100% like an original Amstrad with all the expansions. If we are talking about a completely new device that has the Plus capabilities it could be more complicate because the ASIC is, to my current understanding, not easy to implement by hardware de novo and very very difficult to buy. If it was a "normal" 6128 it would be easier, in fact, Just CPC is quite similar to that...
http://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/details/Just-CPC (http://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/details/Just-CPC),-amstrad-CPC-clone-PCB-board.-4212
For sure, the hardware experts in the forum will be able to shed more light in the question than me :)
*hmmm*
Quote from: dcdrac on 00:24, 25 November 15Would it be horrendously expensive to recreate the CPC from the 664 onwards with the plus capabilities built in and with all the expansion boards that have come out recently, and to have it all in one box?
Not from the 664... But, a 6128 with most existing expansions embedded, yes for around 100€.
By the way, the PLUS capabilities are not interresting at all... They are limited colours display with fake sprites and bugged DMA.
Quote from: TotO on 06:35, 25 November 15
Not from the 664... But, a 6128 with most existing expansions embedded, yes for around 100€.
By the way, the PLUS capabilities are not interresting at all... They are limited colours display with fake sprites and bugged DMA.
In your opinion. I however disagree. Please do not turn every thread that mentions the plus into a reason to start your one man plus bashing crusade.
The thread title is "Recreate the CPC", and it is exactly what I does. So, excuse me to answer if I don't meet all requirements. :-\
My design include something like X-MEM, X-MASS, PlayCity and more... Parts can be reused to save money and free the expansion slot.
It is not my fault if you goes touchy each time I spoke about the PLUS capabilities. I own it and what I said is not new.
If the graphic side is improved, it should be better. (fine if it is compatible, but it mustn't be a limitation for me)
The original post includes "with plus features" your reply with "the PLUS capabilities are not interesting at all" was totally unnecessary and you well known thought on the plus are irrelevant to this thread.
Sent from my A3-A30 using Tapatalk
It is my point of view and I explain why... He don't need to take acount of that. Nor you.
Wow a lot of disagreements on these boards of late, everyone is a bit touchy. Come on, we are all here because we love the CPC! Play nice!
I've thought about a different angle - recreate the CPC by implementing some of the obsolete parts with CPLDs. The plan would be first to build a plug in replacement for the CRTC, as there is an implementation already available. Then you would need to do the gate array in another CPLD (and a D2A). Then integrate the other logic on the mainboard in another CPLD. Eventually you can build a much smaller CPC, with a smaller z80 processor, a PLCC FDC9266 (smaller and doesn't need a data separator), one or two RAM chips instead of 16, and most other parts in small packaging CPLDs. You can integrate other peripherals, and it should be possible to overclock the whole system significantly. Finally, you could look at adding other features to the gate array.
The biggest hurdle is the gate array implementation.
It is close to what I am doing, except that I meet a 6128 form factor.
All possible, although it would be a massive amount of work to do this. If it was some extremely rare computer I'd be with you, but the CPC is still readily available.
Bryce.
I ask this as somebody with absolutely zero tech knowledge, but how come the ASIC chip can't be recreated/reproduced?
I know that if you buy a plus with a duff ASIC, the computer is pretty much worthless as it is the one part that isn't available.
Surely with the knowledge/talents that you guys have, it is doable?
If you followed the way I described, you could implement the plus features of the ASIC with a CPLD - in the gate array (and perhaps needing some extra stuff in the CRTC, not sure about that one).
As Bryce said it's all possible, but it's a silly amount of work. As I said, reimplementing the gate array is the crux of the problem. The rest is still a massive amount of work, but it's more obvious how to do it.
Exactly.
I know some guys at the MESS forums that are specialist decapping and taking high res pictures of the circuits inside.
Would that be useful to decipher the inner workings of the GA? Because it may be worth to sacrifice 3 GA's to gain full understanding of them.
What's your guess?
Do they also do the reverse engineering of the silicon or just take the pictures? Because that's the difficult bit.
Bryce.
With hi-resolution electron microscopy data of a chip like the ASIC is actually possible to fully do the reverse engineering, but one thing is "possible" and another is "viable" or "cheap" :) . If my memory does not fail, I recap that it has been done for the SNES in order to achieve perfect emulation and it would also work great for a FPGA implementation. On the other hand, as Bryce said, reverse engineering from the pictures is difficult and fabricating a new chip from the info, although possible, is probably out of the scope of a particular person unless he or she is really rich. Good news is that this could probably be done using dead ASICs, because it is unlike that all of them are dead due to the same reason.
Funnily enough, in the lab we usually do this kind of job to reconstruct atomic models of protein complexes (that are way smaller that the smallest chip) but the amount of money and time that is spent in the process is quite crazy. The ASIC would be easier to image and map, though :D
I actually looked into the state of the art in this domain a while back. What they used to do was print the picture in a giant size on many pieces of paper, and lay it out on a very large floor. Then engineers go around and draw out each transistor on top of the photo (there are some pictures of people doing this on the net somewhere). Next it has to be entered into a computer. These days there are tools that can do some of the transistor identification automatically, but they are far from perfect and there is still a lot of manual work involved. It takes a long time, and while there are companies that will do it for you, it is not the sort of thing that those in the community could afford.
EDIT: of course you can do it yourself if you have the pictures too. But it the sort of job that will take you years. There were some guys who did it for an acorn ULA, and they have built some custom tools to help. Look here if you want to see what a nightmare that is! stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8539
It should also be mentioned, that while these techniques are quite good for digital circuitry, reverse-engineering analogue silicon is pretty much impossible.
Bryce.
Also I forgot that the topic I linked to is reverse engineering from an original blueprint of the chip die, which is much easier than doing it from a photo.
IMHO it's important to stay compatible to existing hardware. True for the 6128 part, for the X-cards part. And sorry imho also true for the Plus part if doable. Ok, a lot of things could have done better in the Plus for todays 2015 perspective and maybe even from 1992s POV. However it is like it is. Really! Let's stay compatible! It's great to add new features, but please after being compatible. :)
Even if only a part of the Plus gets emulated (colors, softscroll, rasterinterupt) it would be great.
About the Plus sprites: If they get implemented, then we can easily expand them from 16 colors (4 bits per byte used) to 256 colors (all 8 bits used) at (nearly) no cost. If you want add a pointer that points to somewhere in the 576 KB first RAM and you have real sprites.
I pledge for compatibility and expansions. :)
Let's not be misguided by personal likes or dislikes, such a project would be too big for that. :) :) :)
I agree totally with TFM. If you did this then you need everything. And the Plus is more necessary than say PlayCity etc, as it has software already. And then adding more to the ASIC via use of a byte rather than nibble to get 256 colours, or extra palettes, and pointers to allow far more flexibility would turn our plus plus into something amazing
Quote from: Trebmint on 21:28, 25 November 15
I agree totally with TFM. If you did this then you need everything. And the Plus is more necessary than say PlayCity etc, as it has software already. And then adding more to the ASIC via use of a byte rather than nibble to get 256 colours, or extra palettes, and pointers to allow far more flexibility would turn our plus plus into something amazing
Hell yes, that'll do me too. Who's building it?
I love PlayCity and it's new standard now too. But adding it won't be a problem imho. :)
Yep shame that our best hardware guy doesnt like the Plus.
Don't think so, he may be just a bit disappointed about the 'new features'. Guess we all can find a positive agreement here. :) BTW: An new CPC is a huge project, so maybe a well team would be helpful. But not too much. For CPCnG we had a too big team, all power got lost in discussions, final result was close to be zero. Maybe we're more lucky this time. :)
Yeah too many cooks. This would be better to be done by a small team. People can then vote with their wallets. However I wasn't aware this was an actual idea to make this hardware.
It just makes me wish I was hardware rather than purely software, so i could build something wow
Quote from: TFM on 22:53, 25 November 15
For CPCnG we had a too big team, all power got lost in discussions, final result was close to be zero.
Another conclusion should be: keep it simple! Too much ideas were also a big problem of the CPCng project...
Quote from: Trebmint on 22:15, 25 November 15Yep shame that our best hardware guy doesnt like the Plus.
I don't considerate me as a best hardware guy, but I think this message is for me... ;D
I own a 6128 PLUS and like its exclusive dedicated games.
I have done my best to make the PlayCity and X-MEM compatible with the PLUS.
I have redesigned the C4CPC GUI (you are all using it actually...) and made some tests for gerald (the best hardware guy).
Think and understand what you want... 8)
Quote from: villain on 07:10, 26 November 15
Another conclusion should be: keep it simple! Too much ideas were also a big problem of the CPCng project...
That's right. Or better keep it doable. :) The problem of the CPCnG was that everything needed to be from scratch and with the great eZ80 of course everything would be different.
Here IMHO it's different, we can use the CPC6128 design, and add SF2 respective X-card technology. So everything could be integrated on one motherboard and be kept simple and small. That's not my idea TotO pointed that out some day. Well, add some nice Plus features and there you go.
From the software side it would be nice to make a game for it, which would need the spcs.
Are we going to form a dev. team here?
Quote from: Trebmint on 23:52, 25 November 15Yeah too many cooks. This would be better to be done by a small team. People can then vote with their wallets. However I wasn't aware this was an actual idea to make this hardware.It just makes me wish I was hardware rather than purely software, so i could build something wow
Right and right, but be lucky to be a software guy, it will be needed. :)
Used to I found this on some Japanese page with sketches. :)
That's the work of a concept artist: http://www.androidarts.com/
I used to follow him on Twitter. I love his takes on classic games. Good stuff.
Thanks pal. :) Links under "Hardware projects" are incredible Amigas MSX Spectrums and others. :)
Beautiful concept art. This would have been superb back in the day!
Quote from: TotO on 06:35, 25 November 15
Not from the 664... But, a 6128 with most existing expansions embedded, yes for around 100€.
By the way, the PLUS capabilities are not interresting at all... They are limited colours display with fake sprites and bugged DMA.
To integrate Plus features is a horrible amount of work. Nevertheless of course I would like to see them (even if it's an illusion). In this case we could 'debug' things and also add some more power. An example: Sprites use 4 bits of a byte to define the color of one sprite-dot. Now use all 8 bits and we would habe 255 colors instead of 15. But yes, to recreate the ASIC is probably beyond any sense.
I'm really looking forward to your X-CPC project, this will be definitely the next step in CPC's evolution. :) :) :)
I'd rather see a nes on a chip with cartridge port on a cpc compatible board. When cart is inserted keys and joystick and video circuitry map to nes.... but likewise have a way to load nes games from cpc and flick over in software. My other computer can do this (albeit it is based on new hardware)...
NES doesn't use a Z80. But Sega does. ;) :)
I am wondering if the super retro advance adapter, retrogen and retroport could be adapted to work in a CPC...
Quote from: TotO on 06:35, 25 November 15
By the way, the PLUS capabilities are not interresting at all... They are limited colours display with fake sprites and bugged DMA.
The CPC+ features are pretty nice to have, but I'd take a 6128+V9990 any day!
Quote from: dcdrac on 00:24, 25 November 15
Would it be horrendously expensive to recreate the CPC from the 664 onwards with the plus capabilities built in and with all the expansion boards that have come out recently, and to have it all in one box?
No idea how possible it is, but...
I'd quite like a small box mounted on the back of the TV which is the equivalent of 6128 Plus hardware, but instead of ROMs, discs, tapes (is a 2018 model), cartridges, MF2, it uses images.
You could then remap the wireless USB keyboard as required. Maybe this would be redesigned as a CPC layout.
I suspect it's called a netbook and WinAPE...
Something I've wanted to do for ages... I am making with a PenPal in Greece a 7.5 GB version of Windows 7. :)
Quote from: The_Mole_UK on 13:47, 29 September 18No idea how possible it is, but...I'd quite like a small box mounted on the back of the TV which is the equivalent of 6128 Plus hardware, but instead of ROMs, discs, tapes (is a 2018 model), cartridges, MF2, it uses images.
CPCcast(TM) :D