Recent posts

#1

Amstrad CPC hardware / Re: Designing and building the...

Last post by McArti0 - Yesterday at 22:54

@Benedikt 
and will it be possible to display something like this?

https://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?msg=215472

#2

Games / Re: WIP Transversion

Last post by Jean-Marie - Yesterday at 22:51

Nice  Could you please add the Cursor keys in the list of redefinable keys ?
I noticed that sometimes, when I'm hit by a laser bolt, I remain unscathed. I dunno if that's a bug, or maybe I misunderstood something?

#3

B

Amstrad CPC hardware / Re: Designing and building the...

Last post by Benedikt - Yesterday at 22:41

and still only 64kB for CRTC?

Yes. The plan is to give the CRTC an unmodified address space of 64 KiB.
But I also plan to give the pixel generators a 16 bit wide data path to a pair of 64 KiB pages in RAM, which means that the total size of the frame buffer will be up to 128 KiB.
A 128 KiB frame buffer should be sufficient for a well-balanced CPC-like system without an intelligent GPU.
For instance, an interlaced 4-color mode with 640x400 pixels would use 64000 bytes and expanding it to 832x576 pixels would still only fill 119808 bytes and leave 11 KiB free.

#4

Amstrad CPC hardware / Re: Other Video Cards

Last post by McArti0 - Yesterday at 22:23

only 20-25MHz z80, everything else makes no sense.
But T-rex already exists in FPGA.

#5

Amstrad CPC hardware / Re: Designing and building the...

Last post by McArti0 - Yesterday at 22:13

and still only 64kB for CRTC?

#6

Amstrad CPC hardware / Re: Other Video Cards

Last post by Prodatron - Yesterday at 22:10

I agree to Andy, better graphic only makes sense, if there is a blitter/GPU included in the hardware like with the (VDP9990).

#7

General Discussion - Introductions / Re: Hi there!

Last post by Devlin - Yesterday at 21:02

Welcome welcome! Looking forward to your project, it sounds very interesting!

#8

B

Amstrad CPC hardware / Re: Designing and building the...

Last post by Benedikt - Yesterday at 20:51

While I'm not among the potential customers for this kind of things, I love to follow the news on them as after all, they're pretty cool.

To clarify something that must have gotten lost when I wrote the initial post:
For both, bureaucratic and logistical reasons, I will not be selling any hardware, except for the occasional spare PCB, perhaps.
The goal is a publicly available, free design that anyone who can hold a soldering iron can build.
The goal is less that people admire my work, and more that people can replicate my work.

Also, it's great (and unusual) that you're "relatively new to the CPC world". Can you elaborate on that? I mean, you need to really like the CPC to create your project, but you apparently didn't have one in the 80s or 90s. What is exactly your story? What made you interested in Amstrad's machine? What is... the magic of the CPC?

My story is that I was not even around when any of the machines in question hit the market, but learned programing on the PC platform with a then decade-old IDE for MS-DOS.
What makes me interested in the CPC is its simplicity combined with its similarity to the original IBM PC platform, and ironically the absence of magic.
The engineers in Mühlhausen have shown that a CPC can essentially be built without any special components, as long as you can live with a somewhat larger chip count.

I love the idea. I'm personally looking forward to the new keyboard.

I have to admit that I still have not made use of your second pair of adapter PCBs, but we will get there.

The expansions should best be compatibly with already existing hardware, like the additional sound chip could e.g. be compatible to the PlayCity expansion.

That is the plan, but admittedly not in the case of the PlayCity expansion:

• The first 320 KiB of RAM will be Dk'Tronics compatible, the first 576 KiB Dobbertin compatible, the full 1024 KiB will use RAM7's technique
• The DAC will be a Digiblaster compatible Bourns SIL R2R resistor network
• The AY-3-8910 PSGs will use the canonical multi-PSG addressing described in the data sheet, using external XOR gates to imitate the mask-programmed chip addresses
• The RTC, if included, will be Dobbertin compatible, because only a single "phantom clock" chip is needed
• The Serial Port, if included, will be Amstrad compatible
• The IDE interface, if included, will be compatible with Yarek's IDE8255, because of that design's simplicity
• The 8-bit bidirectional parallel port will be KC compact compatible, the 7-bit output Amstrad compatible
• The expansion port itself will use the familiar 50-pin micro ribbon connector, i.e. no obscure Robotron part

#9

General Discussion - Introductions / Re: Hi there!

Last post by BSC - Yesterday at 20:21

Welcome, that's an interesting project you have before you. You are not by any chance planning to make a video series out of this ..?

#10

Amstrad CPC hardware / Re: Designing and building the...

Last post by Richard_Lloyd - Yesterday at 20:15

Oh YES!