Bally Astrocade interface – Update BOM

The MiSTer core for Cosmic Guerilla has been completed. This core uses a TMS9900 CPU where the original uses a TMS9980 (8 bit version of same CPU, just does 2 byte reads/writes instead of 1 word read/write). However, game speed is controlled using vertical counter, so should be the same as the original. Sound effects…

Well, what a weird year it has been so far.  I’ve been learning to code in VHDL and Verilog on the MiSTer platform. The first task was one I have wanted to do since I bought an FPGA Replay was to take the existing Bally Arcadia console core, add in the necessary extra ram, pattern…

Version 2.3 of the PCB has arrived, been assembled and tested … and it works without any wire patches! There is, however, one minor problem. I added some extra bits of screen print on the wrong side. This has now been fixed on the gerbers and any future boards will be correct, but I am…

One of the first things I did on the MiSTer once I had acquired a setup was to take the code for the Astrocade console, add in the additional hardware used by the arcade versions of the games to see if I could get them running. (See original post here) Following that I then decided…

Following on from Astrocade hardware, I thought I would like to do a core as near as possible from scratch. So apart from using the Z80 from opencores, and basing the timing code on that used in the Pacman core, I went from the Crazy Balloon schematics to produce a complete core for it. Where…

Populated the necessary locations for Gorf on the new board, did some sanity checks to make sure I wasn’t putting 5v down any lines to the DE10, discovered a missing track and some layout errors. It all works and I even managed to get the speech working from DDRAM, so you don’t actually need to…