by MikeJ | May 18, 2023 | News
I’ve been shipping Namco CUS34 replacements for a while and the majority of the engineering work was done over 10 years ago. Reverse engineering the silicon by decapsulation of the die, taking pictures and manually tracing them is best way to understand what is...
by MikeJ | Oct 31, 2020 | News
Well, more time has passed. I had surgery on my jaw a few weeks ago in an attempt to remove part of a wisdom tooth that was left behind a few years ago. I’m in recovery, but it really knocked me out for a bit. We are making good progress on both the DE10-nano...
by MikeJ | Jun 19, 2020 | News
Sorry it’s been a bit quiet here for the last few months. I had to move flat three times since January and all the retro kit has been in storage. Work has been intense and it’s only the last week or two that life is calming down enough to get the Retro...
by MikeJ | Jun 19, 2020 | News
I think many people agree that retro hardware looks best on CRTs from the same period. The downside is CRTs are expensive, bulky and hard to get hold of now. I’ve got a small Sony PVM I use for testing, and a large Sony broadcast monitor that is most often used...
by MikeJ | Jun 19, 2020 | News
I wrote the first FPGA Scramble/Frogger core way back in 2007 (when we were all a lot younger)…. It’s been ported to all sorts of other hardware with little changes, but when we were moving it to our new build system I took the opportunity to...
by MikeJ | Nov 21, 2019 | News
Replay2 is still in layout and a few things are awaiting design closure (primarily memory configuration). The FPGA chosen is a Xilinx Ultrascale+ device (super fast) with Quad core A-53s, dual R5s and a Maii GPU. The CPU section has DDR4 DRAM, and the FPGA most likely...
by MikeJ | Nov 6, 2019 | News
Our resident coding genius Erique has been hard at work finishing off driver support for the DB. Source and the ROM binary can be round here : https://github.com/FPGAArcade/amiga_code Please also take a look at the FAQ here: How to install and setup the 060...
by MikeJ | Nov 6, 2019 | News
Still a lot of work going on to move the codebase to the new github repositories and roll out multiplatform support – initially for the Arduino Vidor. Some binaries have been put here while we faff about https://github.com/FPGAArcade/replay_release ...
by MikeJ | Nov 6, 2019 | News
While there is a lot of exciting new stuff going on, I’m still trying to finish off some old commitments. Thanks to some CAD help from the team and the fantastic guys in Taiwan we have received the laser cut ATX I/O panels. Contact me if you want one. It only...
by MikeJ | Oct 29, 2019 | News
Hi all. We’ve released our RTG HDL files and Amiga driver code. https://github.com/FPGAArcade/amiga_code https://github.com/FPGAArcade/replay_amiga This uses some primitives in replay_common. This is just a code dump to support the other projects while we...
by MikeJ | Oct 7, 2019 | News
I forgot to post that I sent ceramic variants of these chips to be decapped and photographed. Denise: https://siliconpr0n.org/map/csg/8362r8/mz_mit20x/ Paula: https://siliconpr0n.org/map/csg/8364r4/mz_mit20x/ Both join our Alice chip from before :...
by MikeJ | Jul 8, 2019 | News
The old punBB forum has served us well, but is now looking a little dated. While most of the developer chat has moved to Slack, the forum is still a useful public archive, and will become more useful as we roll out the Arduino and Replay2 hardware support. I’m...
by MikeJ | Jun 17, 2019 | News
I made some comments in a post here regarding FPGA selection for Replay2 Replay2 …. the saga continues One of the reasons we have been targeting the Arduino Vidor board is to get a low-cost alternative for Replay1 for people to play with – that is actually...
by MikeJ | Jun 17, 2019 | News
Here “Erique” the world renowned Amiga demo coder is doing some actual hardware debug. I think he got a bit over excited if I’m honest…. The Vidor currently has some limitations with it’s USB OTG support, primarily connecting a hub...
by MikeJ | Jun 17, 2019 | News
Coming from an ASIC background, I generally don’t use the FPGA tool IDEs. Sure they have a place for debug, but for consistency especially when using source control systems, scripting is the way forward. Both Intel and Xilinx have good support for TCL in their...
by MikeJ | Jun 17, 2019 | News
The very talented Arnim Laeuger has been working with our new Replay framework to bring his games to the Arudino Vidor 4000 FPGA platform (called V4 from here down) The Vidor is a low cost FPGA board available here : https://store.arduino.cc/mkr-vidor-4000 To support...
by MikeJ | Apr 11, 2019 | News
I have an original Replay1a board back for repair at the moment, so I thought I would take a picture of the family together. R1a on the left. R1b next with the 68060 daughter board. Top right the Arduino MKRVidor4000 we are targeting to be a low cost R1 replacement....
by MikeJ | Apr 11, 2019 | News
We’ve sold all the boards in Europe. Jim Drew still has one or two in the US which can be shipped anywhere. If you have a Replay1 board, this is your last change to get one! Ping me or Jim. Cheers, Mike
by MikeJ | Mar 10, 2019 | News
Took a quick break from the new Replay build system today and tested a batch of replacement 503 ICs. They appear to work well, so I can ship the board back to it’s owner and get some desk space back! You can see the new 40 pin module working on the board below....
by MikeJ | Feb 20, 2019 | News
Finally, after being stuck in Swedish customs for nearly a month (thanks PostNord), the PCB for my 40 pin Konami 503 ASIC replacement has arrived. I’m experimenting with an Atmel 5V CPLD on these, rather than the old Altera MAX7064 which is getting hard to get,...
