microcat - The ultimative ARM based handheld game console

DarkestEx · October 30, 2015, 07:28:32 PM

The 6502 emulator is finally booting

Here is a video of my setup for all who want to see it:

novenary · October 30, 2015, 07:35:18 PM

Nice job.

Snektron · October 30, 2015, 07:57:16 PM

Wooo awesome

Dream of Omnimaga · October 31, 2015, 05:28:44 AM

Wait, does it mean Microcat will be able to run scaled-down (TI-Boy SE style) NES and Atari 2600 games?

Either way, good job. I'm happy to see stuff running on this

EDIT: If it really runs BASIC, does it mean that we could actually make BASIC games (the old school language)?

Snektron · October 31, 2015, 10:36:17 AM

Well, judging by the video, it doesn't run very fast

But a text rpg or something could be done i guess, but there'd have to be a basic interpreter in the os.

adekto · October 31, 2015, 12:30:07 PM

you guys like to have basic?
wel there some wierd things in that video like the amount of ram is wierd
i still dont know why we are using 6502 version of basic

DarkestEx · October 31, 2015, 01:30:26 PM

Quote from: Cumred_Snektron on October 31, 2015, 10:36:17 AM
Well, judging by the video, it doesn't run very fast [emoji14]
But a text rpg or something could be done i guess, but there'd have to be a basic interpreter in the os.

Well its not the BASIC but the screen redraw. I redraw the entire screen on every character send by the 6502 emulator. I will definitively optimize that.
When using the emulator without the display and using the serial console, its really fast.

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on October 31, 2015, 05:28:44 AM
Wait, does it mean Microcat will be able to run scaled-down (TI-Boy SE style) NES and Atari 2600 games?

Either way, good job. I'm happy to see stuff running on this

EDIT: If it really runs BASIC, does it mean that we could actually make BASIC games (the old school language)?

If people want we will indeed make a basic interpreter too. Its not too much work if most people here like to program in a token basic such as on the TI calculators

p4nix · October 31, 2015, 02:26:52 PM

It doesn't seem too fast anyway. Is it the emulator being so slow or the redraw (last one would be fatal)?

DarkestEx · October 31, 2015, 02:30:24 PM

Quote from: p4nix on October 31, 2015, 02:26:52 PM
It doesn't seem too fast anyway. Is it the emulator being so slow or the redraw (last one would be fatal)?

As I just said

The emulator is really fast but the redaw is very slow. This is the fastest CPU and communication frequency over SPI.
We will be switching to parallel data communication later on, which should increase the speed by about 8 times.

p4nix · October 31, 2015, 02:31:45 PM

How fast is displaying the same char on the whole screen without anything like emulators and stuff slowing down?

DarkestEx · October 31, 2015, 02:32:50 PM

Quote from: p4nix on October 31, 2015, 02:31:45 PM
How fast is displaying the same char on the whole screen without anything like emulators and stuff slowing down?

I don't know and I can't measure it right now, but from earlier tests I know that the redraw rate is very poor.
I used some delays in the pixel drawing code as the CPU was too fast and overran the OLED. So in have a 5 CPU cycle delay per pixel.
The CPU frequency is roughly 120MHz. But its probably very imprecise as I use the internal oscillator and PLL that up times 10. But for breadboarding that works.

adekto · November 01, 2015, 01:29:32 AM

Quote from: p4nix on October 31, 2015, 02:31:45 PM
How fast is displaying the same char on the whole screen without anything like emulators and stuff slowing down?

we have some prototype code on a buffer that ran realy smooth, i dint have any way to calculated it perfectly but i say it was around 12 fps at least over spi on lesser hardware

DarkestEx · November 01, 2015, 03:08:41 AM

Though we will probably be using parallel in the final console as it can give up to an IIRC 8 times speed increase.

Dream of Omnimaga · November 01, 2015, 06:33:45 AM

Quote from: adekto on October 31, 2015, 12:30:07 PM
you guys like to have basic?
wel there some wierd things in that video like the amount of ram is wierd
i still dont know why we are using 6502 version of basic

I would be ok if the firmware excludes BASIC and has it as third-party application, but adding it would definitively be nice to allow more calculator programmers to get into Microcat development easily. I would probably not use BASIC as much as Lua, though, but having it would be nice for porting games like First Fantasy: Mana Force.

DarkestEx · November 01, 2015, 11:08:03 AM

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on November 01, 2015, 06:33:45 AM
Quote from: adekto on October 31, 2015, 12:30:07 PM
you guys like to have basic?
wel there some wierd things in that video like the amount of ram is wierd
i still dont know why we are using 6502 version of basic

I would be ok if the firmware excludes BASIC and has it as third-party application, but adding it would definitively be nice to allow more calculator programmers to get into Microcat development easily. I would probably not use BASIC as much as Lua, though, but having it would be nice for porting games like First Fantasy: Mana Force.

Well as you might know, porting a proper BASIC engine is almost as much work as Lua. If you would like to develop in Lua then others can learn it too. If so, the BASIC interpreter would be optional and might come later.

I don't know what many people want who are interested in the project. If anybody wants some features, please go and request them. I really appreciate any feedback, especially regarding the programming language. The worst that can happen is that it might not fit into the remaining space (for BIOS and Lua firmware releated wishes) or that I ask you to program it yourself.