D3thAdd3r wrote:I'd say your demo will be more than just impressive at this rate! For curiosity, is all your mod playback code in assembly? It sounds amazing!
Hi D3thAdd3r. Yes, at this point, all is at assembly language level. But the sound mixing is at about 1/4 horizontal frequency because I don't have enough VERT free blank scanlines to process the 31 kHZ pre-mix ring buffer (The actual mixing is at 7.75 kHZ). So at this point, the UZEBOX have a better sound resolution. Thinking of it, maybe downmixing the UZEBOX to 1/2 scanline will result about the same sound quality and will add some ram and a lot of free CPU cycles?
The player without video generation at 31 khz sounds like the original .MOD
Anyway, it's good enough to do voices, sound effect and music without any problem.
Thinking of it, maybe downmixing the UZEBOX to 1/2 scanline will result about the same sound quality and will add some ram and a lot of free CPU cycles?
Before the "kernel upgrade" that would have been the case. Since, there's no more need for a ring buffer and 1 sample is mixed during the horizontal blanking period of each scanline. There was a wait loop in there before so I recycled those cycles for mixing.
Since I don't have much free time for programming now, I will post my last work on the Atxmega stuff...
Here is the youtube link:
Tha animation sequence is taken from "SPACEBALLS, State Of The Art" demo on Amiga, and is RLE encoded to save program space on the Atxmega.
It was made about the last month. Your comments are welcome!
I hope I will have more time to work on that this fall.
Okey, this topic is old. I don't know if I should start a new thread or not, so I will start it here.
I will reveal you something I have found by myself that I think was never seen before. I think it's simply the first time it's done. (Some kind of new world record?? Anyway...)
Since I work on electronic project about just on winter( in the summer, I fly helicopters instead... and of course, other outside things), I started to play with the Atxmega again. I love this MCU. What I wanted was a console with a lot of power, So, I started to look at ARM without any success with the development plateform. After thinking about some things for about a week, I had an Idea. The Atxmega have a lot of counters and PWM output. The Idea I had was to use all these counters to do an automatic 8 bits counter from the ATXMEGA to 8 outside pins without MCU intervention. The counter have to count from 0 to 255, this way, eventually we can use this counter to stream the DATA from an external RAM to the Monitor without MCU intervention. After 2 more weeks of works tweaking with counters, it finally works! I have managed to have 8 MCU pins to count automatically from 0 to 255.
I tested that with 8 leds on my breadboard. But since the external RAM is SMT and I know that a breadboard is really bad for external BUS transfer, I had to make a real prototype on a real PCB. I started last week to design a first console prototype as proof of concept. I now have finished the schematic and board routing. All I have to do now is making the board, solder the parts and start writing some test code. Here is a 3d picture of the First final prototype Console:
ATXMEGAconsole.jpg (201.5 KiB) Viewed 8190 times
Ok, All SMT. But we don't have choice if we want something more powewrfull. and it's only 3 chips, not that hard to solder. And if the project works, we will have something really SOLID!
By solid, I mean that:
-Dual Page RAM buffer, 256x256 with 256 colors.
-Real RAM Video mapping, no more sprites needed. You have full control of all the DOTS in Video space.
-Horizontal and Vertical FAST scrolling. (As fast as sonic game! Really, no joke!)
-Easy to compose music .MOD with 4 Channels High resolution Audio + 2 Channels for game sound effects. (I already proven that with only 1 MHZ CPU left after all video generation... Imagine with 42 MHZ)
-And a lot lot more.
Why lot?
Because with the MCU that not need to stream the VIDEO to the VGA, you have 99% of free time to process your game. YES, 99% of free CPU time. At 42 MHZ it's a lot of power. You can even do some modest 3D graphics at this speed.
Do you remember all the demoscene made on the Commodore 64 and even Amiga, This will be possible to do that kind of stuff with this console.
here is a link to a youtube Video of a demoscene on a C64 to show you what can be possible with this console (Of course with better sound and better video)
So, This console remain Minimalist with only 3 IC, and still use AVR studio and AVR GCC (WINAVR). No need to learn a new language. I don't know how many people have an interest in this project, but I think it's the perfect alternative for a NEW challenging console. Of course, if people are interested in this project, all the Schematics and source code will be available for free. I can even start a batch of Manufactured PCB and provide The board with all parts at COST if I found enough interest in the project.
Something is sure, I will push this console and I will code on it.
UZE: I will need you help, approbation and support on this for sure! I think this is what you tried to accomplished for some times and me too!
But for now, I must wait to the weekend to make my prototype board and I cross my fingers... I hope that all the things on paper will work in the real world. I will keep you informed, and let me know all about your interest in this wonderful project.
I like the general idea but see the big problem something like a Raspberry Pi is available at extremly low prices; lower than your design could ever be because of the sheer amount of units built. And the Raspi runs Linux which means there already is "a lot" of game software available for it and it's relatively easy to build some game yourself.
I still wonder why so many people are hot for the uzebox but I think it's that "40-Pin DIP 50%-overclocked + spare parts" thing. And this fuzzy feeling of the early 1980ies, where games were still developed by real men, not those wannabe drag'n'drop script kiddies throwing something together in flash
If your box should be a success, you certainly have to introduce something which is cool like that. I think the big thing is still DIP. I don't like to solder SMD either; even though I'm able to.