Hahah... Yeah, already designed. I had a different application in mind, but same difference. I just used three '597s for the inputs. (unfortunately that adds pullup resistor requirements, etc. but I needed other hardware on there anyway). I didn't try to preserve pin-level compatibility on the inputs though because of the need for some other I/Os, but it could run the same software just with a compile option.ravyne wrote:Another baseboard that might be kinda fun would be a JAMMA baseboard with the golden fingers"edge connector. Straight RGB like you say, some shift registers on the input to maintain software compatibility. I don't know if there are any extra pins available to hook up the coin mech / service buttons...
That was sort-of my thought with the AVCore, but straddling a little different line. You're almost describing something like the OneStation portable. (Basically the "device" is just a screen, speaker, inputs, case and the "cartridges" are entire game systems.It would also be cool if your baseboards had a card-edge connector and the core stuff was on a cartridge of sorts. Then we could have the AVR-based Uzebox cartridge to start and maybe someone designs a PIC-based cartridge, or even an ARM-based cartridge.[...]Just some thoughts I had.
Probably the better line to draw there is to really just put all the peripherals on the base (video encoder with colorburst clock, audio gunk, connectors, etc.) and then you just have "IO" level connectors off the cartridge. (SPI/SD, RGB+sync, GPIO,etc.) Then the baseboard really doesn't care what CPU is in the cartridge... Or any of the other peripherals it brings along with it...
But for now I just think it's cool to have a 40-pin dip with video out, SD, audio, and MCU. I need to just run these and not let creeping featuritus take hold of me just yet!
-Clay