[HN Gopher] ATX-80 - ZX-80 computer clone with ATmega8 processor
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ATX-80 - ZX-80 computer clone with ATmega8 processor
Author : xkriva11
Score : 72 points
Date : 2021-12-15 18:12 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.breatharian.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.breatharian.eu)
| [deleted]
| sys_64738 wrote:
| The ZX80 screen flashed when you pressed a key. Yet they still
| managed to make games for it by doing cycle accurate delays to
| account for key processing.
| Donckele wrote:
| I sense that more projects will come where similar
| microcontrollers will be simulating the machines from the 8-bit
| golden age. I wish I had the time to do it but I can't wait for
| someone to do a tandy color computer/dragon32/zx
| spectrum/bbc/c64/etc. running on an off the shelf cheap
| adafruit/sparkfun/arduino board.
| pinewurst wrote:
| The super cool thing about this one is that it's not a
| simulation. It's a full reimplementation with similar
| functional bounds.
| linker3000 wrote:
| How about a VIC20 on an ESP32?
|
| https://github.com/fdivitto/FabGL
| userbinator wrote:
| Microcontrollers are usually Harvard instead of Von Neumann
| architecture, and this one is no exception, which makes executing
| arbitrary code a little more difficult; the EEPROM is only rated
| at 100K cycles too.
| scarygliders wrote:
| Nostalgia for the days of assembling your home computer.
|
| My first home computer was a Sinclair ZX81. With the 16K RAM Pack
| which crashed the machine if it was wiggled even slightly - and
| now I have horrible flashbacks remembering a time when I spent a
| couple of hours typing in row upon row of hexadecimal (plus CRC
| check code for each line!) from the pages of a magazine to get a
| Space Invader type game on the ZX81. And then the RAM Pack
| crashed the machine before I could save to cassette tape - BOOM!
|
| A high school friend of mine had a Compukit UK101 [0] which he
| assembled himself. Quite a quirky and bulky machine that was.
|
| [0] http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/8099/Compukit-UK101/
| kingcharles wrote:
| > I have horrible flashbacks remembering a time when I spent a
| couple of hours typing in row upon row of hexadecimal (plus CRC
| check code for each line!) from the pages of a magazine to get
| a Space Invader type game on the ZX81. And then the RAM Pack
| crashed the machine before I could save to cassette tape -
| BOOM!
|
| This. And the other horrible one. Typing in hundreds of lines
| of hex only to realize there was a digit you either typed wrong
| or was wrong in the listing, so when you ran the code it just
| froze.
| jhgb wrote:
| > Quite a quirky and bulky machine that was.
|
| But apparently, unlike the ZX81, it actually had a proper
| keyboard, so there's that. ;)
| hzlatar wrote:
| I also started with ZX81. For a while, I didn't have a cable
| for tape recorder. A couple of magazines came with my ZX.
| Inside, there were some listings of games in BASIC. So, to play
| a game, a had to retype the code every time I restarted the
| computer. After a while, I started changing the code to see
| what will happen.
|
| That's how I learnt to code.
| scarygliders wrote:
| Yep, it was a great time to be growing up as a kid wasn't it.
| All through those years of home computers.
| ZX81-->VIC-20-->C=64-->Amiga 500-->Amiga 1200 (I still have
| that one).
|
| Progressing from BASIC to Z80 to 6502 to Motorola 68000 to C
| and so on. Learned Turbo Pascal and COBOL in college. Such
| nostalgia! :)
| tconfrey wrote:
| Same! I saved up a long time to buy that ZX81 + RAM pack. And
| lost a lot of hours to the wiggle and crash! I used to put the
| machine on a book and hang the RAM pack off the back to
| maintain the connection. Good times...
| Smoosh wrote:
| The popularity of the Raspberry Pi and Arduino makes me wonder
| why there wasn't more exploitation of the I/O capabilities of the
| simple PCs of the early days. I suppose there must have been some
| I/O breakout devices, but they were very niche. I guess it was a
| combination of cost (too expensive to dedicate a pc to a single
| task), and lack of cheap but useful electronics to connect to
| (though relays and switches could do many useful things).
| jdsully wrote:
| There was a lot less cool sensors and peripherals. Everything
| was more expensive and more difficult, but people did build a
| lot of cool things, like hacking the Altair to play music on a
| radio with its RF interference.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| You may want to downgrade your ideas of what the tech could do.
| No networking, no radio control of any kind, no real time
| clock, no battery backup, no WiFi, no app or web control, very
| limited graphics, no memory card boot, not fast enough for most
| applications that needed an ADC, nowhere near reliable enough
| to run for long periods unattended.
|
| And expensive. The basic PS49.95 kit would have cost the
| equivalent of PS200 today. Add 16K RAM and some I/O and the
| price was more like PS400 - which is well over what most people
| would spend on a box that might turn some lights on and off.
|
| It's pretty easy to do something useful with a Pi. You'll
| probably end up with a mess of wires, sensors, and relays, but
| the core stack is fast enough to run a web server and to
| control useful peripherals.
|
| Compared to a ZX81, the Pi is a supercomputer. Literally. It's
| equivalent to 80s era supermainframes. But super cheap. So of
| course you can do far, far more with it.
| timthorn wrote:
| There were loads of addons and I/O projects. For just a taste,
| take a look at eg Usbourne's "How to make Computer Model
| Controllers" from https://usborne.com/gb/books/computer-and-
| coding-books
|
| (Direct link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FqhExLPJZHakw6Rp
| Nr_LKtmtk1h...)
|
| Or the works of R.A.Penfold
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