[HN Gopher] Bomb Jack display hardware
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       Bomb Jack display hardware
        
       Author : mrandish
       Score  : 110 points
       Date   : 2024-06-21 03:25 UTC (19 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | mrandish wrote:
       | I randomly stumbled across this impressive, home brew graphics
       | subsystem for C64 today. The goal seems to be pushing the
       | boundaries of what would have been possible with period-correct,
       | through-hole 74LS parts (no FPGA or ASIC) toward advanced arcade-
       | level graphics hardware. Quite ambitious for a one-person hobby
       | project and, as the video below shows, very successful!
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLVZav7mVcI&t
        
         | ikari_pl wrote:
         | is it C64-specific though?
        
           | ralferoo wrote:
           | There are numerous mentions to Z80 as well as C64, and the
           | arcade hardware was Z80 and this project started life as a
           | plug-in compatible board, so presumably it still has support
           | for being driven by Z80.
           | 
           | If it started life as a Z80 board, probably the C64 interface
           | is just synthesising _RD, _WR and _MREQ (and maybe _IORQ)
           | that a Z80 design would need from the RD/_WR, clock and high
           | address bits on 6502.
        
             | wellytopness wrote:
             | 8 data bits, write signal, reset address state logic. Each
             | byte written will prime the 24 bit address to write to in
             | the hardware and then store bytes with auto-incrementing
             | address. This lets the C64, or any other machine capable of
             | generating those signals, to write large amounts of memory
             | to the hardware.
        
         | Dwedit wrote:
         | What about ULAs? That's what the ZX spectrum used. They're not
         | quite FPGAs, and not quite ASICs.
        
       | chrisallick wrote:
       | jesus dude... thats amazing.
        
       | Ylpertnodi wrote:
       | I have to admit, and it only happened once, i threw a sickie at
       | work (92?) to finish playing bombjack.
       | 
       | Another game I'm looking for is 'prensorium'.
        
       | wellytopness wrote:
       | Thank you for posting. This is one of my projects. I was
       | wondering why all the subscribers joined today.
        
         | TacticalCoder wrote:
         | What's the relation between this and MAME? I don't have the
         | Bomb Jack arcade PCB (I've got others though) but I do have a
         | Pi2JAMMA and, well, Bomb Jack using MAME.
         | 
         | Is this project something that could be replacing (partial?)
         | hardware on a real Bomb Jack PCB (not unlike what some are
         | doing with C64 chips, where new replacement can be dropped in
         | place of old broken chips)?
        
           | wellytopness wrote:
           | It started off as a direct Bombjack arcade hardware
           | replacement, it then grew way beyond what the arcade was
           | capable of. MAME is software, this is hardware, no relation.
           | :) Although interestingly the first version of the hardware
           | did allow me to find a bug in the MAME implementation.
        
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       (page generated 2024-06-21 23:02 UTC)