165 replies to this topic

[Curt Vendel]

I have finished recovering the GDS stream and reconstructed the GTIA, MARIA, STELLA and several other proprietary Atari chips, now to see if the GDS can be translated to VHDL or if I can find a fab that still does hmos/nmos the original Atari chips can be reproduced at minimum - in SMD sizes...



Curt

[spookt]

Quite simply amazing!  

[dwhyte]

Curt, you truly are a godsend... This is great news!

[Allan]

This is over my head but what I gather is if you can do what your saying you can do you could make (for example) a 'real' Atari 8-bit computer on a board as small as something like the FlashBack 2 or smaller?

Allan

[Stephen]

This is the best news yet!!  We can finally have the A8 on a chip.  How about the mini-mini-mig

Stephen Anderson

[MrFish]

Unbelievably awesome Curt!

[jaybird3rd]

Wow, that's great!  I wish I knew something about circuit board design; I would love to create a new motherboard for the 8-bit computer series around these new chips.  It could integrate all of the various upgrades that have been created over the years (MyIDE, RAM upgrades, dual POKEY, etc) and still be about half the size of Atari's boards.

I wonder if a new MARIA could be combined with the Flashback 2 chipset to create a new 7800 clone ...

[remowilliams]

Wow!  Simply amazing!  

[Curt Vendel]

Stephen, on Sat Dec 5, 2009 2:14 PM, said:

This is the best news yet!!  We can finally have the A8 on a chip.  How about the mini-mini-mig

Stephen Anderson

Minimig is an FPGA clone.

Reproducing actual chips - this would essentially allow new chips to be run, I have a foundry that can run some samples of the GTIA chip in any package size, so doing a 44 pin tqfp type smt chip:

http://www.pulsarpro...ing_smt_300.jpg

To move the gds binary format into vhdl may be far more trouble then its worth and is really a backwards approach - you tend to synthesize your vhdl code so that a fab can produce asics based on it, so here is the gds code which a fab can directly take, so it is better to go this route, Christmas and New Years are fast approaching, so I'll look more deeply into this after New Years once I get things rolling on the 1200XL plastics.

Curt

[Stephen]

Curt Vendel, on Sat Dec 5, 2009 1:26 PM, said:

I have finished recovering the GDS stream and reconstructed the GTIA, MARIA, STELLA and several other proprietary Atari chips, now to see if the GDS can be translated to VHDL or if I can find a fab that still does hmos/nmos the original Atari chips can be reproduced at minimum - in SMD sizes...

1069-pal-GTIA.jpg

Curt

Any chance of a higer-res image Curt?  If not, no worries. Just looking to make a large print for my boring work cube.

Stephen Anderson

[potatohead]

Curt Vendel, on Sat Dec 5, 2009 1:26 PM, said:

I have finished recovering the GDS stream and reconstructed the GTIA, MARIA, STELLA and several other proprietary Atari chips, now to see if the GDS can be translated to VHDL or if I can find a fab that still does hmos/nmos the original Atari chips can be reproduced at minimum - in SMD sizes...

1069-pal-GTIA.jpg

Curt

Excellent!!

Somebody is gonna suggest this, so why not right now?

So, we take a STELLA, for example, and enhance it for a drop in replacement / upgrade...

[candle]

Curt, remember that a slight change in production process was the reason for failure of certain PAL gtia chips back in 90'

[Mathy]

Hello Curt

How about dual-Pokey's in what looks like a single-Pokey chip?

greetings

Mathy

[Curt Vendel]

Here ya go Stephen---












Curt

Stephen, on Sat Dec 5, 2009 3:04 PM, said:

Curt Vendel, on Sat Dec 5, 2009 1:26 PM, said:

I have finished recovering the GDS stream and reconstructed the GTIA, MARIA, STELLA and several other proprietary Atari chips, now to see if the GDS can be translated to VHDL or if I can find a fab that still does hmos/nmos the original Atari chips can be reproduced at minimum - in SMD sizes...

1069-pal-GTIA.jpg

Curt

Any chance of a higer-res image Curt?  If not, no worries. Just looking to make a large print for my boring work cube.

Stephen Anderson

[Curt Vendel]

Here is KERI !!!    This brings us extremely close to being able to do a new 8bit recreation!!!






Curt

Edited by Curt Vendel, Sat Dec 5, 2009 6:41 PM.

[Stephen]

Thanks so much!

Stephen Anderson

[AtariNerd]

*sniff*

'tis beautiful. (Though chip designs back then seemed about creating'what works', not about recreating a Master work in silicon holo-spectra difraction matrixes or whatever.)

At last, the chip designs have been preserved for posterity...regardless of what happens from now on, it is reproducible. :')

[Wickeycolumbus]

Curt Vendel, on Sat Dec 5, 2009 1:26 PM, said:

I have finished recovering the GDS stream and reconstructed the GTIA, MARIA, STELLA and several other proprietary Atari chips, now to see if the GDS can be translated to VHDL or if I can find a fab that still does hmos/nmos the original Atari chips can be reproduced at minimum - in SMD sizes...

1069-pal-GTIA.jpg

Curt

I'm speechless.

Do you have the GDS code for any unreleased chips?

Edited by Wickeycolumbus, Sun Dec 6, 2009 12:57 AM.

[Thelen]

What is the KERI chip ?  

[Curt Vendel]

I am trying to recover the Silver & Gold chipsets, the tapes are not in standard 2048 blocks and I block by block view of the tape header is not revealing anything.   AMY is recoverable too.   There is code for something called ICY, I also recovered the SARA B chip as well, so things are coming along.


Curt

Wickeycolumbus, on Sun Dec 6, 2009 12:13 AM, said:

Curt Vendel, on Sat Dec 5, 2009 1:26 PM, said:

I have finished recovering the GDS stream and reconstructed the GTIA, MARIA, STELLA and several other proprietary Atari chips, now to see if the GDS can be translated to VHDL or if I can find a fab that still does hmos/nmos the original Atari chips can be reproduced at minimum - in SMD sizes...

1069-pal-GTIA.jpg

Curt

I'm speechless.

Do you have the GDS code for any unreleased chips?

[Curt Vendel]

Keri is also known as the CGIA which is a combined Antic & GTIA chip.   With Keri and a reproduction of Pokey we've essentially got the core of what we'll need to get a basic Atari 8bit computer (and 5200) going.


Curt

Thelen, on Sun Dec 6, 2009 4:28 AM, said:

What is the KERI chip ?  

[Rybags]

*Lightbulb moment*

Relating to improving video on Atari machines

How about a GTIA that outputs raw RGB.  VBXE does so but is too expensive for someone who doesn't want the full featureset.
Then again, maybe it'd be less effort/expense to just have a cut-down VBXE which only has the GTIA features and RGB output.

Pokey is another area of interest.  Something like Quad Pokey in a single package would be pretty awesome.  Or maybe something like a dual-Pokey, plus quad 16-bit DACs on a small board with dedicated RAM.

[RevEng]

Curt Vendel, on Sat Dec 5, 2009 3:01 PM, said:

... Christmas and New Years are fast approaching, so I'll look more deeply into this after New Years...

This news really puts a smile on my face. Enhanced chips would be fantastic, but even SMT versions of the originals would be greatly appreciated.

It's been a hard year for a lot of people, and this gives us all something amazing to look forward to the coming year!  

BTW, not sure which OS/tape-drive combo you're using, but if you can set your drive to variable block size and have "dd" handy, it's pretty straightforward to figure out the blocksize of the tape.

Edited by RevEng, Sun Dec 6, 2009 8:43 AM.

[BigO]

Curt,

Although I have very little interest in the 8-bit stuff (right now anyway), I have great appreciation for what you do in the realm of preservation and reproduction. Best of luck in your efforts.

[Kernal]

maybe we could use these to develop the cougar like i was talking about... =)

mebbe make super atari 8 bits =)