atari2600land's Blog

This is just my opinion. Anyone who has a working Microvision may not want to mess with it.

 

I'd pay $75 dollars for a new atari2600land-vision though

How would I get enough money to make a me-vision? How much money did it cost to make the Microvision prototype? Besides, I have two working Microvisions, so it's not like they're hard to get, that is, if you spot a good price on ePay. I'd make sure it wouldn't harm one, I'd measure the voltage and everything.

Nah. Sorry if I came off as discouraging your project. Maybe I'm just jealous because I don't have a Microvision myself

 

Arduinos and Arduino parts can be had for dirt cheap from Chinese distributors. I don't think an Atari2600Land-vision would cost much to produce. The enclosure/shells may be tricky, though.

Well, the bidding of eBay item #221228468287 (a working Microvision with box and 3 boxed games) is only up to $11.50 with two days left. If you want one, maybe you should join in the bidding.

The Propeller has an onboard 32K ROM containing the bootloader, SPIN interpreter, and some hardcoded data like a font and sine table. The 64K EEPROM (which is kinda like flash memory) is where your game would be stored when the game is turned off. The bootloader automatically loads the onboard 32K RAM from the EEPROM.

 

From my perspective there are two "do first" tasks:

1. Start reading up on the Propeller documentation and spend some time experimenting with the Quickstart board. There are sample projects explicitly for the Quickstart. Try to make a game which uses the 8 touch-buttons and 8 LEDs along with terminal I/O (via the USB serial connection). Your objective is to learn the new programming languages you will need to use to create your game.

 

2. Learn to read Dan B's schematics, then spend some time probing the Microvision LCD controller with your mulitmeter to determine the input & output voltage levels. Your objective is to determine whether it will be easy / safe to connect the Propeller directly to the LCD controller, or if you will need additional parts. (The Propeller has 3.3V inputs & outputs).

 

This then will lead you to the next step which is to use the Propeller to capture the input to the LCD so you can reverse engineer it and write a driver for the Propeller.