rossum Posted March 21, 2022 Share Posted March 21, 2022 Retrovox is an homage to the Atarivox based on an ESP32. LMK if there is interest and I will figure out how to get some of these made. It can play midi, mod or mp3 files from flash, carts or from the internet. It emulates the Yamaha YMF262/YM3812 FM synthesis music chips, as well as the General Instrument SP0256 speech synthesizer, and has a port of the Software Automatic Mouth (SAM) voice synth. Its supports keyboards, wireless controllers and other peripherals. The hardware can be used stand alone as a Atari800 emulator or a https://rossumblog.com/2020/08/08/espflix-a-free-video-streaming-service-that-runs-on-an-esp32/. The hardware can also yeet graphics through the joystick port to a kernel on the 2600. A 32*192*4 mode supports a 3D engine with texture mapping and room-over room non-orthogonal geometry. A 96*96*1 mode supports wireframes. game of life etc. A few ugly photos of output from Atari2600+CRT+Retrovox: Also includes a text mode that supports proportional fonts, ideal for the great underground empire. There is a TinyBasic and a wee C interpreter/compiler. 11 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+rbairos Posted March 21, 2022 Share Posted March 21, 2022 That's incredible. I thought atarivox was mainly a speech synthesizer? How does the TinyBasic or C interpreter fit into it all? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Al_Nafuur Posted March 21, 2022 Share Posted March 21, 2022 Awesome project ! 7 hours ago, rossum said: Retrovox is an homage to the Atarivox based on an ESP32. LMK if there is interest and I will figure out how to get some of these made. I would be interested to build one myself. Is the schematics and source code available? 7 hours ago, rossum said: The hardware can also yeet graphics through the joystick port to a kernel on the 2600. A 32*192*4 mode supports a 3D engine with texture mapping and room-over room non-orthogonal geometry. A 96*96*1 mode supports wireframes. game of life etc. Cool a GPU for the 2600 Would be awesome to feed the internet connection to the 2600 too! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rossum Posted March 21, 2022 Author Share Posted March 21, 2022 14 hours ago, rbairos said: That's incredible. I thought atarivox was mainly a speech synthesizer? How does the TinyBasic or C interpreter fit into it all? Once you have a keyboard and a way of displaying text, little retro languages seemed like the next step. It also allows tinybasic or C source to be stored on the cart: you could write an adventure game in basic etc. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+rbairos Posted March 21, 2022 Share Posted March 21, 2022 1 hour ago, rossum said: Once you have a keyboard and a way of displaying text, little retro languages seemed like the next step. It also allows tinybasic or C source to be stored on the cart: you could write an adventure game in basic etc. So you have the retrovox in a joystick port, that supplies the co-processing and memory, then a custom Cart in the mainslot that basically runs a dumb-terminal type interface? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JetSetIlly Posted March 21, 2022 Share Posted March 21, 2022 4 hours ago, rossum said: Once you have a keyboard and a way of displaying text, little retro languages seemed like the next step. It also allows tinybasic or C source to be stored on the cart: you could write an adventure game in basic etc. Smart work. So in the text adventure example, the ZMachine is running on the ESP32? What is actually being sent from the ESP32? Is it text information (ie. ASCII or similar) or is it graphical information? Can you transmit a page of text from the ESP32 in one frame? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rossum Posted March 22, 2022 Author Share Posted March 22, 2022 5 hours ago, rbairos said: So you have the retrovox in a joystick port, that supplies the co-processing and memory, then a custom Cart in the mainslot that basically runs a dumb-terminal type interface? In the demos pictured above the cart just listens to the ESP32 and displays what is asked. You can also just use it like a Atarivox and stream audio/voice commands from the 2600. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rossum Posted March 22, 2022 Author Share Posted March 22, 2022 2 hours ago, JetSetIlly said: Smart work. So in the text adventure example, the ZMachine is running on the ESP32? What is actually being sent from the ESP32? Is it text information (ie. ASCII or similar) or is it graphical information? Can you transmit a page of text from the ESP32 in one frame? Yup, ZMachine is running on the ESP32 and graphics are transmitted to the 2600 for display. The fonts are rendered into pixels on the ESP32 and transmitted as two 60hz venetian blind frames. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JetSetIlly Posted March 22, 2022 Share Posted March 22, 2022 6 hours ago, rossum said: Yup, ZMachine is running on the ESP32 and graphics are transmitted to the 2600 for display. The fonts are rendered into pixels on the ESP32 and transmitted as two 60hz venetian blind frames. It looks like the display is about 27 characters wide. Is that correct? This is really interesting to me. I've experimented with compiling advland for ARM cartridges, with the aim of eventually moving to the ZMachine. You've taken a very different approach but it's a viable solution to an existing "problem". I look forward to seeing how it develops. When can we see a running video of it in action? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JetSetIlly Posted March 22, 2022 Share Posted March 22, 2022 (edited) 6 hours ago, rossum said: Yup, ZMachine is running on the ESP32 and graphics are transmitted to the 2600 for display. The fonts are rendered into pixels on the ESP32 and transmitted as two 60hz venetian blind frames. In addition, how are you receiving keyboard input? Is it from an Atari2600 peripheral, like the keypad, or is it directly to the ESP32? edit: Reading back I can see you have a regular keyboard attached to the ESP32? I like it but it would be interesting to see if you can transmit keypad input from the 2600 to the ESP32. Edited March 22, 2022 by JetSetIlly 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rossum Posted March 23, 2022 Author Share Posted March 23, 2022 On 3/21/2022 at 1:46 AM, Al_Nafuur said: Awesome project ! I would be interested to build one myself. Is the schematics and source code available? Cool a GPU for the 2600 Would be awesome to feed the internet connection to the 2600 too! Will be making schematics and source available soon. The internet stuff can be plumbed directly to the 2600 for loading urls, multiplayer games etc. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rossum Posted March 23, 2022 Author Share Posted March 23, 2022 On 3/22/2022 at 12:40 AM, JetSetIlly said: In addition, how are you receiving keyboard input? Is it from an Atari2600 peripheral, like the keypad, or is it directly to the ESP32? edit: Reading back I can see you have a regular keyboard attached to the ESP32? I like it but it would be interesting to see if you can transmit keypad input from the 2600 to the ESP32. Connection is bi-directional, joystick/keyboard data from devices plugged into the Atari can be seen by the ESP32. ESP32 also transmits data alongside graphics. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rossum Posted April 25, 2022 Author Share Posted April 25, 2022 (edited) Adding a few videos of retrovox apps. All video is from the 2600, audio is from the retrovox. Includes a few toy internet apps including chat between two 2600s. I am building a few of these, lmk if you would like to play with one. mars.mov wee_c_compiler_interpreter.mov sam_from_basic.mov teeny_basic.mov midifiles.mov modfiles.mov adventure.mov webchat.mov life.mov doomed.mov Edited April 25, 2022 by rossum 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
orange808 Posted April 25, 2022 Share Posted April 25, 2022 PM sent Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rossum Posted July 2, 2022 Author Share Posted July 2, 2022 source code and schematics/pcb now at: https://github.com/rossumur/retrovox enjoy! 1 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JetSetIlly Posted July 2, 2022 Share Posted July 2, 2022 1 minute ago, rossum said: source code and schematics/pcb now at: https://github.com/rossumur/retrovox enjoy! Thanks for this. I've really enjoyed exploring the RetroVox. I plan to devote more time to it later this summer. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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