Dear friends,
after the teaser of some time ago, here is our last project, hoping you will like it.
As you may have guessed, this is a graphics card for Apple-1, which is well-known for not having any graphics capability, so why not fill this gap?
It is based on the popular Texas Instruments TMS9918A which gave us a bit of a hard time interworking with the 6502, solved also thanks to the tips of our friend Leonardo Miliani.
But all the hardware would have been useless without the contribution of the incredible Antonino Porcino, who prepared libraries, games and demos for the project in no time... and we are just at the beginning!
The frendly support of Francesco Sblendorio has also been fundamental, he promised me DOOM with Force Feedback :-)
The whole project is open source and is available here (the link to Nino's library repo is on the page):
Here is a short video that summarizes the capabilities of the board:
Enjoy! :-)
Claudio - P-LAB
It would be great if you can offer some of the cards here at AppleFritter.
I'd be first in line to buy a set.
Thank you for your kind words, also on behalf of the group!
At the moment I/we have no plans for the production and sale of these boards: the whole project has been made public to encourage enthusiasts to build it.
It' s more fun and you learn a lot more when you create something with your own hands, maybe with the help of some friends in case of need!
I'm in the process of creating a specific Apple1 emulator with double video output (native and TMS9918) in order to simulate this configuration and allow software developers write their applications easily. The demos you see in the video were written in C using the KickC compiler, there is a small set of library routines to help interact with the Video Display Processor. I ported Tetris in very short time (and I had lot of fun doing it!).
I imagine you've probably seen this but back in the 1980s there were a few TMS9918A cards for the Apple II, including a sort of "open source" one designed by Steve Ciarcia and published in his Circuit Cellar column in Byte Magazine.
http://cini.classiccmp.org/pdf/byte/Hi-Res%20Graphics%20TMS9918%20BYTE%200882.pdf.pdf
Some of the commercial cards included things like a sound chip and if I remember one right, also Atari style (directional, switch based) joystick ports.
Sure,
BYTE #8-82 and Steve Ciarcia's work have been mentioned in my project documentation and bibliography, although from a different source (archive.org).
Hello. Is there any ready File for the EEPROM on the Tank Card ? I´m using just an Apple 1 without any Expansions. I want to build this phantastic Graphicscard. Thanks for help. Sorry for my english.
Hi,
thank you for your interest in our projects! :-)
I've just asked the sw developer (nippur72, also a member of this forum) if it is possible to share on his GitHub repository the binaries you requested.
It's an ongoing project, so in case they don't show up in a few days I suggest you to contact him directly through this forum.
Regards,
C.
Hi, I've released the binaries for the graphic card, you can find them on my Github repo:
https://github.com/nippur72/apple1-videocard-lib/tree/main/demos/demo/release
https://github.com/nippur72/apple1-videocard-lib/tree/main/demos/tetris/release
https://github.com/nippur72/apple1-videocard-lib/tree/main/demos/picshow/release
*_jukebox.bin are the 16K EPROM files (relocated at $4000)
*.bin are the plain binary files starting at $0280 in free ram
*.woz are the binary files in text format for the Woz monitor
*.prg same as *.bin but with 2 bytes start address header
Very nice. Thank you.