Retroleum » Z80 Project

V6Z80P+

Phil — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:01:50 +0000

I now have the parts to build some more V6Z80P boards, well it’ll be the “V6Z80P+” from now on as I’ve made a few small changes to the PCB (EG: The video out socket is now a standard VGA connector – this means I only have to make TV SCART adapter cables (if required) instead of those *and* VGA adapters.) I changed a few of the connections to the FPGA too, so it does use slightly modified config files from the original V6, but as far as software goes – everything made for the V6Z80P runs exactly the same. (I’ll continue to support both versions of the board too). If you’re interested in buying one, see this page for details.

V6Z80P Demo at Breakpoint 2010!

Phil — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:05:29 +0000

Daniel and Slawomir (Insane/Altair & Malfunction/Altair) made a fantastic demo (called Loopback) for the V6Z80P at the recent Breakpoint party in Germany. Great work guys!

Anyone for Tetris?

Phil — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:44:43 +0000

For some reason I made a version of Tetris for the V6Z80P :)

More V6Z80Ps

Phil — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:55:32 +0000

I’ve had some more enquiries regarding the V6Z80P so I’ve just ordered some parts to make five more. [Edit] These boards have now been sold.

Construction time again..

Phil — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 09:29:25 +0000

More improvements and utilities have been created for the V6Z80P..

The OS now loads from a normal file on the root directory of the SD card, previously it required a special installer to place it on reserved sectors.
New apps: Playwav.exe – to play wav files and Showbmp.exe to (guess what!) display .bmp pictures.
New command km.exe – to change keymaps.
Following a suggestion from Branislav, Daniel has made Chfnt.exe – an app which changes the OS font. The front end can now resemble that of your favourite 8 bit micro :)
The slideshow program has been improved to load native .bmp pics of various size, it also slides each picture over the previous one using the LineCop to split the screen and swap palettes.
I’ve improved the filesystem code – previously it would perform a full seek from the start of a file each time a smaller section of a file was loaded, but now that only happens in the filepointer is changed. Loading sequential segments of files is now a lot faster. (This was necessary for the playwav program as it loads/buffers whilst playing.)

V6Z80P Wiki

Phil — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:37:53 +0000

With the assistance of Martin and Valen, an online wiki version of the V6Z8oP documentation has been set up. How thoroughly modern!

http://wiki.uelectronics.info/wiki/

Some new demos..

Phil — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 15:32:55 +0000

I’ve been coding various routines to test new features of my OSCA architecture so thought I may as well tidy them up and make some more demos..

First, blits triggered by the LineCop co-pro:

Secondly, a more intense test where the LineCop rewrites 124
palette entries each line as well as the bitmap pointer…

Youtube really doesn’t like 50FPS videos.. Here’s the original fullsize .avi files: Pipes (20MB) and Parity (16MB) (hosted on mediafire.com)

V6Z80P Update Roundup

Phil — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 10:15:30 +0000

Work on the Z80 Project continues, here’s a list of recent updates:

OSCA – FPGA architecture:

Interlace timing mode, increases the vertical resolution 2x on PAL and NTSC TVs. Would be easier to use if the bitplane pointers had line modulos, something I may look into later.
Sound system interrupts. There are now flags which become set when each channel loops (re-reads its location and length pointers). These flags are OR’d into a new interrupt source. This allows long samples to be played seamlessly as the buffer data and pointers can be set up ahead and switched when the previous buffer has been played.
Double buffered palette – saves the need to write to the palette registers off screen to avoid glitches.
New Sprite modes – X mirror image, Matte mode (forces all non-zero pixels to a single colour) and high palette (sets bit 7 of pixels indexes, providing a simple means of switching video priority per sprite)

FLOS – Operating system

OS can now be assembled to use FAT16 instead of my own filesystem, alas no room for both.
Rewrite of the text plotting code, now uses to the blitter - allows colour in the fonts (15 foreground and background colours)
Added new Kernal (sic!) commands for directory listing, character plotting, low level sector access..

Meanwhile, other V6Z80p owners have been making some nice programs.. Valen has provided a C framework for using SDCC with the V6Z80p and Daniel has made a PT3 tracker player.

Eyup, it’s all gone “Wordpress”

Phil — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:08:56 +0000

I’ve given into peer pressure and converted Retroleum to Wordpress. Most of the old site has been changed to suit, but some of the older articles remain to be done (beware of broken links too). The more “bloggy” format and ease of updating offered by Wordpress may mean this front page gets updated more often.. and then again it may not :) Updates are more visible anyway..

Still one V6Z80P for sale BTW…

V5Z80P – Redux

Phil — Tue, 05 May 2009 21:09:31 +0000

With the V6Z80P taken as far as I can for the time being, my attention has returned to the last V5Z80P sitting in my cupboard. I’ve brought it up to date with the addition of a few soldered links on the PCB and an update of the FPGA config. Its now almost the same as the V6 (multiple configs, latest OSCA hardware, Spectrum emulator, OS etc) though obviously still has an IDE connector instead of SD card, less memory and off-board PSU. If you’re interested, have a look at this page - the board is up for grabs at the below cost price of £50 plus postage+paypal fee. Existing owners of the V5Z80P can update their boards to 5.1 spec by following the info in the new V5Z80P folder.