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madcrow
Account closed
Registered: Oct 2003
Posts: 39 |
Cloning the DTV
I wonder how hard it would be. Given that the DTV seems to be finally attracting some quality productions, but is no longer sold at all (and even when it was sold, was a pain to convert into a "real computer"), it might be a cool project to create a little DTV on a mini-ITX type board.
The only questions I have are:
1. Is enough known about the DTV's internals to actually code the clone chips in VHDL/Verilog/whatever?
2. Would anyone buy such a creature if it were to become available?
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please have pity on the n00bish emu kiddie responsible for the post above. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11351 |
from a hardware point of view it'd be rather easy - any common fpga board would be sufficient (you wouldnt even really need a "big" fpga, so it wont be very expensive either)..... infact at some point jeri even promised to release the dtv core, but that obviously wont happen =P |
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madcrow
Account closed
Registered: Oct 2003
Posts: 39 |
Quote: from a hardware point of view it'd be rather easy - any common fpga board would be sufficient (you wouldnt even really need a "big" fpga, so it wont be very expensive either)..... infact at some point jeri even promised to release the dtv core, but that obviously wont happen =P
I know all that. My question was more about whether enough is known about how the DTV actually WORKS in order to code for something as low-level as an FPGA. Putting together emulation code in C is one thing, but coding actual hardware is much harder.
BTW, does VICEplus actually emulate any of the DTV-6510's advanced features (fast mode, extra opcodes/registers, etc) or is it just a mod of the VIC code ATM?
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please have pity on the n00bish emu kiddie responsible for the post above. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11351 |
Quote:
I know all that. My question was more about whether enough is known about how the DTV actually WORKS in order to code for something as low-level as an FPGA.
i doubt that its known enough to justify trying a reimplementation right now.
Quote:
BTW, does VICEplus actually emulate any of the DTV-6510's advanced features (fast mode, extra opcodes/registers, etc) or is it just a mod of the VIC code ATM?
it implements a few of those things, but probably is by far not complete or anywhere near accurate..... it's just enough that the handful existing demos work.
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Peiselulli
Registered: Oct 2006
Posts: 81 |
Some facts of the for the 1. question :
I think the emulation of the CPU, the blitter and the DMA controller is nearly 100% accurate.
emulation speak for that. For example, the disk loader and the modplayer of DTV odyssey is very time critical.
Maybe for the video part of the DTV there are some strange tricks left.
The only way to get the emulation more accurate is to
write more special testcode or write more demos for DTV :->
for the 2. question :
A new hardware will be quite more interesting if is much more compatible with the original C64, which results in lesser compatibility for DTV software.
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Mace
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 1799 |
Quote:A new hardware will be quite more interesting if is much more compatible with the original C64, which results in lesser compatibility for DTV software. Resulting in a machine that is neither... who'd want that? |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11351 |
you can always run fpga64 ... which is *quite* accurate now (i would dare to say, more accurate than most emulators). |
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Scout
Registered: Dec 2002
Posts: 1570 |
Quote: you can always run fpga64 ... which is *quite* accurate now (i would dare to say, more accurate than most emulators).
That's C-One related, right?
Would be nice of there would be a DTV-alike spawn off based on the C-One. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11351 |
fpga64 runs on the c-one, yes...but it also runs on a few other boards (and porting to a different board isnt supposed to be terribly hard either)
Quote:
Would be nice of there would be a DTV-alike spawn off based on the C-One.
that IS the dtv =D |
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Scout
Registered: Dec 2002
Posts: 1570 |
Quote: fpga64 runs on the c-one, yes...but it also runs on a few other boards (and porting to a different board isnt supposed to be terribly hard either)
Quote:
Would be nice of there would be a DTV-alike spawn off based on the C-One.
that IS the dtv =D
:-P
Yeah, but the fpga source from Jeri isn't available.
I heard there was another kernal (afaik by a dutch guy) made. Maybe it's possible to use that as a base. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11351 |
Quote:
I heard there was another kernal (afaik by a dutch guy) made. Maybe it's possible to use that as a base.
that IS fpga64 =D |
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Scout
Registered: Dec 2002
Posts: 1570 |
Quote: Quote:
I heard there was another kernal (afaik by a dutch guy) made. Maybe it's possible to use that as a base.
that IS fpga64 =D
Yay! We're getting somewhere ;-)
Maybe it's possible to use that as a base for a DTV clone. |
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enthusi
Registered: May 2004
Posts: 677 |
sorry, but to me that sounds incredible stupid :)
using an c64 fpga to emulate another c64fpga that kinda failed in several places but got additional features instead?
Id rather LOVE to see a proper stand-alone fpga64-board.
What peiselulli said. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11351 |
enthusi: like i said, the fpga64 core runs on a few other boards, you can call that "standalone" if you wish :) |
