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New GTIA chips!


Curt Vendel

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I have finished recovering the GDS stream and reconstructed the GTIA, MARIA, STELLA and several other proprietary Atari chips, now to see if the GDS can be translated to VHDL or if I can find a fab that still does hmos/nmos the original Atari chips can be reproduced at minimum - in SMD sizes...

 

post-23-12600411927_thumb.jpg

 

Curt

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Wow, that's great! I wish I knew something about circuit board design; I would love to create a new motherboard for the 8-bit computer series around these new chips. It could integrate all of the various upgrades that have been created over the years (MyIDE, RAM upgrades, dual POKEY, etc) and still be about half the size of Atari's boards.

 

I wonder if a new MARIA could be combined with the Flashback 2 chipset to create a new 7800 clone ...

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This is the best news yet!! We can finally have the A8 on a chip. How about the mini-mini-mig :)

 

Stephen Anderson

 

Minimig is an FPGA clone.

 

Reproducing actual chips - this would essentially allow new chips to be run, I have a foundry that can run some samples of the GTIA chip in any package size, so doing a 44 pin tqfp type smt chip:

 

http://www.pulsarprofx.com/pcbfx/main_site/pages/direct_etch/index_support/hoding_smt_300.jpg

 

To move the gds binary format into vhdl may be far more trouble then its worth and is really a backwards approach - you tend to synthesize your vhdl code so that a fab can produce asics based on it, so here is the gds code which a fab can directly take, so it is better to go this route, Christmas and New Years are fast approaching, so I'll look more deeply into this after New Years once I get things rolling on the 1200XL plastics.

 

Curt

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I have finished recovering the GDS stream and reconstructed the GTIA, MARIA, STELLA and several other proprietary Atari chips, now to see if the GDS can be translated to VHDL or if I can find a fab that still does hmos/nmos the original Atari chips can be reproduced at minimum - in SMD sizes...

 

post-23-12600411927_thumb.jpg

 

Curt

Any chance of a higer-res image Curt? If not, no worries. Just looking to make a large print for my boring work cube.

 

Stephen Anderson

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I have finished recovering the GDS stream and reconstructed the GTIA, MARIA, STELLA and several other proprietary Atari chips, now to see if the GDS can be translated to VHDL or if I can find a fab that still does hmos/nmos the original Atari chips can be reproduced at minimum - in SMD sizes...

 

post-23-12600411927_thumb.jpg

 

Curt

 

Excellent!!

 

Somebody is gonna suggest this, so why not right now?

 

So, we take a STELLA, for example, and enhance it for a drop in replacement / upgrade...

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Here ya go Stephen---

 

 

post-23-12600592623_thumb.jpg

 

post-23-126005927086_thumb.jpg

 

post-23-126005928176_thumb.jpg

 

post-23-126005929132_thumb.jpg

 

 

 

Curt

 

 

I have finished recovering the GDS stream and reconstructed the GTIA, MARIA, STELLA and several other proprietary Atari chips, now to see if the GDS can be translated to VHDL or if I can find a fab that still does hmos/nmos the original Atari chips can be reproduced at minimum - in SMD sizes...

 

post-23-12600411927_thumb.jpg

 

Curt

Any chance of a higer-res image Curt? If not, no worries. Just looking to make a large print for my boring work cube.

 

Stephen Anderson

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*sniff*

 

'tis beautiful. (Though chip designs back then seemed about creating'what works', not about recreating a Master work in silicon holo-spectra difraction matrixes or whatever.)

 

At last, the chip designs have been preserved for posterity...regardless of what happens from now on, it is reproducible. :')

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I have finished recovering the GDS stream and reconstructed the GTIA, MARIA, STELLA and several other proprietary Atari chips, now to see if the GDS can be translated to VHDL or if I can find a fab that still does hmos/nmos the original Atari chips can be reproduced at minimum - in SMD sizes...

 

post-23-12600411927_thumb.jpg

 

Curt

 

:lust: I'm speechless.

 

Do you have the GDS code for any unreleased chips?

Edited by Wickeycolumbus
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I am trying to recover the Silver & Gold chipsets, the tapes are not in standard 2048 blocks and I block by block view of the tape header is not revealing anything. AMY is recoverable too. There is code for something called ICY, I also recovered the SARA B chip as well, so things are coming along.

 

 

Curt

 

I have finished recovering the GDS stream and reconstructed the GTIA, MARIA, STELLA and several other proprietary Atari chips, now to see if the GDS can be translated to VHDL or if I can find a fab that still does hmos/nmos the original Atari chips can be reproduced at minimum - in SMD sizes...

 

post-23-12600411927_thumb.jpg

 

Curt

 

:lust: I'm speechless.

 

Do you have the GDS code for any unreleased chips?

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*Lightbulb moment*

 

Relating to improving video on Atari machines

 

How about a GTIA that outputs raw RGB. VBXE does so but is too expensive for someone who doesn't want the full featureset.

Then again, maybe it'd be less effort/expense to just have a cut-down VBXE which only has the GTIA features and RGB output.

 

Pokey is another area of interest. Something like Quad Pokey in a single package would be pretty awesome. Or maybe something like a dual-Pokey, plus quad 16-bit DACs on a small board with dedicated RAM.

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... Christmas and New Years are fast approaching, so I'll look more deeply into this after New Years...

This news really puts a smile on my face. Enhanced chips would be fantastic, but even SMT versions of the originals would be greatly appreciated.

 

It's been a hard year for a lot of people, and this gives us all something amazing to look forward to the coming year! :thumbsup:

 

BTW, not sure which OS/tape-drive combo you're using, but if you can set your drive to variable block size and have "dd" handy, it's pretty straightforward to figure out the blocksize of the tape.

Edited by RevEng
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