Maker and classic coming fanatic Clyde Shaffer is seeking to launch a contemporary tackle traditional video games consoles: the dual-processor MOS 6502-based GameTank.
“GameTank is a brand new online game console based mostly on WDC [Western Design Center]’s fashionable model of the venerable [MOS] 6502 microprocessor,” Shaffer explains of his creation. “Comparable in spirit to fantasy consoles just like the Pico-8 or TIC-80, the GameTank is about aside by its implementation as a bodily {hardware} machine first, and an emulator second. Its customized framebuffer-based graphics structure permits it to provide smoother and extra fluid animations than are typical of eight-bit {hardware}. Moreover, the audio system is extremely configurable, utilizing a second 6502 as a devoted sound coprocessor.”
When Shaffer describes the GameTank as a “new online game console,” it is one with an already prolonged historical past — and never simply because it has a pair of processors that hint their lineage again to MOS Know-how’s launch in 1975 and which discovered their manner into units as iconic because the Commodore 64, Nintendo Leisure System (NES), and early Apple programs. Shaffer first confirmed the GameTank off 5 years in the past, promising a tool that did issues just a little in a different way to rival 6502-based consoles of yesteryear.
“The graphics {hardware} contained in the GameTank differs considerably,” Shaffer explains. “As a substitute of fixed-function tiles and sprites, a area of reminiscence termed a ‘framebuffer’ comprises knowledge for particular person pixels of the on-screen picture. That is paired with a bigger retailer of off-screen reminiscence ‘Sprite RAM’ and a blitter circuit, which is devoted to fast copy of bytes from Sprite RAM to the framebuffer. The GameTank is designed with a beneficiant quantity of Sprite RAM to help giant sprite sheets, and since the blitter can copy arbitrarily-sized areas of information, these sprite sheets will be densely packed.”
As with Shaffer’s early prototypes, the completed GameTank features a 3.5MHz WDC W65C02S as its important CPU, and a second working at 14MHz and with 4kB of devoted RAM to supply audio output at a default 14kHz pattern charge. The video output takes the type of a square-format 128×128 framebuffer, although Shaffer warns that “some rows on [the] high and backside [are] hidden by most TVs,” and the customized controller provides a four-way path pad, three hearth buttons, plus a begin button. Video games, in the meantime, are loaded from bodily cartridges with 2MB of flash storage — and there is a 26-pin growth port to the rear for brand spanking new {hardware}.
“All the GameTank’s {hardware} is open supply,” Shaffer guarantees, “together with schematics, board information, 3D print information, and half lists. The C SDK [Software Development Kit], the emulator, the shopper program for the cartridge flasher, and most of the video games are all additionally open supply. The console board designs are maintained in each surface-mount and through-hole variations for robotic meeting and DIY soldering, respectively.”
These design information can be found on the undertaking’s GitHub repository beneath an unspecified open supply license; Shaffer can also be getting ready to launch a crowdfunding marketing campaign for fully-assembled items, with events invited to enroll on Crowd Provide to be notified when the marketing campaign goes reside. For many who wish to strive the system out first, Shaffer has revealed a GameTank emulator on GitHub beneath the permissive MIT license.
