Date   : Mon, 18 Feb 2008 08:15:36 +1100
From   : msmcdoug@... (Mark McDougall)
Subject: BBC FPGA Boots to BASIC... almost...

Alex Taylor wrote:

> However I like the idea of this being available as a self-build kit -
> one that could optionally use a real Model B keyboard. That way it
> would be possible to build some kind of SuperBeeb into a real case!

Heh, my "retro" interests span a range of old 8/16-bit computers and I'm 
active in more than a few newsgroups/mailing lists. Because I'm heavily into 
emulation - especially hardware emulation - inevitably the subject comes 
around to designing a "super" or "next gen" version of computer X.

You may have heard of the C-One computer - it was supposed to be an 
FPGA-based super Commodore 64 - and actually made it as far as a commercial 
product, albeit never officially getting past beta status. And the C64DTV is 
actually a "super" C64...

Another commercial product is the FPGA-based One-Chip MSX! It even has two 
MSX cartridge slots!

There have been similar discussions on the Apple II groups, including the 
recently-released FPGAApple by Gary Becker, though Apple people *really* 
love their original hardware! ;) And of course there's the Replica-1 kit...

Most recently there was a long thread on making an FPGA-based (TRS-80) "Coco 
4" which garnered a lot of interest from a handful of Coco enthusiasts. Gary 
also released a Coco 3 FPGA implementation recently.

And causing a lot of interest is a recent release of Minimig (Amiga 500) 
including a 68K core within the FPGA. It's still got some teething problems 
at this point...

It's a great idea, and something I am quite interested in, but personally 
I'm leaning more towards a generic hardware design that is capable of 
emulating more than 1 retro platform, rather than something purpose-built 
for only 1 machine. Having said that, such a design should easily fit within 
a BBC case should one be interested in doing that.

On this note, I'm becoming more interested in the BBC now that I've been 
studying the design - it's certainly an interesting platform. Over the next 
few weeks I'll endeavor to implement the basic functionality as completely 
as possible given my current time constraints. Who knows, someone may pick 
up the ball at some point in the future and produce a "super BBC"?!? ;)

Regards,

-- 
|              Mark McDougall                | "Electrical Engineers do it
|  <http://members.iinet.net.au/~msmcdoug>   |   with less resistance!"