Gigatron Hackers

Hello. I want to discuss about the future of Gigatron TTL coming years. Do I get right that standard machine is 32K with ROMv5a and it would be better to be upgraded to 64K and offcourse using Pluggy Reloaded you can load programs. These things have full qtbasic and glcc support so we can make prog...

While I may never try this, I just got a brainstorm from the 512K thread and Jeff Laughton's KimKlone. https://laughtonelectronics.com/Arcana/KimKlone/Kimklone_intro.html A point raised in the 512K thread was that most ideas discussed over the years could be realized through the RAM and output regis...

Actually, some of what I propose could actually be done on a stock Gigatron with a board that plugs into the ROM socket. Then, like the versatile I/O expander, it could add new instructions and registers. However, that would not give you 75+ Mhz. It could just add shifts, multiplication, more regist...

Okay, I think I got confused. The one with the purple PCB has gone up. Where I could use help with my idea is that it is hard to find memory that matches my specs. That is harder than I thought. For a 21-bit ROM, those are hard to find and marked obsolete, and likely only 90 ns. You can likely get t...

Another idea on ROM space involves other threads where 20-24 bit addresses are considered. While that allows more RAM, it is conceivable that could make wider ROMs possible if one wanted to pursue that. So then a master game ROM like this could be made, and maybe code in the ROM to detect what Gigat...

Thanks for the explanation. Still, 7 different hardwired games are still a lot when compared to the TV Wizard consoles and the old arcade games. Those are all equipment from the late '70s. It is too bad that arcade games from that time period didn't have multiple games per console. That would have a...

This is neat, but why are there so many duplicates? Two Pucmon, 2 Puzzles, 3 Invader, 2 Bricks. Are these different variations of the same? Like 32K and 64K, or for different ROM versions, or what?

I wasn't really speaking for anyone, just paraphrasing their own words. One of Marcel's philosophies was to not use hardware unless you had to. Plus there is what he said in the FAQ about not wanting to build a machine entirely out of memory. The memory was too slow and expensive for use back in the...

As for a new board, it can't be avoided. Too bad the Gigatron didn't start as a backplane board. That would be neat as you could replace sections of functionality at a time. The incremental approach is also inefficient. For instance, let's say you need higher clock rates on other boards. Then you'd ...

Thank you both for the perspective. I think we could actually go even faster than 100 Mhz with the memory in the ps range, but I wouldn't know how to wire it up. When it goes that fast, the throughput is faster than the clock rate, it is synchronous, and there are more control lines. As far as that ...