Search found 101 matches

by monsonite
20 Mar 2021, 10:57
Forum: Escape Meta Alt Control Shift
Topic: A monthly Gigatron meetup on Zoom.
Replies: 4
Views: 5851

Re: A monthly Gigatron meetup on Zoom.

As I have only heard from 2 forum members regarding the monthly Zoom meet-up, I will take this as members, in general, not being interested in this sort of event. If you have any strong views either way, please let me know, and if there is a sufficiently positive response then we work towards gettin...
by monsonite
11 Mar 2021, 10:51
Forum: Escape Meta Alt Control Shift
Topic: A monthly Gigatron meetup on Zoom.
Replies: 4
Views: 5851

Re: A monthly Gigatron meetup on Zoom.

That sounds like a great idea, I'm not sure I could attend regularly, (I think that's around 3:00am my time), but I could try and show up every now and then. Thanks for your support. It gives an alternative means of sharing Gigatron projects and techniques as well as an opportunity to meet other me...
by monsonite
10 Mar 2021, 16:38
Forum: Escape Meta Alt Control Shift
Topic: A monthly Gigatron meetup on Zoom.
Replies: 4
Views: 5851

A monthly Gigatron meetup on Zoom.

Hi All, I'd like to put forward the suggestion for a regular monthly meetup for Gigatron enthusiasts on Zoom. It would be an opportunity to meet other users, and learn what's happening in the rest of the Gigatron community. It could take the form of a "show and tell" where users could talk...
by monsonite
28 Dec 2020, 14:00
Forum: Escape Meta Alt Control Shift
Topic: Sell Gigatron?
Replies: 12
Views: 10980

Re: Sell Gigatron?

In May of 2019 I did a partial study of how Gigatron could be reduced to a smaller 200mm x 100mm 4-layer pcb. https://forum.gigatron.io/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=118 This made use of 74xx573 and 74xx574 registers to improve the signal routing between ICs. It also included the expansion components to a...
by monsonite
30 Nov 2020, 18:00
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: List of possible Gigatron mods
Replies: 14
Views: 10238

Re: List of possible Gigatron mods

Here's my take on it. As a non-games player, the colour graphics, blinkenlights and sound don't really interest me. Imagine the Gigatron as a general purpose CPU. It's capable of emulating 6502, Z80 and any other cpu. Remove the overheads of VGA video generation and it becomes a powerful cpu (by 198...
by monsonite
14 Nov 2020, 14:41
Forum: Escape Meta Alt Control Shift
Topic: Gigatrons and Education
Replies: 1
Views: 4488

Gigatrons and Education

In this strange year of lockdowns and social distancing, many of us will have had some spare time on our hands. I chose to use this time as constructively as possible, and to advance my understanding of computer science, software and hardware design languages. After 35 years in industry as a hardwar...
by monsonite
13 Nov 2020, 15:58
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: 10MHz, 12.5MHz and Beyond!
Replies: 45
Views: 54382

Re: 10MHz, 12.5MHz and Beyond!

Sugarplum, The Gigatron as it stands, is a marvellous piece of minimalist TTL design, backed up with incredible software. We truly have Marcel to thank for his insight and vision. As a colour, games machine, it spends all of it's time pushing pixels at the VGA screen. Imagine what it could do if unb...
by monsonite
08 Oct 2020, 15:46
Forum: Kit assembly gallery
Topic: Finding parts?
Replies: 17
Views: 14471

Re: Finding parts?

I was waiting for someone to do a Gigatron on a purple board from Oshpark - very smart.

Roughly how much did they charge for the boards?
by monsonite
31 Aug 2020, 10:07
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: microtron
Replies: 42
Views: 24517

Re: microtron

Steve, Thanks for the reply. When I first saw the Roelh alu - I was concerned how the ADD function could be achieved from just multiplexers and XOR gates, but after some consideration, a full adder is essentially just two XOR gates and an AND or NAND to provide the final carry out. The problem with ...
by monsonite
30 Aug 2020, 16:54
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: 80 Column Mode and high speed serial?
Replies: 3
Views: 3066

80 Column Mode and high speed serial?

Clearly the original vision for the Gigatron was a 80's retro-style machine with colour video and audio - capable of playing arcade style games. The TTL cpu and integrated video generation hardware was designed around the requirement of 1/4 VGA video generation at 2 bits per colour. What if we took ...