And again a new Gigatron fan
Posted: 28 Feb 2021, 10:44
I am Hans, I was born in 1961 and grew up in a small town near Dresden in the east of Germany. Unfortunately I don't speak English, so I have to resort to the Google translator or DeepL. Please forgive me.
I learned the profession of an "electronic technician" 42 years ago and later I got a degree as an "IT specialist for application development".
First of all, if the fathers/originators don't mind and there is a need for finished Gigatron's and peripherals I would sell some. I also don't want to make a profit with it. Even if many don't understand, soldering is relaxation for me. I think I would sell a Gigatron for 100€ and a PluggyMcPlugface for 10€ plus shipping costs from Germany.
Gigatron changes
I think one should not overdo it there. The Gigatron should remain the Gigatron. In any case downward compatible.
My suggestions/wishes
1. the simple extension to 64k should be on the PCB, CS2 on VCC and for A16 a jumper. Then you would have the choice between 32k and 64k (128k chip) directly on the PCB and you would not need the line for A15 at the "expansion bus" extra.
2) I think there are already good games for the Gigatron. With a game you need a goal and an incentive. With "Racer" I miss the goal, for me it's more a nice interactive graphic demo. My favorite is Tetronis. The incentive is the highscore. It would be nice if it could be saved. One approach for me would be to equip the Gigatron with a SPI EERPOM on the "Expansion bus" board or the PluggyReloaded with a I2C EERPOM/FRAM. Or to use the SD card on the PluggyReloaded. You need software/administration for this again of course. For the software interface I see 3 possibilities: fall back on a file system, allocation of the data over a simple ID, orientation at the cookie from the WWW.
3. graphic resolution
With the Gigatron I am already impressed what is possible with a resolution of 160x120 pixels. For the porting of old games I would wish for more. Whereby a doubling would be the upper limit for me. A doubling of the resolution means a quadrupling of the amount of data, which has to be handled by "jump and run games".
My simplest thought would be to double the clock to 12,5Mhz and to add a divider to 6,25Mhz. The 6.25 then goes on to the Gigatron normally. With the 12,5Mhz a multiplexer is controlled, which splits the 6 bits of the colors into 2x 3 bits. This would require hardly any software changes at first. But in this case the dots would be rectangular, which wouldn't be nice either.
I realize I'm starting to write a novel, and that certainly doesn't fit in this forum. I still have a lot of things going around in my head that I would like to share. I still have an old blog, maybe I'll do something in German about the Gigatron.
Just a quick thought about the "expansion bus". The board now supports 128k RAM, which is more than enough for the Gigatron. What I think I have seen is that they are working on an 8080 vCPU. With a CP/M a RAM disk would be very advantageous. 64k for it is a bit low though. If there is an easy way to support larger RAM's, that should be considered now. But maybe there is a better solution then for it over SPI.
My personal goal is also to write code for the Gigatron, also native, but I still have a long way to go.
Finally, then I really stop. I am a fan of the Apple II and of Steve Wozniak. I also bought his book iWoz. I think his hardware solutions of the Apple1, Apple2 and especially the floppy control are unbeatable brilliant.