Do-It-Yourself-Game-Console

DrCarbonite writes "Andre' LaMothe is releasing a brand new game console, the XGAMESTATION which may fulfill the fantasies of Slashdot readers everywhere. 16-bit Motorola CPU with a graphics architecture "similar to the Commodore 64, Atari 800, and Apple II". Its an electronics kit being marketed as a game system that wants to be hacked/modded/rebuilt. It supports homebrew everything-- joystick adapters, displays, software, roms, the whole nine yards."

Comments

Re:Andre LaMothe

[dodell]

Sorry, just read the FAQ, estimated price is about $99.

68000?

[usotsuki]

Didn't RTFA, but "16-bit Motorola" CPU sounds like a reference to the 68000.

68000 isn't really a 16-bit processor, any more than the 80386SX is. It's a 32-bit CPU internally.

And let's face it, the Apple ]['s video hardware was teh sux (I had to write emulation for that b*stard, and MY code was a fscking nightmare), so I don't see why anyone would want to emulate it (it was basically a braindead monochrome CGA, and faked color). C64 tho I can see, a little better.

-uso.

Re:68000?

[Detritus]

The MC68000 internally used 16-bit data paths and three 16-bit ALUs. It did not have a 32-bit ALU. Motorola's original documentation called it a "16/32-bit Microprocessor". The MC68020 was the first true 32-bit member of the 68K family.

Re:68000?

[jpop32]

If I may, just to clarify...

The 68000 executes 16 bit code. Last I looked it had a 24 bit address space, that's pretty cool. Nonetheless it is not a 32 bit processor, as you say.

68k had 24bit adress space, 16 bit pathways to the outside, and 8/16/32bit operations on the inside. All instrucions that operated on data had a size qualifier (add.b, add.w, add.l), so it could do 32 bit operations, but had to fetch 32 bit data in two reads if it came from the outside. Not so if operating on 16 internal, 32 bit registers (8 data, 8 address).

It's a 32 bit CPU as much as 386SX was.

68010 is a slightly optimized 68010 which has one or two additional instructions.

68010 is a 68k with a VBR (Vector Base Register) which enabled it to place its vector table (a list of pointers to code for servicing interrupts and stuff) wherever inside it's address space. Useful for embedded applications, I guess.

Besides that, it incorporated an 8 byte (or something on that order) cache which enabled it to run tight loops (a couple instructions) much faster.

God, I loved Motorola CPUs...

Re:It's a neat idea...

[t-maxx cowboy]

When I read the FAQ's there was mention of the XGameStation BASIC. So maybe you are not totally out of luck.

Re:Slashdot dreams

[Cpt_Kirks]

Does it come with a girlfriend?

Try here. They now have sensors, audio via ethernet (I shit you not), tan lines, moveable hands and "hip thrusting" available.

Now we need porn star and celebrity models with special "heated vibrating" functions.

The ultimate Geek Game Console.

Re:from 6812 XGS3 to Altera FPGA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used Xilinx/XESS boards and they're underpowered, overprice peices of educational crap. This thing is actually very affordable considering the amount of time I'm sure he spent developing it. If you're at all into embedded systems or programming, this thing is a boon to learn the ins and outs of hardware/software interaction. I'm sure its more of an educational tool, but its pretty awesome even as a homebrew tool.

Don't knock it till you tried it.

Re:Fantasies?

[LocalH]

• If you think the Commodore 64 was good, you guys are REALLY gonna be bowled over by the Nintendo NES!

Of course the C64 was good. Way better graphics capabilities than the NES. Don't think so? I beg to differ. Especially check out the Crest demos. Digital Magic has some of the best graphics to date on the C64, and it's all stock, no hardware mods.

Can the NES display graphics outside the 'normal' screen? Can the NES stretch a sprite vertically up to the entire length of the screen? Sure, the C64's multicolor mode has fat pixels, but that can be easily overcome in software, as can the relatively low color resolution. It's gotten to the point where you can have graphics with normal sized pixels, and each pixel can pretty much use any of approx. 100 colors, independently from the others.

The VIC-II is way more flexible than any other graphics chip of the era. You can scroll the screen in pretty much any direction with very little actual work to do on the part of the processor. Of course, many of the great effects are really only usable in demos and not games, but that doesn't really matter. And there are lots of effects that I'm not even touching on right now.

And people thought that giving up 40 cycles every 8 scanlines was a bad idea ;)

it's not a handheld

[yerricde]

It says it's 5-10x the speed of the Super Nintendo, with 2-4x the graphic power. That's better than the current Gameboy Advance!

Are you sure? The Super NES had a 3.6 MHz 65c816 processor, essentially a 6502 with 16-bit registers and a 24-bit address bus. The sound side of the system had a Sony SPC700 processor at 2 MHz, which was in essence a 6502 with a reshuffled instruction set encoding. The GBA, on the other hand, has a 16.78 MHz ARM7TDMI processor with a halfway modern RISC design. This XGameStation has a "Third-generation Motorola 68HCS12 16-bit processor @ 25 MHz" according to the spec sheet. A speed rating in MHz is relevant only when combined with operations per clock, but because a couple minutes of Google searching didn't tell me whether or not the 68HCS12 is pipelined (the 6809 wasn't, and neither was the 68000), I can't guess an operations-per-clock value for the 68HCS12.

Also, it's projected to be $99.

Yeah, but the GBA is only $99 ($70 for the GBA and $29 for the coder's cable), and it's a handheld.

Design case history: the Commodore 64

[runderwo]

There was an awesome article in the IEEE Spectrum years ago detailing the hurdles the C64 designers went through while building the machine. I scanned the article and placed the DjVu e-book here:

http://retro.icequake.net/commodore_64_design_case _history

Hope this is of some interest to the sort of people who would be interested in the XGameStation.