On Mon, 10 Sep 2001, Chris Wilkson wrote:
> Heh....mine *has* the bolts!!! I bolted the ZIF socket to the PCB... :P
ZIF sockets are pretty hard to come by, around here... Soon I'll get annoyed
enough to go ahead & order a bunch of stuff from Digikey, but until then I'll
keep using my 18 cent `machine' sockets..
> The PIC is useful, but you can learn to use them in an afternoon. After that,
> where is the fun? The only challenge is finding a project to work on. You'll
> never run out of challenge trying to write for the 2600. :P
The roommate tells me, `you should figure out a way to put a PIC inside an
Atari cart, and use that to control the TIA'... but I don't think it'd work.
Hrm, but it would be cool to put a POKEY or something inside a 2600 cart,
if only there were a way to get the audio from it to the TV speaker. Maybe
a 2600 cart with a POKEY, a GTIA, and an RF modulator inside, so you'd just
plug your TV into the top of the cart? Might add some RAM while you're at it :)
> But when I say programmable logic, I don't mean MCU or MPU. I mean PLDs and
> the like. With a 20MHz PIC, you only get an instruction every 200ns. That's
> fast enough for something like this, but it's pushing it. PLDs can be had
> with ahhh..."response times" of < 5ns. (I'm grouping everything into a
> generic "response" that basically has no real meaning.)
> And they're cheap. Sorta.
I'm not familiar with these PLDs... what's a good example of this kind of
chip?
> Yep...address decoding. Take a look at an old ISA card for the PC. You'll most
> likely find a 74133 hidden someplace.
Gods know, I've got enough of 'em... Also I discovered that an ISA slot from
an old mobo can be cut down to fit an Atari cart card edge... so I may end up
trying to build a cart dumper with a PIC or whatever. Right now I can use my
EPROM burner as a dumper for 2k and 4k carts, if I desolder the ROM from the
board. Could use a card edge to pin-header adaptor to dump them without taking
the cart apart.
Brian
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