Game Boy Recreated In Verilog

March 23, 2019 by Lewin Day 8 Comments

With the wide availability of Raspberry Pi hardware and pre-baked Linux distros with emulators ready to go, making a retro handheld is easier than ever. Emulation isn’t the only way to go about playing old games however. [Wenting Zhang] decided to instead recreate the Nintendo Game Boy in Verilog, and has documented the effort.

The project runs on a Spartan 6 FPGA. [Wenting] first developed the hardware to use a DualShock controller for input, and output video to a regular LCD monitor. However, work is now underway to produce a handheld VerilogBoy. This will feature a 320×320 LCD screen, with pixels being quadrupled from the original Game Boy 160×144 resolution, with some pixels to spare. [Wenting] is also looking at porting the code to some Pano Logic units, which we’ve discussed before. The thin clients pack FPGA hardware and lots of IO ports that make them perfect for such a project.

Code is available on Github for the curious tinkerers out there. While there are easier ways to play old handheld games, the amount of learning value of such a project should not be underestimated. We’ve seen FPGAs used for other Nintendo hijinx, too – like this NES cart that packs some serious muscle. Video after the break.

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Retro ZX Spectrum Lives A Spartan Existence

January 12, 2017 by Al Williams 23 Comments

FPGAs (like Xilinx’s Spartan series) are great building blocks. They often remind us of the 100-in-1 electronic kits we used to get as kids. Lots of components you can mix and match to make nearly anything. However, like a bare microcontroller, they usually don’t have much in the way of peripheral devices. So the secret sauce is what components you can surround the chip with.

If you are interested in retro computing, you ought to have a look at the ZX-Uno board. It hosts a Spartan 6 FPGA. They are for sale, but the design is open source and all the info is available if you prefer to roll your own or make modifications. You can see a video of the board in action, below (as explained in the video, the color issues are due to the capture card trying to deal with the non-standard sync rate).

Here are the key specifications:

FPGA Xilinx Spartan XC6SLX9-2TQG144C
Static Memory 512Kb, AS7C34096A-10TIN
50MHz Oscillator
Video output (composite)
PS/2 keyboard
Stereo audio jack
EAR jack connector (for reading cassette tapes)
Connectors for JTAG and RGB
Slot for SD Cards
Expansion port with 3 male pin strips
Micro-USB power connector
PCB Size: 86×56 mm. (Compatible with Raspberry Pi cases)

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V4Z80P: The 8-bit Laptop

November 8, 2010 by James Munns 14 Comments

[Phil] over at Retroleum has cobbled together a clean, well put together laptop based entirely around a Zilog Z80 microprocessor and a pair of Spartan II FPGAs. These FPGAs allow him to reduce the number of devices on his board, and therefore cut his production cost as well as device size. He even managed to integrate a salvaged PSOne screen. The laptop comes complete with [Phil]’s own Homebrew OS as well as a great graphical vector based demo.

Sure he’s updated the project in recent years to shrink the board, speeding up the Z80, and increasing the peripheral speed and functionality, but we’re suckers here for a total package hack. Seriously though, check out the newest version of the device as well as the backlog that shows the project growing over time.

Thanks to [Steth] for the heads up.