The Commodore 64 was quite a machine in its time, though a modern assessment would say that it’s severely lacking in the graphical department. [Vossi] has whipped up a bit of an upgrade for the C64 and C128, in the form of a graphics expansion card running Yamaha hardware.
As you might expect, the expansion is designed to fit neatly into a C64 cartridge slot. The card runs the Yamaha V9958—the video display processor known for its appearance in the MSX2+ computers. In this case, it’s paired with a healthy 128 kB of video RAM so it can really do its thing. The V9958 has an analog RGB output that can be set for PAL or NTSC operation, and can perform at resolutions up to 512×212 or even 512×424 interlaced. Naturally, it needs to be hooked directly up to a compatible screen, like a 1084, or one with SCART input. [Vossi] took the time to create some demos of the chip’s capabilities, drawing various graphics in a way that the C64 couldn’t readily achieve on its own.
It’s a build that almost feels like its from an alternate universe, where Yamaha decided to whip up a third-party graphics upgrade for the C64. That didn’t happen, but stranger team ups have occurred over the years.
[Thanks to Stephen Walters for the tip!]
Steinway and Sons makes graphics chips?
Casio makes graphics chips?
Actually, I think Casio might.
They did make LCD. Atari Lynx uses Casio color LCD. GBC almost used Casio LCD but Sharp had a bit of temper tantrum because they’ve made custom chips and b&w LCD for Nintendo so Nintendo decided to go with Sharp in the end.
I think Game Gear also used Casio.
Beat me to it.
I swear, except for the “and Sons” part of your comment, I came to say EXACTLY that. Curses! Foiled again! ;-)
So can C128 run Colecovision games? Using the built in Z-80 and piping video through the video cartridge.
really? no of course it can’t without some further hacking and add ons the memory mapping and sound chips are completely different for example
Not sure how Nintendo and Sony pairing up is a “stranger thing” when Sony literally made the audio chip for the SNES in the first place.
its not, its grasping for straws to include more clickbait
not click bait it’s cool even tho I have none of this stuff.
thing with these type of projects is where is the software
hint! there is none, there’s a few demo’s on something no one will ever use or make… thats the problem with changing a standard to a 40+ year old platform … its neat that you can, but no one else will
wrong. On these platforms YOU write the software. Its always been that way. These are just for script kiddies and app jocks to download someone elses app.
My cartridge port is occupied with my marvellous action replay cartridge it’s a shame I have to lose the functionality of that just for better graphics.
You mean, favorite motorcycle manufacturer?
Looks cool, any videos of it running?
You can shove any graphics chip in an Atari cartridge or pbi port too
With certain ones you might even be able to use anticto Dma data to it…with a software defined display list
Or just use an avr chip like atmega8515 or 644, and create you own dma blitter (like on my custom 2600 sbc)
Then no bottle necking from Vic and CPU clock sharing, and add 16k-32k of sram for video memory so it’s framebuffer is also separate and can run at the 21mhz of the avr, though the avr will need wait states or buffering to the display chips since those will run at 3.579454 or 4.43 mhz, with buffering and tri-state you can easily get around that, and while you wait each pixel clock would be around 6-7 clocks and for my CPU 18 clock per on CPU clock
1,368 instructions per scanline in my case, much more than the 6502 76 per scanline
Can do alot more graphics and sound using avr for dma, and 6502 for ay8910 and rest of io
Or use the avr for game logic and sound(fast enough for some digital audio) and 6502 to also draw to screen, tri stating allows this flexibility but requires either an Atari custom 6502 or a 6502 with tri-state, or some 74 glue logic, which can be put on a single pld
They can be over locked to 21.47727 mhz as these where used for sid chip replacements way back when, and ran around that speed, perfect for Atari systems since they work on harmonics of the color bust
That’s why ntsc computer ran faster and had more colors than pal units
And I feel bad for the secam Atari users, since the vcs graphics in france sucked with only 8 colors vs 128 on ntsc
Even Jay miner couldn’t figure out secam: “good for color video, shitty for computer graphics”
Hiding color data in between scaliness rather at the start of em and a complicated hue/color wheel encoding, ntsc and pal store color in phase shift of colorburst, the colors you can produce is a series of steps around a circle, either yuv, rgb/cmyk
And color data (chroma) was separate of grayscale video data (luma)
That’s why typically black and white TV can still show a ntsc color signal, doesn’t look for colorburst phase shift, but it can cause some picture distortion on older TVs, that’s why there was a color and black and white switch on those old consoles
I could just slap an nes ppu or playchice-10 ppu and get RGB on my Atari 800 pbi
Just add some dual port sram 8k is 4x the amount the ppu had and iirc can address more than that
And get tile based bitmap pixel instead of buffered scanlines
Though the Atari 800 can already produce better than nes graphics with scanline
This is graphically what a c64 will look like
You do have benefits of being able to run separate vram and Dma chip and still use the interal graphics chip (run a monitor or stub code to display realtime memory dumps and debugging monitor on a separate display, without too much impact or performance loss, since unlike antic or biltter, the avr provides modern full risc instruction set, and a few modern things like extra serial port, timers, and interrupts.. so combining a uart, full cpu core (32 8bit registers, avr iirc lets you do operations on any combo of em, not just just one accumulator, x,y flags, and program counter) ram, flash memory, eeprom (especially good for storing display mode in luts)
pia/via chip in one 40 or 48 pin dip or plcc
But you can do this on a stock Atari 8bit, and they have graphics chip upgrades that sit between the gtia and antic they provide more Amiga like and 16 bit style graphics
https://youtu.be/jSS08co8zvA?si=f2wnRY22mOsB9z6l
Either an msx or an over glorified “graphing calculator”
https://youtu.be/ZhSUhE03XFw?si=Wg57Qjen2uc0z0Gk
Just like no c64 fanboy gonna tell me sid was the best sounding chip
This eventually became the sound of Yamaha pianos of the 1980s
Those YM family of sounchips
Sounds like Atari but with all the hardware filters and waveform manipulation of the sid chip, later with fm synth
Still does everything in squares mostly but it’s cheap and using filters can get round that
https://youtu.be/PK1hErnozbk?si=DvLzRgDX9A8BSCAy
Especially pay grands for Yamaha keyboards that had the money to actually support digital samples playback
Atleast I grew up in a household that grew up with the kind of income to afford an Atari 800xl launch day, with half a meg of ram, highspeed floppy, wireless modem, and true stereo
Meanwhile you still fixing dat c64 that cheep bak then
https://youtu.be/hLxw_CMy9ik?si=dq5LKkRYFQKardxX
Even Atari can emulate a sid chip
https://youtu.be/-hUPZAtkyEA?si=5UQVwmZgGJYh-UWd
Well even in 1979 I could watch South Park using an ide harddrive interface….
I don’t even think Vic 20 was really around yet ….
Gotta always add something to c64 to make it work better 🤷♂️
https://youtu.be/l9Tro0JfdYU?si=4kutFnaz-9E5tmO2
SID was the best sounding chip. That’s why it’s still used by professional musicians. I don’t hear much POKEY in mainstream music, probably because it generally sounded like crap with 4 8-bit channels as was commonly used. And while POKEY was limited, I don’t want to discount everything done with it. Some musicians have made amazing music with it despite its limitations. I went through a large archive of Atari music several years ago and developed a fondness for Grayscale (the group) and their constituent members music.
Meanwhile on the C64…
https://youtu.be/W9WCEMEwoww
Don’t ask me why they used Hubbard tunes which were generally C64-first and sounded best there. Would have been cool to hear some covers of songs that originated on the Atari.
Actually most professional musicians used YM Yamaha chips (sound blaster/Sega genesis)
That’s what those hi end 80s synth piano keyboard with midi interface used mostly, and those used digital samples too.
They had ibm PC and Atari st moneybags
Sid chip was easily beat by an arcade machine soundchip
This can easily substitute the additional pokey chip in a stereo pokey mod
Pretty much the pokey can do a lot of what sid can do,
I even can play games with digitized stereo sampled music on my Atari, use in dac mode play sid files too
Pokey also sounds the same doesn’t matter if it’s Atari 400, Atari xl or xe
Can’t say that about sid
Different revision so no two c64 ever sound the same
https://youtu.be/epALZ1dV_P4?si=2OP6yjoU3o0cSZ1i
Sa1099 was available in around 1984 by Phillips iirc
Pretty much a pokey on steroids with all sid capabilities and way more audio outputs
https://youtu.be/CPwGaocgbHE?si=hrv62E_F3us9BbqN
I had a C-64, and it did have quite a neet little graphics processor. It had a bunch of what were called sprites. Each sprite was a small bitmapped object, you could move around the screen. There were a bunch of other graphics processing features that were very cool on their own. The C-64 was a head of its time. It was a very cool little machine.
There’s still a lot going on for the C64, people are still pushing the limits of what it can do.
https://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?platform%5B%5D=Commodore+64&page=1
Should make it with HDMI port to connect to modern TV’s
The chip doesn’t support HDMI, so you’d need a seperate (probably expensive) NTSC -> HDMI converter. Otoh, the normal display output of the C64 is also NTSC, so you’d have a monitor available anyway.
Yamaha, the piano, motorcycle, robotics company.
What about combining it with super cpu?
https://youtu.be/sKq9qX2QUmU?si=2FR8y_4qNm8liope
Can it do this?
This is not a Disk interface card, so no it cant stream video from modern flash card like DivIDEo does.
Anyone working on symbios operating system ? Seems to be mainly z80 based can we expect any msx2+ conversions for c64? What about video playback ? What about v9990 chip is it any better?
http://www.tecnobytes.com.br/p/v9990-powergraph_10.html
For the Amstrad CPC so you get the Z80 for free.
Quick note that a similar hardware was added to the Amstrad CPC a few years back, and got to the point of selling quite a few units to the scene and a port of the CPC windowed OS, SymbOS.
http://www.tecnobytes.com.br/p/v9990-powergraph_10.html
In this case it is a V9990 with 512KB memory.