Exploring The Sega Saturn’s Wacky Architecture

March 28, 2024 by Maya Posch 44 Comments

Sega Saturn mainboard with main components labelled. More RAM is found on the bottom, as well. (Credit: Rodrigo Copetti)

In the annals of game console history, the Sega Saturn is probably the most convoluted system of all time, even giving the Playstation 3 a run for its rings. Also known as the system on which Sega beached itself before its Dreamcast swansong, it featured an incredible four CPUs, two video processors, multiple levels and types of RAM, all pushed onto game studios with virtually no software tools or plan how to use the thing. An introduction to this console’s architecture is provided by [Rodrigo Copetti], which gives a good idea of the harrowing task of developing for this system.

Launched in Japan in 1994 and North America and Europe in 1995, it featured a double-speed CD-ROM drive, Hitachi’s zippy new SH-2 CPU (times two) and some 3D processing grunt that was intended to let it compete with Sony’s Playstation. The video and sound solutions were all proprietary to Sega, with the two video processors (VDP1 & 2) handling parts of the rendering process which complicated its use for 3D tasks, along with its use of quadrilaterals instead of triangles as with the Playstation and Nintendo 64.

Although a lot of performance could be extracted from the Saturn’s idiosyncratic architecture, its high price and ultimately the competition with the Sony Playstation and the 1996 release of the Nintendo 64 would spell the end for the Saturn. Although the Dreamcast did not repeat the Saturn’s mistakes, it seems one commercial failure was enough to ruin Sega’s chances as a hardware developer.

Wico Boss Joystick Modded To Use Cherry MX Keyboard Switches

March 22, 2024 by Lewin Day 5 Comments

The Wico Boss joystick was one of the better designs of the 1980s. Yours truly had one, and put it through many brutal hours of Amiga-based gameplay. [Drygol] was recently asked if he could alter some of these sticks to be even clickier than stock, and jumped at the change to do some modding.

[Drygol]’s idea was to swap out the original microswitches in the sticks for keyboard switches instead. In particular, the idea was to use the Cherry MX Blues which have a particularly nice click to them. But this wasn’t just going to be a straight swap. Instead, since the hardware was retro and preservation was desired, the modification had to be reversible.

The result was a drop-in 3D-printed bracket that holds four Cherry switches around the joystick’s central bauble. Thus, when the stick is moved, it actuates the keyboard switches with a satisfying click. A 12mm tactile switch was also installed in the base to be activated by the fire button. Then, it was a simple matter of tidying up some of the sticks during reassembly and wiring up the original cables to the new switches.

It’s a neat way to give an old-fashioned digital joystick a new lease on life. This would be a particularly great mod for tired sticks with worn out microswitches, too. Hilarious archaic marketing video after the break. They really are whacko for Wico.

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Video Poker Takes Your Money In 10 Lines Of BASIC

March 21, 2024 by Donald Papp 14 Comments

It wasn’t easy, but [D. Scott Williamson] succeeded in implementing Jacks or Better Video Poker in 10 lines of BASIC, complete with flashing light and sound! Each round, one places a bet then plays a hand of 5-card draw, hoping to end up with Jacks or better.

This program is [Scott]’s entry into the 2024 BASIC 10 Liner Contest, which at this writing has concluded submissions and expects to announce results on April 6th 2024. Contestants may choose any 8-bit computer system BASIC, and must implement their program within ten lines of code (classically limited to 80 characters per line, but there are different categories with different constraints on line width.)

10 lines of BASIC is truly an exercise in information density.

We’ve seen impressive 10-line BASIC programs before, like this re-implementation of the E.T. video game. (Fun fact: while considered one of the worst video games of all time, there’s a compelling case to be made that while it was a flop, it was ahead of its time and mostly just misunderstood.)

These programs don’t look much like the typical BASIC programs many of us remember. They are exercises in information density, where every character counts. So we’re delighted to see [Scott] also provides a version of his code formatted and commented for better readability, and a logical overview that steps through each line.

He spends a little time talking about the various challenges, as well. For example, hand ranking required a clever solution. IF…THEN conditionals would rapidly consume the limited lines of code, so hands are ranked programmatically. The 52-card deck is also simulated, rather than simply generating random cards on the fly.

The result looks great, and you can watch it in action in the video, just under the page break. If this sort of challenge tweaks your interest, there’s plenty of time to get started on next year’s BASIC 10 Liner Contest. Fire up those emulators!

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Commodore CHESSmate Replica Runs On The ESP32

March 20, 2024 by Maya Posch 9 Comments

The Commodore CHESSmate chess computer might not be terribly well known, but that doesn’t make it any less worthy of being reproduced. If anything it is more important, as it gives more people an opportunity to use one of these devices, yet beyond a purely emulated experience the real user interface is harder to experience.

This is where [Michael Gardi]’s modernized replica provides a highly accessible version, consisting of a custom PCB with an ESP32 as the brains of the system. Although decidedly overkill next to the 6502 in the original CHESSmate, it makes the project far easier for others to assemble as it contains few components that shouldn’t be readily available.

The ESP32 is mounted on a small daughterboard which plugs into the main PCB with the buttons, LEDs and indicators. The whole stack is then inserted into the 3D printed reproduction case. These 3D models along with the ESP32 port of the CHESSmate firmware can be found in the GitHub repository, along with a minimalist frame and a ‘CHESSmate Lite’ version as alternative enclosure options for those who somehow don’t appreciate the delightful 1980s aesthetics.

We covered the Commodore CHESSmate last year, including a highly faithful reproduction built by [Hans Otten], which [Michael] read the day after meeting [Peter Jennings], the author of MicroChess (which the CHESSmate uses internally) at an event at York University. Taking this as a sign, he set to work on this particular project.

We’re not sure if there’s really a cosmic force directing [Michael] towards his next project, but if there is, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank it for doing a fantastic job so far.

DIY Pocket PONG Breaks The Mobile Spell

March 18, 2024 by Kristina Panos 8 Comments

[Minikk], aka [Athul] is about to enter 10th grade and reports that they and their contemporaries are eschewing boring mobile games for 90s stuff and old games like PONG. Well, we already knew the 90s were back, but it’s nice to see that even older stuff is coming along with it. The kids are alright.

Whether you want to play alone or with a friend, it’s a classic to have in your pocket for sure. The brains behind this 70s-era operation is a Seeed Xiao ESP32-C3, which takes input from the two potentiometers and outputs the game on a 128 x 64 OLED. There’s also a small buzzer for when the ball hits the paddle, or you or your friend slips one past the goalie.

Our favorite part of this build has to be the DIY rivets that hold the OLED in place. [Athul] built posts into the enclosure that get heat-smashed into place with a soldering iron. Pretty neat, huh?

PONG is a specific thrill, certainly. How can it be more thrilling? Maybe with LEDs instead of a screen? Just a thought.

Playing ZX Spectrum’s Manic Miner On The Arduino Uno

March 11, 2024 by Maya Posch 15 Comments

Composite output shield with audio driver and controller inputs for Arduino Uno (Credit: Scott Porter)

Although it seems many have moved on to 32-bit MCUs these days for projects, there is still a lot of fun to be had in the 8-bit AVR world, as [Scott Porter] demonstrates with a recent Arduino Uno project featuring his game engine running a port of the Manic Miner game that was originally released in 1983 for the ZX Spectrum. For the video and audio output he created an add-on board for the Uno that creates a composite signal using two resistors, along with an audio driver circuit and control inputs either from the onboard buttons or from a NES controller. Audio can be sent either over the composite output or via the audio jack.

A demonstration of the game is provided in a number of videos on [Scott]’s YouTube account, which shows off a few levels, at 256×256 resolution. It contains all 20 original levels, with a few quality of life upgrades with animation. It also features original music, which may or may not work for you, but music can be turned on or off in the main menu. Compared to the 3.5 MHz Z80 MPU in the ZX Spectrum, the 16 MHz AVR of the Uno is a lot beefier, which raises the hope that a color version like the ZX Spectrum one is also in the future, even if it may require an add-on board with a framebuffer. As [Scott] notes, the weakness of the Uno is that the ZX Spectrum has significantly more RAM, which limits what can be done.

Thanks to [256byteram] for the tip.

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Gaming On A TP-Link TL-WDR4900 Wireless Router

March 5, 2024 by Maya Posch 18 Comments

When you look at your home router, the first thought that comes to mind probably isn’t about playing games on it. But that doesn’t stop [Manawyrm] and [tSYS] from taking on the task of turning the 2013-era TP-Link TL-WDR4900 router into a proper gaming machine using an external GPU. This is made possible by the PCIe lanes on the mainboard, courtesy of the PowerPC-based SoC (NXP QorIQ P1014) and remappable Base Address Registers (BARs). This router has been an OpenWRT-favorite for years due to its powerful hardware and feature set.

This mod required a custom miniPCIe PCB that got connected to the PCIe traces (after cutting the connection with the Atheros WiFi chipset). This allowed an external AMD Radeon HD 7470 GPU to be connected to the system, which showed up in OpenWRT. To make full use of this hardware by gaining access to the AMD GPU driver, full Debian Linux was needed. Fortunately, the distro had a special PowerPCSPE port that supports the e500v2 CPU core in the SoC. After this it was found that the amdgpu driver has issues on 32-bit platforms, for which an issue ticket got filed.

Using the legacy Radeon driver helped to overcome this issue, but then it was found that the big endian nature of the CPU tripped up the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City game code which has not been written with BE in mind. This took a lot of code patching to help fix this, but eventually the game was up and running, albeit with glitches. Whatever the cause of these graphical glitches was will remain unknown, as after updating everything things began to work normally.

So now it’s possible to convert a 2013-era router into a gaming console after patching in an external GPU, which actually could be useful in keeping more potential e-waste out of landfills.

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