Dual Porting A C64 Flash Cart

December 26, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 4 Comments

The old cartridges for the Commodore 64 use EEPROMs to store their data, and the newer Flash carts use either a Flash chip or an SD card to put a whole bunch of games in a small plastic brick. [Stian] and [Runar] thought that wasn’t good enough – they wanted to program cartridges in real time, the ability to reboot the C64 without ever touching it, and a device for coding and testing. What they came up with is the latest advance in Commodore cartridge technology.

The device presents 8k of memory to the C64, but it doesn’t do this with Flash or an EEPROM. Instead, [Stian] and [Runar] are using a dual-port static RAM, specifically one from the IDT7005 series. This chip has two data busses, two address busses, and /CE, /OE, and R/W lines for either side of the chip, allowing other digital circuits to be connected to one small section of the C64’s memory.

Also in the cart is an ATmega16 running V-USB to handle the PC communications. It takes about 1 to 1.5 seconds to transfer an entire 8k over to the cartridge, but this chip can read and write the RAM along with the C64 simultaneously.

If you want a box that will give you the ability to put ever game in existence on a single cartridge, this isn’t the one. However, if you want to write some C64 games and do some live debugging, this is the one for you. The Eagle files are available, and there’s a video demo below.

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Dual Port RAM Teaches An Old NES New Tricks

May 6, 2014 by Adam Fabio 11 Comments

nesDPR

[Andrew] is developing a game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Emulators are great for this, but [Andy] loves running on the real iron. To help, he’s created a dual port RAM interface for his NES. As the name implies, a dual port RAM is a memory with two separate data and address buses. The Cypress Semiconductor CY7C136 [Andy] used also includes arbitration logic to ensure that both ports don’t attempt to access the same memory cell and cause data corruption. In [Andy’s] case the NES was on one side, oblivious to the new hardware. On the other side of the dual port RAM, [Andy] installed an ATmega164 running his own custom firmware.

The new hardware gives [Andy] a live view of what’s going on in the NES’s memory. He added a live memory view/edit screen similar to the FCEUX emulator. The window runs on a PC while the game itself is running on an NES. [Andy] was even able to add rudimentary break and step features by connecting his circuit to the Non Maskable Interrupt (NMI) line of the NES. By holding the NMI asserted, the ATmega can essentially freeze the game in progress.

[Andy] has even used his circuit to teach the NES some new tricks. By reading the timer and score memory locations on Ice Hockey, he was able to create a scoreboard and goal light. Similar techniques were used to give Contra a muzzle flash light which puts Ambilight systems to shame.

We don’t know what [Andy] is planning next, but we hope it’s a source release so we can start hacking some some games ourselves!

Click past the break to see a couple of [Andy’s] Vine videos.

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