emulation

99 Articles

a Pi Pico on a breadboard, running a 7-segment counter gateware, with a 7-segment digit and a pushbutton next to the Pico

Want To Play With FPGAs? Use Your Pico!

December 31, 2022 by 21 Comments

Ever want to play with an FPGA, but don’t have the hardware? Now, if you have one of those ever-abundant Pi Picos, you can start playing with Verilog without getting an FPGA board. The FakePGA project by [tvlad1234], based on the Verilator toolkit, provides you with a way to compile Verilog into C++ for the RP2040. FakePGA even integrates RP2040 GPIOs so that they work as digital pins for the simulated GPIOs, making it a significant step up from computer-aided FPGA code simulation

[tvlad1234] provides instructions for setting this up with Linux – Windows, though untested, could theoretically run this through WSL. Maximum clock speed is 5KHz – not much, but way better than not having any hardware to test with. Everything you’d want is in the GitHub repo – setup instructions, Verilog code requirements, and a few configuration caveats to keep in mind.

We cover a lot of projects where FPGAs are used to emulate hardware of various kinds, from ISA cards to an entire Game Boy.  CPU emulation on FPGAs is basically the norm — it’s just something easy to do with the kind of power that an FPGA provides. Having emulation in the opposite direction is unusual,  though, we’ve seen FPGAs being emulated with FPGAs, so perhaps it was inevitable after all. Of course, if you have neither a Pico nor an FPGA, there’s always browser based emulators.

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Blinky Project Is 6502s All The Way Down

December 24, 2022 by 19 Comments

Virtually any platform you might find yourself programming on has some simple method of running a delay. [Joey Shepard] got rather creative on a recent project, though, relying on a rather silly nesting method that we’re calling 6502s All The Way Down.

The project in question was a simple PCB that was shaped like a robot, with blinking LED eyes. Typically, you’d simply reach for the usual sleep() or delay() function to control the blink rate, but [Joey] went off-piste for this one. Instead, the PIC32 on the board runs a 6502 emulator written in MIPS assembly. This emulated 6502 is then charged with running a further 6502 emulator coded in 6502 assembly, and so on, until there’s 6502 emulators running six-deep on the humble microcontroller. The innermost emulator runs a simple program that blinks the LED eyes in a simple loop. With the overhead of running six emulators, though, the eyes only blink at a rate of roughly once every two seconds.

It’s an amusing and complicated way to write a blink program, and we applaud [Joey] for going to all that trouble. We imagine it was a great way to learn about programming the PIC32 as well as emulation in general. Meanwhile, if you’re working on your own emulator feats, be sure to let us know!

A 386 motherboard with a custom ISA card plugged in

Emulate Any ISA Card With A Raspberry Pi And An FPGA

November 13, 2022 by 28 Comments

One of the reasons the IBM PC platform became the dominant standard for desktop PCs back in the mid-1980s was its open hardware design, based around what would later be called the ISA bus. Any manufacturer could design plug-in cards or even entire computers that were hardware and software compatible with the IBM PC. Although ISA has been obsolete for most purposes since the late 1990s, some ISA cards such as high-quality sound cards have become so popular among retrocomputing enthusiasts that they now fetch hundreds of dollars on eBay.

So what can you do if your favorite ISA card is not easily available? One option is to head over to [eigenco]’s GitHub page and check out his FrankenPiFPGA project. It contains a design for a simple ISA plug-in card that hooks up to a Cyclone IV FPGA and a Raspberry Pi. The FPGA connects to the ISA bus and implements its bus architecture, while the Pi communicates with the FPGA through its GPIO ports and emulates any card you want in software. [eigenco]’s current repository contains code for several sound cards as well as a hard drive and a serial mouse. The Pi’s multi-core architecture allows it to run several of these tasks at once while still keeping up the reasonably high data rate required by the ISA bus.

In the videos embedded below you can see [eigenco] demonstrating the system on a 386 motherboard that only has a VGA card to hook up a monitor. By emulating a hard drive and sound card on the Pi he is able to run a variety of classic DOS games with full sound effects and music. The sound cards currently supported include AdLib, 8-bit SoundBlaster, Gravis Ultrasound and Roland MT-32, but any card that’s documented well enough could be emulated.

This approach could also come in handy to replace other unobtanium hardware, like rare CD-ROM interfaces. Of course, you could take the concept to its logical extreme and simply implement an entire PC in an FPGA.

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Putting A Little More Juice In Your Emulation Station

June 22, 2022 by 9 Comments

After you’ve built a snazzy Raspberry Pi-powered retro gaming console, you might be wondering if you could have just a wee bit more power and run some of those other games you might remember, such as Xbox, Wii, or PS3. Perhaps in the future, a later revision of an RPi could handle it but currently, to emulate the 6th/7th generation of consoles, you need something a little beefier. Luckily, [Zac] got his hands on an old gaming laptop and turned it into his own game console.

The first step was to take the laptop apart and discard the parts not needed. [Zac] stripped away the battery, Bluray drive, and spinning hard disk. That left him with a much smaller PCB that could fit into a small case. The power button was integrated into the keyboard but came into the motherboard by the flat cable keyboard connection. So by bridging a few pins, he could power up the laptop. Next, he upgraded the RAM, wifi card, an NVMe drive, and redid all the thermal paste and putty to try and keep things cool while overclocking the GPU.

The case for the machine heavily used his CNC as it was walnut with a mid-section made of plywood. The top has a gorgeous cast acrylic window to see inside. The part the [Zac] was dreading with the fine pitch soldering. Ultimately he got both wires connected with good connections and no bridging. Because it’s just a PC at its heart, almost every game is on the table. Emulation, some more moderate PC games, streaming from his office PC, and cloud gaming services allow him to access most games made. We love the concept and the idea.

We love the aesthetic of the build but if you prefer to keep your consoles looking a little more faithful, why not put your mini PC inside of an actual N64 case? Video after the break.

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The Little Lightgun That Could: Sinden Makes Good

June 22, 2022 by 13 Comments

Back in 2018, we covered the work being done by [Andrew Sinden] to create a lightgun that could work on modern televisions. The project was looking for funding via Kickstarter, but due at least in part to skepticism about the technology involved, the campaign fell well short of its goal. It seemed, at the time, like the story would end there.

But we were recently pointed to a fascinating interview with [Andrew] that ran in The Guardian a couple months back that not only tells the rest of the story, but concludes with a happy ending — after years of hard work, the Sinden Lightgun is now available for purchase. It’s not exactly the turn-key product that some would like, as there’s a fair number of hoops one must jump through just to bag some eponymous waterfowl in Duck Hunt, but nothing that would scare off the average Hackaday reader.

Limited technical details about the 2018 prototype may have kept backers away.

The final version of the hardware ditches the realistic firearm aesthetic inherited from the Wii gun accessory it was designed to fit into, and now features a brightly-colored pistol enclosure that wouldn’t look out of place tethered to a Virtua Cop machine. It’s also gained an optional recoil solenoid for force feedback, though it tacks on another $60 to the already hefty $100 price tag for the base model.

We’re glad to see that [Andrew] recognized the importance of getting Linux support for the software side of things, as it enabled the development of a pre-configured Retropie image for the Raspberry Pi 4. Though you aren’t forced to emulate on the Pi, for those who would like to blast the occasional zombie on their desktop, Windows and x86 Linux are also supported.

Often times, when we cover a project here on Hackaday it’s a one-shot deal: somebody had a particular need or desire, built a gadget to fulfill it, and moved on. There’s nothing wrong with that, but there’s a certain feeling of pride when we see a project from this community develop into something more. While not every hacked together piece of hardware we feature has the potential to be the next Arduboy or Sinden Lightgun, we like to think that we’ve already covered the next big project-turned-product success story and just don’t know it yet.

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A modern Tamagotchi PCB design and built-up prototype

Classic Tamagotchi Is Reincarnated In Modern Hardware

May 8, 2022 by 25 Comments

If you thought that Tamagotchis were a late ’90s fad that has faded from most people’s memory by now, you’d be wrong: the franchise is still alive and well today, with new models being released regularly. But even the original model from 1996, known as Tamagotchi P1, is being kept alive by a small group of enthusiasts. When ROM dumps of the original hardware began floating around the internet a couple of years ago, even those without the real thing could run these virtual pets in an emulator.

But the whole idea of the Tamagotchi hardware was that it was portable enough to carry around anywhere. If you’re among those who missed that part of the Tamagotchi experience, you’ll be pleased to know that [JC] designed OpenTama: a portable hardware platform that runs an emulated version of the original Tamagotchi P1 software. It’s about as close as it gets to those first-generation virtual pets, but with several additions that make your life easier.

The software platform is [JC]’s TamaLib which we featured last year; in effect it’s an open-source emulator that allows the Tamagotchi ROM to run on a variety of modern hardware platforms. It also contains several additional options like the ability to save and restore your progress or to select customized ROMs. The OpenTama hardware, meanwhile, is a proper 21st-century reimplementation of the original: a small, egg-sized PCB sporting an STM32 microcontroller driving an LCD or OLED display, powered by a 100 mAh battery that can be recharged through a USB-C port.

OpenTama is not limited to the TamaLib software, either: as an open-source general-purpose platform, it can also be used as a learning tool for embedded programming, so if you’ve always wanted to program your own virtual pet, or are simply looking to build a fancy egg timer, OpenTama’s GitHub page is the way to go. We’ve seen quite a few neat Tamagotchi-like projects recently: this 3D-printed one comes with a nice retro LCD screen, while this one’s giant size ensures you don’t forget to feed it.

Continue reading “Classic Tamagotchi Is Reincarnated In Modern Hardware” →

A Nintendo 64 console with modern hardware internals

N64 Mini PC Conversion Includes All The Trimmings

November 18, 2021 by 8 Comments

We’ve seen quite a few retro gaming consoles physically modded to house modern emulation hardware, but the NUC-64 by [RetroModder] stands out as one of the most impressive Nintendo 64 guttings that we’ve seen to date.

Observed from the front, the NUC-64 almost resembles a stock Nintendo console. The project’s name is printed across the vestigial cartridge slot, and two suspiciously modern wireless networking antennas can be seen poking out from the back. The console’s modifications are fully revealed when looking at it from the rear – gone is the power brick socket, which now houses the I/O for the replacement motherboard. A custom 3D printed I/O shield keeps everything looking neat and tidy.

Internally, the new hardware is no slouch. The Intel NUC is a small-form-factor PC, and this miniature battlestation sports an 1.6GHz Intel N3700 Pentium processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, WiFi/Bluetooth connectivity and an M.2 SSD. This hardware runs circles around the original Nintendo 64, and is more than capable of emulating games from that system.

Most total conversions would call it a day here, however [RetroModder] has taken it a step further by producing a custom PCB that neatly ties together the console’s front I/O. Most importantly, two Mayflash N64-to-USB converters means that your favorite 1990s games can be enjoyed with the original controllers. The original power LED and reset switch are present, as is the sliding power switch which retains its original purpose, thanks to a simple 555 circuit that sends the expected power-on and power-off signals to the motherboard with each slide of the power switch. Additionally, a system of 3D printed mounts and brackets keeps everything secure inside the case.

All the build details can be found here. The NUC-64 follows on from last month’s GamecubePC. The build quality and attention to detail makes this conversion rather special, and it’s clear that a lot of care and planning was taken to pull this off. Hopefully the original N64 hardware can be repurposed as well, perhaps as a new portable console?

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