Let there be....SOUND

Finally no more silence! I went the secure way and soldered a SID-Socket to the board. It's tested with a SwinSid, I don't have 12V and don't want to fry neither a real SID nor my FPGA-Board. For better sound, the Audio-Out from the SwinSid is connected to a real C64 SID-Socket, because I don't have the right parts to remake this part of the C64 mainboard (which also needs 12V).


Looks..erm.. funny.. but works great! On top of the FPGA-Board you can see the SwinSid, which is connected directly to the I/O of the FPGA. On the left it's a small board which is 1:1 a remade of the C64-Hardware (CIA <-> IEC Bus). On the bottom, you see a SD2IEC (left) and the AD725-Board (right).

Another perspective.. the two yellow cables go from the SwinSid into the C64-Sid Socket (Audio Out and Ground). Works fine, as long nobody touches something...

And here's Oneder / Oxyron :)

NUFLI working

After turning around in circles NUFLI finally works - thank to the guys over at CSDB and an addendum of Christian Bauer's VIC-II Text! This fix also fixes the "face" from Deux Ex Machina and the 5-Sprites-Over-Fli from Demus Interruptus, and hopefully others too :)

Here some "work-stages" (the FLI-Bug is still not emulated..that's why it looks not quite right on the left).

VIC-II / CIA / 65xx Cracks needed

I'm looking for people who can help debugging the FPGA64 by providing some small test-programms (like f.ex. a stable raster with different numbers of sprites active on, around or outside a badline).

Just small pieces of code which can help locate bugs easy :)

Please drop me a mail to d@c64.ch!

Thank you :)

New Test: Deux Ex Machina

Almost perfect :)

Silly, but powerful, bug fixed....

A silly bug in the ram-bus caused that all writes to $d000 - $dfff went to Nirvana instead of RAM (with I/O-area turned off). Compatibility has improved a lot, many games that bugged/crashed before (like Bruce Lee, Bubble Bobble, Commando, Rambo II) are working fine now.

Some Videos

As promised, here some videos.

All debugging was made based on games like Kickman, The Pit, Save New York - so I'm still surprised that it's working that great.. But to "perfect" it's still a long way to go.

Cycle / Booze Design. Looking fine, except the plasmas....

EoD / Booze Design. Intro is perfect, rest havocs and crashes. Still better than nothing!

Major Update - Video to come soon!

Did some major updates the last weeks. (I know it's April 1st, but no jokes here!)

Video: 
The AD725 for color-video is here and working. Now it finally looks like a real C64!

Serial I/O:
Yes, I was finally able to hook a 1541 and load stuff (just finished this morning around 3am)!
From the things I've already tried, I need to say that I was positively surprised how good the implementation already works (remember: all debugging so far was made using 8k-Cartridge Files from 1982/1983 only!).

As far as I can tell, fastloaders seem to work fine, also the Sprite- and IRQ-Timing (VIC) seems to be cycle exact (IRQs are stable and borders open as they should). The first Side of We Are New/Fairlight runs almost perfect (except heavy gfx-glitches on the "disco"-part). The Last Ninja II works without any visible differences to a real C64. Also interlace-modes (tried from Soiled Legacy/Resource) are working fine with no visible difference to the real thing. So it will pass emusuxX0r for sure :)

There are still many issues to fix. AGSP/VSP-Stuff just cannot work properly as of now, so is sprite stretching/crunching. Also xScroll is still a little buggy on some modes, so are the CIAs.

Tonight I need to invest some time into "Hardware". Currently I connect 5 Pins of the FPGA thru a 3.3 <-> 5V Level Converter directly on the CIA2-socket of an old C64-Board (with removed CIAs). From there, I connected a 1541. This method just leaves a big mess on my desk, and there is no place left to hook a second C64 which should serve as a "DJ" for my 1541 Ultimate.
I need to rebuild parts of the C64-Board, so I can connect a Floppy directly. As an old 1541 just went up in smoke yesterday, I can use the parts from there ;)

Test-Setup: the FPGA is connected to the CIA2, which goes to the floppy...

Close up. The board in the front is the AD725 converter.

"Final" Test-Setup: the C64-Board Board is powered by the FPGA now, and the Floppy is connected to....

..an 1541 Ultimate on another C64, which is connected to....

..my PC with a Grabber-Device....