Bomb Jack display hardware

https://github.com/martinpiper/BombJack/blob/master/README.md

by mrandish • 2 years ago

119 10 2 years ago

mrandish• 2 years ago

I randomly stumbled across this impressive, home brew graphics subsystem for C64 today. The goal seems to be pushing the boundaries of what would have been possible with period-correct, through-hole 74LS parts (no FPGA or ASIC) toward advanced arcade-level graphics hardware. Quite ambitious for a one-person hobby project and, as the video below shows, very successful!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLVZav7mVcI&t

ikari_pl• 2 years ago

is it C64-specific though?

ralferoo• 2 years ago

There are numerous mentions to Z80 as well as C64, and the arcade hardware was Z80 and this project started life as a plug-in compatible board, so presumably it still has support for being driven by Z80.

If it started life as a Z80 board, probably the C64 interface is just synthesising _RD, _WR and _MREQ (and maybe _IORQ) that a Z80 design would need from the RD/_WR, clock and high address bits on 6502.

Dwedit• 2 years ago

What about ULAs? That's what the ZX spectrum used. They're not quite FPGAs, and not quite ASICs.

chrisallick• 2 years ago

jesus dude... thats amazing.

Ylpertnodi• 2 years ago

I have to admit, and it only happened once, i threw a sickie at work (92?) to finish playing bombjack.

Another game I'm looking for is 'prensorium'.

wellytopness3• 2 years ago

Thank you for posting. This is one of my projects. I was wondering why all the subscribers joined today.

TacticalCoder• 2 years ago

What's the relation between this and MAME? I don't have the Bomb Jack arcade PCB (I've got others though) but I do have a Pi2JAMMA and, well, Bomb Jack using MAME.

Is this project something that could be replacing (partial?) hardware on a real Bomb Jack PCB (not unlike what some are doing with C64 chips, where new replacement can be dropped in place of old broken chips)?

wellytopness3• 2 years ago

It started off as a direct Bombjack arcade hardware replacement, it then grew way beyond what the arcade was capable of. MAME is software, this is hardware, no relation. :) Although interestingly the first version of the hardware did allow me to find a bug in the MAME implementation.

Bomb Jack display hardware

Related Stories