Bitbox console

Ah .. such a nice game to play on the Bitbox ! (see Angry Video Game Nerd or Joueur du Grenier reviews ;) ... )

This game / engine is aimed at reproducing the dragons lair game on the Bitbox. It's only compatible with the standard bitbox since the data is streamed from SD card.

It's currently 200LoC / 40k flash / 128k RAM + a 70MB data file

See github release : https://github.com/makapuf/bitbox-fmv

Hi ! now the Bitbox has a ZX spectrum emulator (on top of the Game Boy one)

Spectrum hardware is quite simple and regular, so it's actually quite simple, based on an existing Z80 CPU emulator, to build a spectrum on it !

Much of the needed info is here : http://www.worldofspectrum.org/faq/reference/48kreference.htm

See details at http://bitboxconsole.blogspot.fr/2015/05/zx-spectrum-emulator.html and https://github.com/makapuf/bitbox-spectrum

Want to see other emulators ?

a few updates on the micro BB, BB dev will go on a bit for now.Well, after playing a bit with a STM32f0 dev board, and porting a kernel it seems outputting a 12MHz signal with a 48MHz f0 really isn't possible, even with a DAC. Resolution seems to be capped at ~190 pixels horizontally. Also some prototype pcb have arrived - with some issues but, eh that's planned.

So I'm investigating stm32f1 @72MHz which will prove quite cheap also and able to output 320 pixels at least

In the meantime, playing with a cleaner kernel really is a charm, which I plan on cleaning the main Bitbox,

Also working on several games (existing and new ... ) but all of them in parallel so individual advancement may not be great ... also planning on working with ESP8266 ...

Also planning on making a more streamlined 2.5 pcb (smaller but with ~same chip bitbox) but that's not short term.

I'm in the process of thinking about making a bitbox micro, cortex m0-based console. The idea is to be smaller, cheaper and maybe more challenging to write games than bitbox, while retaining enough similarity to keep experience and be able to port games simply. Original Bitbox will still be the bigger brother with USB, high def vga, expandability, bigger memory & faster core.

So far the design choices are :

• when in doubt, prefer small, cheap and simple
• stm32f0, 128k flash /16k RAM chip - 48MHz
• VGA out, jack for sound
• nunchuk controller
• USB for reflash and power
• around 1x2 inches
• a few megs SPI flash chip (no microsd since it adds to the price)

stay tuned !

Well the project is still ongoing well (see the blog maybe). More code,games are coming and quite a lot of simple graphical modes and sound/music related work from me and others.