Retro computing/gaming FPGA Arcade Replay Review

[paulcav]

https://www.mups.co.uk/post/2017/05/fpga-arcade-replay-review/
http://www.fpgaarcade.com/



What is it?
The replay board makes use of different cores which run on an. A “core” is the FPGA recreation of an arcade machine’s hardware such as Pac-Man or a home computer system such as the C64 or Amiga. Depending on how a core is implemented, it can provide a more authentic representation of the original hardware than emulation alone. It’s about as close as you can get to running the original hardware (custom chips not withstanding).

[gary_01]

I got mine in May this year and having a blast playing games on it and developing

Never done anything with an FPGA/VHDL before this and as a software programmer it has been quite the eye opener, very different mindset and lots of subtle "traps"  Lots of fun too though.

[Kjelt]

Very interesting till I saw the price of the board.

[rstofer]

In terms of a single game, say PacMan, the T80 core over at OpenCores does a great job for Z80 based games.

There is some memory decoding to do and you have to dig up the ROM contents but the entire project should be doable on something as old as a Spartan III Starter Board.  I would look for the 1200k version of the board.

I have it running on a NEXYS 2 board.  I built an add-on card to break out the video, audio and switch connections.

I'll take a flying leap of faith and say the project could fit into an Artix 7 "Arty" board.

http://store.digilentinc.com/arty-a7-artix-7-fpga-development-board-for-makers-and-hobbyists/

The only issue is the fact that Arty doesn't have a VGA connector nor the appropriate resistors to create the VGA DAC.  This PMOD gadget will take care of the video but it eats up two PMOD connectors:

http://store.digilentinc.com/pmod-vga-video-graphics-array/

All of the code comes from fpgaarcade.com several years ago and has now morphed into the Replay board.

One of these days I'm going to build the cocktail table version.  I already have a full sized cabinet with Mame and this includes PacMan.

[daybyter]

A z80 core should work on those 13$ cyclone 2 Boards from eBay?
Maybe even on one of those 8$ lattice ice40 boards?

[JanJansen]

Very interesting till I saw the price of the board.

What is the price then ?

[Kjelt]

€300

[legacy]

it'a a good platform, for sure better than the last cheap board offered on FleaBay.
The price is explained by a simple statement: it's not produced for the mass.

[helius]

It looks like a more recent shot at what the MiST did, but sold for arcades instead of home consoles.

[rstofer]

A z80 core should work on those 13$ cyclone 2 Boards from eBay?
Maybe even on one of those 8$ lattice ice40 boards?

Maybe but I doubt it.  Here is the Design Summary Report for my Nexys2 build.  These is always some difficulty in equating resources among the various vendors.

Code: [Select]

Design Summary Report:

Number of External IOBs  63 out of 250    25%
Number of External Input IOBs  27
Number of External Input IBUFs 27
Number of LOCed External Input IBUFs  27 out of 27    100%
Number of External Output IOBs  36
Number of External Output IOBs  36
Number of LOCed External Output IOBs  36 out of 36    100%
Number of External Bidir IOBs  0

Number of BUFGMUXs  3 out of 24     12%
Number of DCMs  1 out of 8      12%
Number of RAMB16s  19 out of 28     67%
Number of Slices  1482 out of 8672   17%
Number of SLICEMs  66 out of 4336    1%

For the boards with the EP2C5T144, it appears there is nowhere near enough BlockRAM.