The GameTank

Designing and building an 8-bit game console from the GND up

I'll log my project here and mantain a roadmap

For the moment this is just an outline of what will go on the site

• Intoduction
  • Goals
  • Self-imposed rules
  • Target specs
• Address decoding
  • Nested demuxers, write timing
  • Memory mapping
  • Effects of memory decisions
  • Swap buffers
• Graphics/Video
  • Experiments with 74HC123
  • Digital timing, Steamed RAMs, PCB mistakes
  • Colorbursts and phase shifts
  • Swap buffers
• Audio
  • Initial concepts
  • Prototyping with 40103
  • Attenuating and filtering
  • Wavetable sampling
• Cartridge system
  • Pin assignments
  • Room for expansion
  • Programming ROMs
• Controller inputs
  • Serial comms with shift registers
  • Controller design, ergonomics and durability
• Bringing it all together
  • Putting everything on the motherboard
  • Testing overall functionality
  • Case design
• Software
  • Toolchain
  • Language
  • File formats / Data compression
  • Making the first games