Author: Jon Suite (83.sub-66-174-7.myvzw.com)
Date: 06-09-2005 22:50
Since we're dreaming, why focus so much on building a FULLY COMPATIBLE Atari? It would be a lot more useful to implement most of the Atari's features on a PCI card and drop it in a PC, where it could have access to modern hardware while still remaining compatible with the old Atari 8-bit line. On the card would be:
- 6502 CPU
- 1MB RAM; this memory should be accessible by the PC as well
- programmable clock generator (to switch between PAL and NTSC Ataris)
- ANTIC/GTIA/PIA/POKEY chips
- SIO and all 4 joystick ports in a breakout box
- VGA/TV out
- scan-conversion hardware to allow direct digital capture of the Atari's output (i.e. for running the Atari in a window)
With appropriate software on the PC side, what you end up with is an Atari that not only keeps its original Atari flavor, but also gets things like USB, true VGA output (just allocate some of the 1MB RAM as a frame buffer and have the PC software copy it to the video card), Ethernet, etc.... and you could still hook up homebrew projects to the joystick ports :)
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