Tellymate Library

Just happened upon the Tellymate Library while fiddling around looking for ideas to add to my suite (haha) of software, it looks like it could form the basis of a great interface for this project, especially if combined with the Cmd Library to build some applications.

Anyone for Pong?

After a tough week and a general lack of time to tinker with things electronic, I finally have some results worth bleating about. I had made a game controller of sorts some time ago, but I have finally got an opportunity to solder on a makeshift 4-way header so it can be plugged into the breadboard. Consisting of a 10k potentiometer and a momentary push-button switch in a small, slanted black plastic case I had lying around that came from Maplin (I got another a few weeks ago, to make a second controller) along with a length of 4 core mouse cable and a chicken-head knob that I had a few of in my parts box.

Sony, Microsoft - be afraid, be very afraid :).

I have reverted to Arduino 0023 for the time being so I could compile and upload some working software, and a version of 'Pong' I found on the Arduino Forum seemed like a good first tryout to see what I can expect in terms of output quality and usability of anything I may choose to run. The sketch requires two 10k pots wired as a voltage divider connected to 5v, GND and inputs 0 and 2 for player 1 and 2 respectively, so I wired my 'gamepad' with one, plus a pushbutton wired as per the basic Arduino tutorial for reading a switch for future use. For the purposes of testing, I wired the output of the pot to both inputs (0 and 2) so that both of the paddles would move together when playing Pong, although this could prove to be the basis of a whole single player mode of the game once I get to grips with the software side of things.

Ping-pong.

An idea I did have, was to use the two unused lines contained within the ps2 mouse/keyboard interface for the 'gamepad', enabling me to use one 6 pin DIN connector for both the keyboard (when I get round to it) and Player 1's controller.  Finally I got to use my little 7" TFT monitor, I bought it so I didn't have to lug a heavy old CRT around everywhere when I want to mess about with my Spectrum stuff, but it's turned out to have more uses than I ever thought possible.

Breadboard Rebuild

I have now moved the project to it's own (cheap and nasty) breadboard, there is now the Tellymate, an Arduino bootloaded ATMega328p and my Sparkfun FT232R Breakout board.

I'm having trouble getting certain sketches to work correctly (or at all in some cases) but I suspect that this may be due to how certain things such as string handling has been changed in v1.0 of the Arduino IDE.

I have had the 'Hello World' example provided by Batsocks displaying correctly, but most of the rest of them just output garbage or don't even compile any more. I might see if I can somehow revert to a previous version of the IDE as most examples as well as the vast majority of stuff posted on forums and the like is written for 0022/0023. Once I've found a way to prove this theory then my confidence will be restored, then I can get back to dreaming about normal stuff.

As soon as I can find a suitable DIN socket (sure I had one somewhere) then I'll start working on adding a keyboard. An initial bit of trouble remembering how I set the 'jumpers' to control baud rate on the Tellymate, combined with a dearth of good results on the display front dented my confidence for a while but I think I've detailed the cause above.

On a different but related note, I took a deep breath and bought a NEC z80 from Fleabay (2 actually, but one is going to be a socketed replacement on one of my Speccy's mainboard) to see if I can get that up and running on a breadboard :).

EDIT: I am now certain that Arduino 1.0 is causing the problems detailed above, now I need to find out how to sort it out.

Arduino Retro Computer

Here's a guy that has had an idea similar to mine:



Amigojapan has already built a version that uses a 4 line LCD, PS2 Keyboard and SD card reader in conjunction with an Arduino Uno running his own BASIC interpreter. Like me he's working on a new version that uses a composite video output to display on a normal tv/monitor.

Also included on his page are the schematics and a few links to resources in case you fancy a go yourself.