Polish Engineer Creates Postage Stamp-Sized 1980s Atari Computer (arstechnica.com) 32
Ars Technica's Benj Edwards reports: In 1979, Atari released the Atari 400 and 800, groundbreaking home computers that included custom graphics and sound chips, four joystick ports, and the ability to run the most advanced home video games of their era. These machines, which retailed for $549 and $999, respectively, represented a leap in consumer-friendly personal computing, with their modular design and serial I/O bus that presaged USB. Now, 46 years later, a hobbyist has shrunk down the system hardware to a size that would have seemed like science fiction in the 1970s.
Polish engineer Piotr "Osa" Ostapowicz recently unveiled "Atarino," which may be the world's smallest 8-bit Atari computer re-creation, according to retro computing site Atariteca. The entire system -- processor, graphics chips, sound hardware, and memory controllers -- fits on a module measuring just 2x1.5 centimeters (about 0.79x0.59 inches), which is roughly the size of a postage stamp.
Ostapowicz's creation reimplements the classic Atari XL/XE architecture using modern FPGA (field-programmable gate array) technology. Unlike software emulators that simulate old hardware (and modern recreations that run them, like the Atari 400 Mini console) on a complete computer system of another architecture, Atarino reproduces the original Atari components faithfully at the logic level, allowing it to run vintage software while maintaining compatibility with original peripherals. [...] The project, which began over a decade ago and was first publicly demonstrated in December 2023, includes a 6502C processor, ANTIC and GTIA graphics chips, POKEY sound chip, and memory controllers onto a single Lattice UP5K FPGA chip. Despite its tiny size, the system can run at clock speeds up to 31 MHz -- far faster than the original hardware's 1.79 MHz. While the Atarino can run vintage software and work with the original peripherals, it brings several key improvements -- including a modernized 6502 core with added instructions, a more efficient memory architecture, enhanced video output via VGA and HDMI, extended graphics modes, refined sound chip emulation, modular hardware design, support for modern connectivity like Wi-Fi and Ethernet, and compatibility with contemporary development tools like CC65 and Visual Studio Code.
Ostapowicz "plans to release complete kits with documentation, inviting the retrocomputing community to experiment with the hardware," adds Edwards.
Polish engineer Piotr "Osa" Ostapowicz recently unveiled "Atarino," which may be the world's smallest 8-bit Atari computer re-creation, according to retro computing site Atariteca. The entire system -- processor, graphics chips, sound hardware, and memory controllers -- fits on a module measuring just 2x1.5 centimeters (about 0.79x0.59 inches), which is roughly the size of a postage stamp.
Ostapowicz's creation reimplements the classic Atari XL/XE architecture using modern FPGA (field-programmable gate array) technology. Unlike software emulators that simulate old hardware (and modern recreations that run them, like the Atari 400 Mini console) on a complete computer system of another architecture, Atarino reproduces the original Atari components faithfully at the logic level, allowing it to run vintage software while maintaining compatibility with original peripherals. [...] The project, which began over a decade ago and was first publicly demonstrated in December 2023, includes a 6502C processor, ANTIC and GTIA graphics chips, POKEY sound chip, and memory controllers onto a single Lattice UP5K FPGA chip. Despite its tiny size, the system can run at clock speeds up to 31 MHz -- far faster than the original hardware's 1.79 MHz. While the Atarino can run vintage software and work with the original peripherals, it brings several key improvements -- including a modernized 6502 core with added instructions, a more efficient memory architecture, enhanced video output via VGA and HDMI, extended graphics modes, refined sound chip emulation, modular hardware design, support for modern connectivity like Wi-Fi and Ethernet, and compatibility with contemporary development tools like CC65 and Visual Studio Code.
Ostapowicz "plans to release complete kits with documentation, inviting the retrocomputing community to experiment with the hardware," adds Edwards.
Pfft. Fpgas. Real engineers lay out each circuit (Score:4, Interesting)
https://www.seas.upenn.edu/~ja... [upenn.edu]
Also, get off my lawn.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
They *did* lay out each circuit. Within an FPGA!
What is this? (Score:4, Interesting)
A computer for ants?
Re: What is this? (Score:1)
I was shopping around for microcontrollers at one point 20 years ago when I came across a PIC8 packaged into a 5-pin sot23. It had literally power, ground, and three usable pins.
Re:What is this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just saw this the other day https://www.zdnet.com/article/... [zdnet.com]
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Enjoyable and appropriate reference.
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A computer for ants?
Look on the bright side. That could have been the iPhone by 2027 if Bendgate didn’t happen.
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Yes. ;)
Small? (Score:2)
Re:Small? (Score:5, Informative)
It actually seems quite big for what we can put on a microchip these days. We can probably make one that needs to be measured in picometers, if not smaller.
Sure, but making a custom ASIC is seriously expensive. No one is going to do it unless there is a market for a ton of them, which there isn't. What this guy did was actually make one. Working hardware beats hardware that you can "probably" make but haven't and probably never will.
Re:Small? (Score:4, Informative)
it's cheaper than you think: https://tinytapeout.com/ [tinytapeout.com]
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Interesting link! But keep in mind ASIC != FPGA
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I'm not following. Tiny Tapeout is an actual ASIC. It's not an FPGA.
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Well the article said, the mini Atari is based on an FPGA.
interesting (Score:3)
compatibility with contemporary development tools like CC65 and Visual Studio Code.
Did not assume that tools like Visual Studio Code fit into the supposedly 64kB of RAM, and that even a 6502C port exists!
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The Atari XL/XE that this hardware supposedly emulates, is not limited to 64Kb of RAM. It can use much more, via bank switching.
As for CC65, don't forget that it's a cross-compiler first and foremost.
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Of course it can use more via bank switching.
So? What did you want to say?
At any given time, it has a 64k address space ... to access some "other bank" it has to switch. ... and the lower 48kB gets switched in and out. But there are different approaches. The bigger Apple //s had the main memory split into 48+16, and the second bank worked different, as far as I remember.
In general 16kB are always the same
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Real coders use AMAC :-)
Cross Development (Score:2)
Much of the development of new code on retro computers is done using tools on modern computers. Last year I did some coding for my Atari using Linux.
I wrote a simple AUTORUN.SYS program to launch a BASIC program, but with a few tweaks like enabling BASIC if it was disabled and displaying an error if it's a model without BASIC. And I managed to get it in 124 bytes so that it would fit on a single 128-byte sector, so it can be a drop-in replacement for any other version without those features. That was fun
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Sounds pretty cool!
typo in CPU (Score:1)
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Re: typo in CPU (Score:2)
I was getting ready to correct as well, but checked first. Then was embarrassed to see that Atari used a custom version of the 6502C (not all have this feature) with a Halt pin. Embarrassed because my first computer was an 800, and I should have remembered.
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Stuff like this is easy to mix up ...
While answering I stumbled over this: https://hackaday.com/2024/05/2... [hackaday.com]
Pretty interesting, too!
Re: typo in CPU (Score:2)
Yeah, that is pretty interesting. Thanks.
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And it gets more confusing as some people put 65C02 processors in or a 65816 (which includes 65C02 instructions). Even in the Atari community, people will get it backwards.
The summary mentions added instructions, so I assume those are 65C02 instructions, most notably the STZ instruction (store zero), allowing you to write zero to memory without altering one of the real registers. The downside is that there were undocumented instructions that people had figured out on the original 6502, and some people use
Jay Miner rules! (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] :)
Long live the master.
Pity (Score:3)
Pity that it needs a carrier board twice its size to be able to interface with the world.