Making A Retro(ish) Game Console From Scratch

As simple as it’s to make a late Nineteen Eighties-style recreation console utilizing a contemporary microcontroller, there’s arguably extra enjoyable in doing issues the normal manner. This is the problem that [Throaty Mumbo] took upon himself when he launched into his retro recreation console mission, referred to as merely the Game Console V2.

In the accompanying video the event course of and different particulars are coated and demonstrated. Most notable maybe are the correct cartridges with ROMs on a parallel bus somewhat than one thing like SD playing cards, and the absence of any fashionable ports together with even VGA. This means solely composite AV output like within the good previous days of RF splitters and different assorted enjoyable.

The NTSC output sign is generated by an RP2350 MCU within the type of the PGA-shaped PGA2350 breakout board that’s wired right into a 6-bit R-2R community for RGB332 output by way of the RCA jack, whereas audio is fed right into a PCM5102A I2S DAC. For controllers you get 4-pin Bulgin SA2367 connectors and an N64-compatible protocol.

It’s famous that the usage of an RP2350B MCU is non permanent, because the aim with the V3 model of the mission is to take it into a correct 8- or 16-bit CPU route. We’re definitely wanting ahead to seeing this subsequent revision of what appears to be a reasonably fascinating recreation console.