First place at Sillyventure 2K26SE, the 4K Mega Spredpoint demo! If you remember the spreadpoint demo from the Cuddly Demos then this is a 4K fullscreen tribute with 25khz sampled audio. All in just 4K.
Starting to get a feel for the case for the PolyMaster GameDrive. Slightly shorter than your usual PGM cart but with additional grip ridge for pulling the damn thing out! I'll iterate on how that works, but this is first pass.
Demo season is well upon us! Just putting the finishing touches to my 4K STE entry for Silly Venture 2K26 SE. I have a whopping 2 bytes left! I may stop there. Also featuring a new music track from Virgill!
Poly Master Game Drive Preview. Still work in progress, but it's pretty much there now from a basic features standpoint. Thought it was a good time to show it given the NeoGeo fun we've had in the past days!
A new firmware update for the 7800GD has just been released!
Firmware 26.01.2266 Added colour kill support for greyscale display Potential fix for ADPCM audio playback glitching (Rikki & Vikki, etc) Added save and load state of ADPCM audio
Well, I wasn't really expecting this to work, but here it is! I've been playing with a DVI video card for the MegaST's mega bus and have been able to get perfect video mirroring for the shifter output even with the most complex tricks.
That’s both wtf!? and beautiful all at once. I’m glad I don’t have to install these… You’d want a clear case so you could appreciate the craftsmanship!
Quick project to have a play with the Trion BGA256 part, a Mega ST DVI graphics card! Looks good, just need to try and populate it. I’ve had good luck with smaller BGA’s, so here’s hoping…
I got my old Mega ST out of storage to have a play with at the weekend and it was dead. The PSU made some clicking sounds, so powered it via the bench supply and got it working. So for an more permanent fix i ordered Exxos’s DIY PSU replacement.
I've been playing with more 4K demo coding recently. Huge thanks must go to @Virgill74 for AKlang and @leonard_coder for LightSpeed player and TinyPaula! And also Blueberry / Loonies for Shrinkler which makes so much more possible. It's amazing what you can fit into 4K.
Cute little Taito L system repaired! Was missing the ROMs and GAL. It would have been repaired much quicker if I had realised programming a GAL16V8 without specifying it was a D part meant it didn’t work!
I finally got around to building up the Atari ST USB development cart I designed some months ago. I get a download speed of about 720kb/s over USB from the PC. I’d say that’s fast enough!
The Mega Multi is finally about to start appearing with retailers. Sorry for the delay, they've been ready to go for a while, but with one thing and another kept getting delayed.
Support for Atari ST, Atari XL/XE, Amiga, CD32 (7 button), C64, VIC20 and Spectrum (Kemptson…
This is great! For those who remember cool and bizarre home made hardware from their youth that you built from a magazine, this is a fantastic re-visit. Well worth a watch and a great way to get into electronics. Make something simple that works!
Holy cow, watching TV programs and reading magazines from the 1980's is so refreshing! They encourage you to build things out of electronic components, type in your own programs and participate in actual technological advances! No wonder it bred a generation of techies.
Argonaut is a legandary name in the industry, I was massively lucky for it to be my first job and it's fantastic to see the head of the multi-coloured Argonaut again. Can't wait to see more come out of this. Congratulations all involved!
An arcade joystick I made from an old JAMMA cab control panel about 25 years ago has now been re-wired for super-gun use! Much easier than poking wires into connector blocks.
A bit of optimisation by using the blitter to do the height map traversal and store it locally for the GPU to iterate linearly has given a good speed up, now getting a good 25fps at an acceptable visual quality. A bit chunky, but good for the era!
A quick rest from doing useful things, a voxelspace gpu renderer for the Jaguar! As voxels seem to be all the rage. GPU only rendering, no blitter, 160x200 running at 15fps.
For those of you who have a Jaguar GD and are looking for something new, why not support the awesome Reboot Games who are continuing to support the Jaguar even today!
Head on over and see if anything takes your fancy:
There's another JagGD firmware update for people to grab. It should help again with CD stability and fixes some issues with memory track on homebrew (notably Yopaz and Alice). Usual disclaimer applies: it's still not perfect and is unlikely to ever be, but it's improving.
Not of interest to many, but I’m pleased with myself. My New Years resolution — half trail marathon this year. Going well, 10 miles trail running with 1000ft of climbs today. Furthest I’ve run. And with my trusty canine companion! Always nice to have company…
Much improved reliability, booting every time now (except for a mysterious reset issue) and missing sound is restored! Video slightly improved but still washed out and vicious banding. Good enough to start working on the 32X side.
I’m feeling knackered and ill so I decided to do something fun. I’ve built up a T20 DVI out test board I designed ages ago and I’m pleasantly surprised I can output 720p directly from the LVDS outputs via a PTN3366.