Retro machines always feel less authentic to me when they use an fpga for the CPU instead of an actual retro CPU or descendant of.
Just opinion of course. Retro is whatever it means to you.
Just opinion of course. Retro is whatever it means to you.
- WDC 65C02S @ 8 MHz
- 40-pin DIP package
It does use an fpga for graphics. That’s kinda surprising I would have thought there’d be a suitable graphics chip off the shelf.
You can do a bitmapped or character displays with just a bit discrete logic.
The graphics chips that do exist these days are all focused at driving LCD touchscreen interfaces with the cheapest microcontroller possible. They communicate over quad spi (not an interface that works with classic 8bit CPUs) and support 24bit color with complex modern drawing primitives like "draw line, draw box, draw circle and decode jpeg".
Sadly, if you want a sprite and tilemap video chip for your modern 8bit computer without resorting to old stock, an FPGA is about your only option.
Which isn't that inaccurate. Most video chips of that era were custom designs themselves, and FPGAs can be though of as just a simple way to achieve custom chip design on a hobbyist budget.
But from the features it sounds like it’s really just a frame buffer/RAMDAC, no sprites or other fancy features.