Apple II + FPGA = fun






















































  • Apple II peripheral card pinout

  • 6502 VHDL core
  • another 6502 VHDL core Apple IIe on one FPGA chip Updated Apple IIe on one FPGA chip PACE project (apple II and other machine emulator) by Mark McDougall Gary Becker's Apple II on an FPGA C-ONE configurable computer Jorge Bieling's video card project The FPGA will hold the 6502 + apple II motherboard + other peripherals. A friend of mine has an ARM 6502 emulator that he wrote in assembly, he gets 50mhz. 50Mhz is faster than any of the FPGA-only projects I've read about (above), and it relieves the FPGA of holding the 6502, leaving more room for other apple II peripherals. apple II:

    Storage

    USB: USB keys (memory sticks) (atari guys have a driver for USB storage devices) IDE storage (CFFA, Focus, many others have schematics and code for IDE interface)

    Sound

    Phasor (Mockingboard, Echo speech) Speech recognition: Covox Voice Master emulation (I have the schematic and software) heuristic H2000 speech recognition; I have schematic and software stereo audio input (a/d converters) stereo audio output (a/d converters) Apple IIgs Ensoniq

    Video

    selectable refresh rate new video modes: -high resolution memory mapped (how to do color?) -TMS9918(A) hardware sprite controller -character ROM hooked to peripheral bus, or through softswitch, so ROM can be changed by program 1)current apple II video mode data grabber/displayer for VGA (off data bus) 2)new video modes like the VOC's IIgs SuperHighRes mode 3)hardware sprite generator, 4)user definable character ROM in high resolution, for display of high-res characters on 40X24 and 80X24 text modes (use winDOS fonts?) 5)user definable memory mapped text screen horiz/ vert size 6)user definable resolution and color depth 7)user definable "RAM to display" (bank#(s), memory location(s))

    Interrupt Generator

    programmable interrupt generator (generate interrupts at definable intervals, or interrupts based on peripheral card status, or external interrupt input) interrupt source register: define an address that holds the ID # of the hardware that interrupted: 1)parallel card 2)serial card 3)counter1 4)counter2 etc 6522 emulation (has built in counters that could be used for the interrupt generator)

    Apple II bus connector

    *** Apple II Bus connector on the edge of the new computer ** plug the new computer into an apple II, and it acts as an accelerator... turns your Apple2 into a terminal. The plug in computer has all the RAM, CPU, etc. Goes to APple II bus for video updates (display video through II monitor), and peripheral access (joystick, peripheral cards, cassette, keyboard, etc)

    Extra features

    Save State button: copies all RAM contents to IDE or USB storage device LOAD state button: loads RAM with copy from storage device, initializes CPU, etc,

    Legacy support

    Disk II, 5.25 DB drive, 3.5 800k support