During the lead-up to VCFSW, I rushed to design a new VERA PCB intended as a retro accessory for microcontrollers. I got a bit carried away and put a microcontroller directly onto VERA.
- VERA ¡Espicial!.png (219.36 KiB) Viewed 6266 times
A few days before I had to leave for VCSFW, the first engineering samples came back.
- IMG_20230620_135806327 (2).jpg (589.19 KiB) Viewed 6266 times
I had one hastily assembled for VCFSW, but due to a couple of board design bugs, it wasn't working quite yet. I found one issue before they arrived and bodged that, but there were a couple others waiting to be found.
- IMG_20230621_201350497 (2).jpg (464.54 KiB) Viewed 6266 times
Once back, I was able to properly debug and get it working.
- IMG_20230702_141756207.jpg (2.1 MiB) Viewed 6266 times
This VERA is will be accessible over a 25MHz SPI interface after I finish that Verilog code, and after accounting for overhead will be close to the speed when driven by an 8MHz 65C02. By adding the microcontroller to the VERA itself, it can also act as super-charged X16 VERA using the same 8-bit parallel bus interface, potentially enabling "air dropping" of files onto the SD card over WiFi or who knows what else. Last, the board can act as a single board computer of its own (which is why the audio jack and USB port are there). Here is a comparison of the two VERA PCB designs:
- Vera comparison 1.png (6.12 MiB) Viewed 6266 times
Before anyone asks, I intentionally feature-capped this design so that it could not 1) turn the X16 into a glorified ESP32 peripheral; or 2) emulate a complete X16. It opens up many possibilities though!
