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Minimalist ECB (MECB) - PICO9918 VDP Display Card

Digicool Things

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I’ve added a modern PICO9918 based VDP Display Card, to join my existing TMS9918 / TMS992x and my existing V9938 / V9958 VDP Display Cards.

This new PICO9918 based MECB VDP Display Card delivers the MECB solution for ensuring that we have a VDP compatible Display Card for the future.

Join me, as I walk through the background and the evolution of this robust VDP display solution. I then assemble a HDMI connected PICO9918 VDP Display Card, and demonstrate its use with existing retro code, and with a couple of assembly language test programs.

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
00:04 - Background
01:15 - PICO9918 VDP Module
02:58 - PICO9918 Continued Evolution
04:24 - MECB PICO9918 VDP Display Card
05:35 - VDP Display Card Schematic
06:54 - VDP Display Card PCB
07:33 - VDP Display Card Kitset
08:52 - VDP Display Card Output Options
11:15 - VDP Display Card Assembly
14:58 - VDP Display Card Operation
15:23 - HDMI “dongle” Pass-Through Audio Connection
16:46 - CreatiVision re-Creation Demo – Setup
18:19 - Issue with existing PICO9918 RGBS “dongle”
20:31 - CreatiVision re-Creation Demo – Output
24:46 - Useful to have “original silicon” VDP Display Card
26:06 - Advanced Functionality (beyond TMS9918 replacement)
26:45 - “Sprites per Scanline” Enhancement Options
31:02 - TEXT mode and enhanced TEXT 2 mode (80 columns)
33:54 - Programmers Reference Guides
34:35 - Outro

You can find the MECB PICO9918 VDP Display Card here:
On Tindie:
https://www.tindie.com/products/43970/
On Lectronz:
https://lectronz.com/products/minimal...

PICO9918 / visrealm:
https://github.com/visrealm/pico9918
PCO9918 Configurator:
https://visrealm.github.io/pico9918/c...
PICO9918 Github Wiki:
https://github.com/visrealm/pico9918/...

Other MECB VDP Display Cards:
Minimalist ECB (MECB) - TMS9918/TMS992x VDP Card
https://www.tindie.com/products/32463/
Minimalist ECB (MECB) - V9938 or V9958 VDP Card
https://www.tindie.com/products/38551/

Also used:
Minimalist ECB (MECB) - Motorola I/O Card
https://www.tindie.com/products/32825/
Minimalist ECB (MECB) - Backplane
https://www.tindie.com/products/31847/

Project Blog:
https://digicoolthings.com/minimalist...

Project Github repository:
https://github.com/DigicoolThings/MEC...

MECB Homepage:
https://digicoolthings.com/minimalist...

Digicool Things on the web:
https://digicoolthings.com

Digicool Things on Tindie:
https://www.tindie.com/stores/Digicoo...

Digicool Things on Lectronz:
https://lectronz.com/stores/digicoolt...

Video production setup:
Camera (overhead): Sony ZV-E10 (captured at 4K)
Camera (other): Logitech Brio 4K (captured at 1080p 60fps)
Eakins Trinocular + Eakins 3700W Camera (1080p 60fps)
Mic: Samson C01U Pro USB / Hollyland Lark M1 Wireless
Lighting: Double-row 8520 LED 6000K strip lighting
Capture Cards: Elgato Cam Link 4K / HagiBis USB 1080p
Capture / Post Prod: OBS / Camtasia

3 Comments

@EmilLenc 13 days ago

I was completely unaware of the PICO9918. There's always a fear that some 8-bit devices will become more and more difficult to source so it's great to hear of alternatives becoming available (particularly to support the retro community). It's also great to hear that they've overcome the number of sprites per scan line limitation - I always found that to be really limiting. Curious that Sonic Invaders behaved strangely with the sprite limitation removed - perhaps they use sprites for the bullets and somehow use this feature to detect when they've reached the top of the display (by maybe having some unused and stealth sprites there? Seems strange though as I would've thought that this would be just as easy to detect in code anyway).

@LeslieAnderson-y8o 2 weeks ago

Back in the 80s if a computer could display an '80 column' mode. Then it was in the Big Boys league with computers like the IBM 5150 The PICO9918 would allow the Creativision to do proper Word processing and spreadsheets !! Pretty hilarious now but if you look at the specs for the original PC 1981 then the 6502 processor was quite good for its time. : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer

@LeslieAnderson-y8o 2 weeks ago

It should be possible to do faster Read/Writes to the PICO9918 (Than an original TMS9929). Thus allowing faster clock speeds on the 6502 CPU. Perhaps overclocking to 4, 6 or 8MHz ? Namely allowing Turbo modes .