FPGA development

Gowin+STM32 multicore retro emulation board

The main goal of this project is to create an alternative to Mist/Sidi board. There is nothing wrong with these boards, I just wanted to have my own solution. Also, the primary target was to recreate some old Hungarian 8 bits computers, trying some new ways. Gowin is a relatively new brand on the FPGA market, still they produce quite interesting chips. The one used on the test board called Tang Nano 9K for example has integrated PSRAM and FLASH.

The board itself

The STM32 MCU is the central controller of the board. It has a firmware that is responsible to handle the Joystick inputs, the SD card, the USB keyboard and programming the FPGA board. The emulation is done completely in the FPGA chip, it has enough resoruces to realize those old machines.
The FPGA board originally had its own programmer chip which I removed, so the STM32 can reprogram the FPGA on the fly, using JTAG protocol and port.
Right now I have the following cores that run stable on the board:

ZX Spectrum 48K. A must, this was my 1st computer, so it's always the 1st one to implement :-)
TVC 64K, a Hungarian computer. See more about it.
Primo A64, a Hungarian computer. See more about it.
HT1080Z 48K, a Hungarian computer (based on TSR80). See more about it.
Homelab 2 (Aircomp 16), a Hungarian computer. See more about it.
Homelab 3/4, a Hungarian computer. See more about it.

(... and planning to implement more, like VIC20, C+4, ZX81, Jupure ACE... just need time )

And this is how it works....

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Contact: write to this email:
rbendr [at] gmail [dot] com