ABBUC Hardwarewettbewerb 2025

[CharlieChaplin]

Hier gibt es die offiziellen Regeln des Hardwarewettbewerbs 2025:

https://abbuc.de/aktivitaten/hardware-competition/

[ScreamingAtTheRadio]

Hello everyone! Apologies for the English-only post. This is my submission for this year's contest:

Der Dateianhang IMG20250629123654.jpg existiert nicht mehr.

The DecentCart2350 cartridge is a new multicart for Atari 8-bit computers. What? Another multicart? Don't we already have plenty of these?
Well, yes, and those carts are all great in their own way. I have my reasons to make my own though:

IMG20250629123654.jpg (690.89 KiB) 291 mal betrachtet

First, because I wanna. I really liked the idea of Raspberry Pi Pico-based cartridges like the A8PicoCart and many others on other platforms. The idea that we don't really need an FPGA and can just race the bus with a microcontroller is very, very nice: microcontrollers are a lot easier to program than an FPGA, the learning curve is way gentler, and there's plenty enough power to drive something like this.
Second, I had this idea that a cart with a screen could push the envelope, provide a better experience and open up a whole new range of possibilities. Just the idea of having the label of the game you're playing displayed on the cart is a very nice enhancement to the multicart experience in my opinion...

Third, this cart is entirely open source: the PCB design, the enclosure, the firmware, all of it is under a permissive license. I'll be selling carts myself of course, but you can absolutely build your own, hack the firmware and contribute changes and fixes.
The DecentCart 2350 is based on a RP2350B microcontroller chip, with 16MB of flash memory, a micro-SD card port, a micro-USB port for firmware updates, and all the lines going to the Atari motherboard are behind level shifters doing the 5V to 3.3V translation in both directions. It also has a debug port and an ECI port, which opens up all the PBI peripheral features with a small additional connection at the back of the cart. The screen is a 320x170 color screen that's the largest that I could fit into the part of an Atari cart that sticks out of an XL computer. the enclosure is a custom design I made in FreeCAD that is the same size as a standard Atari game.

There's still a lot of work remaining on the firmware, but the hardware is finalized. The cart can read signals on the Atari bus, read from the SD card and display anything on the screen.

IMG20250627204416.jpg (819.06 KiB) 291 mal betrachtet

This cart, with two cores, DMA and 12 PIO state machines, has plenty of computing power. Racing the bus is essentially doable with just PIO and DMA, leaving most of the two cores free to do other things. You can imagine having heavy calculations performed on the cart and the Atari just picking up the results through the magic of DMA. Imagine what you could do by pointing the screen memory to an address space managed by the cart, which can dynamically fill that space with a view of a complex 3D world. The Atari doesn't have to do any of those calculations and can just handle controllers and keyboard interaction. The cart is then like a GPU, and the Atari just sees as the content of the video memory whatever the cart computed on its own.
Another cool application could be a kind of "rich text" mode where the text layout and proportional font rendering is done on the cart, and the Atari just has to pick up the rendering, by reading the memory for what is to it just a 320x200 high res mode.
You could also manage huge game maps on the cart, have large software sprites, "hardware" zooming and rotations, etc. You don't really get new graphics mode, but you get more powerful versions of the existing ones.
The extra display on the cart could also be used as a second screen, and display a map, or work as a HUD.
Of course, this is still speculative and remains to be implemented, but the potential is here, and over the next year, I'll have plenty of time to demonstrate those features.
Let me know if you have any other suggestions for what could be done with this hardware... With that, thanks for reading, and please vote for this...

I posted a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-sEndb4mEI

[cas]

If the microcontroller has RAM available, a RAM paging option would be great (to use the RAM in the RPI as memory expansion).

I also like the GPU idea, where the Atari writes high-level graphics commands into some RAM, and the RPI renders the pixel into the ANTIC screen memory.

[pancio]

Hi Everyone!

This year was particularly difficult for me, especially since I had several other open projects focused on image quality... so there was nothing new to show at the ABBUC HW Competition, as everything had already been published :-)

I was beginning to think I'd have to skip the competition this year, but then I remembered an old ESP8266 project that was supposed to be a serial interface via WiFi to a PC. I found it in drawer, thought about it, and decided to improve it a bit. That's how the TasmARI concept was born.

TasmARI
Atari – The Universe Control Center

I'd like to introduce you to my new, very simple device for the Atari XL/XE.
TasmARI is a simple connection between an ESP32 microcomputer running under Tasmota operating system and an Atari. This allows for a greater expanse of the Atari's capabilities in the broadest sense of the word, while also enabling our Atari to be part of a set of IoT devices. Thanks to the Tasmota OS, our Atari can communicate with other IoT components and manage our digital home using e.g. Home Assistant software. Now your Atari can become a control center... you can turn the lights on and off, make your morning coffee in the espresso machine, or play your favorite Internet Radio track on your Atari. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination and... the type of devices connected to the network...

General description of the system.
The heart of the system is a module containing an ESP32 microcomputer – I chose the LoLIN D32 PRO version because it has an SD card port, a TFT display connector, an I2C connector, and a connector for connecting a battery. The module communicates with the Atari via a serial port, which is the easiest to use and allows for compatibility with the Atari OS and interoperability with other devices connected to the SIO connector. Proper operation also requires a voltage level shifter between Atari and ESP32. The remaining components are user-defined. These can include any sensors using the I2C, SPI, or OneWire bus – the only limitation is the type and version of the installed Tasmota OS software.
For example, adding a PCF8574 chip provides an additional register that can be connected to, for example, PIA PORTB, allowing for control and management of the Atari's memory management. Another example is the use of EEPROM chips such as the AT24C256, the BMP280 – a digital barometer, thermometer, and hygrometer, and many other interesting sensors. Furthermore, the Tasmota OS allows remote access to all other sensors and controllers using the MQTT protocol.

Project Stages and Status.
In the first phase, the project was implemented based on a pre-built LoLIN D32 PRO module equipped with 74HC07 buffers. The software communicating with the Atari is written in the Berry scripting language, which is part of the Tasmota OS software. Berry allows for simple peripheral management and also includes file management functions. In the next step, I plan to design my own PCB and place the ESP32 module directly on it (similar to FujiNet's approach) – this will make it easier to install the device in the Atari while also allowing me to select and use the most necessary components of the IoT kit… Software is a separate step – Tasmota, as an independent operating system, can communicate with the Atari using scripts written in Berry – I hope my programming skills will be sufficient… if not, we have many very clever people around! What do you think about Atari as Universe Control Center? :-)

hope you like this simple concept.

Best regards,
pancio

[andymanone]

Auch hier der aktuelle Stand:

Angekündigt:

- DecentCart2350 cartridge/ScreamingAtTheRadio (Bertrand Le Roy)
- TasmARI /Pancio (Biernat Błażej)

Eingereicht und in Prüfung:

- DecentCart2350 cartridge/ScreamingAtTheRadio (Bertrand Le Roy)
- TasmARI/Pancio (Biernat Błażej)

Aktuell im Wettbewerb:

- DecentCart2350 cartridge /ScreamingAtTheRadio (Bertrand Le Roy)
- TasmARI /Pancio (Biernat Błażej)

Abgelehnt:
-


Gtx.,
andY

[DjayBee]

Auch hier der aktuelle Stand:

Angekündigt:

- DecentCart2350 cartridge/ScreamingAtTheRadio (Bertrand Le Roy)
- TasmARI /Pancio (Biernat Błażej)

Eingereicht und in Prüfung:

- DecentCart2350 cartridge/ScreamingAtTheRadio (Bertrand Le Roy)
- TasmARI/Pancio (Biernat Błażej)

Im Wettbewerb:

- DecentCart2350 cartridge /ScreamingAtTheRadio (Bertrand Le Roy)
- TasmARI /Pancio (Biernat Błażej)

Abgelehnt:
-


Gtx.,
andY

Nehmen die Jungs jeweils dreimal teil?

[andymanone]

Haha, nee ich habe das nur so aufgeteilt, adäquat zu Holger (a la Softwarewettbewerb )

Das sind halt die 3 Stufen:

1. Eingereicht
2. In Prüfung
3. Im Wettbewerb



Gtx.,
andY

[Mathy]

.
Hallo André

Aber bei Holger sind sie eben nur immer in einer Kategorie und nicht in drei gleichzeitig.

Tschüß

Mathy

PS und wenn ich mich nicht irre ist "Blazej" der Vorname und "Biernat" der Nachname.

[andymanone]

.
Hallo André

Aber bei Holger sind sie eben nur immer in einer Kategorie und nicht in drei gleichzeitig.

Tschüß

Mathy

PS und wenn ich mich nicht irre ist "Blazej" der Vorname und "Biernat" der Nachname.

Hi Mathy,

ja das stimmt, aber Holger macht auch jedesmal (sehr sorgfältig) einen "neuen" Post wenn sich was ändert .

Ich war da eher pragmatisch und habe alle 3 Phasen der Einreichungen in einem Post aufgeführt (spart CO2 ).

@Pancio:
Naja, seine Signatur sieht so aus:

Pancio Signatur.JPG (31.91 KiB) 24 mal betrachtet

Darum habe ich mich einfach an diese Schreibweise gehalten


Gtx.,
andY

[Mathy]

.
Hallo André

Die Belgier machen das auch "falsch rum". Wenn man aber die Namen in Google eingibt, kommt man schnell zum Schluß was der Vorname ist und was der Nachname.

Tschüß

Mathy

PS deine Art es zu machen schöpft Verwirrung. Es macht meiner Meunung nach dann auch keinen Sinn alles in drei Kategorien ein zu teilen.
PPS kommst Du dieses Jahr zur Fujiama?