We're seeing some great progress on the hardware (FPGA) implementation of the Ember CPU! The Verilog simulation of the CPU on a Cyclone V FPGA in QuestaSim can now process LDI (Load Immediate) and MOV instructions. Next step, the ALU!

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Circuit board bodge of the day: Socketzilla! 🙄

I had some of the pins off by 1, so needed to shift them...

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Success! I am now able to boot and POST the Apple I Replica Board using the SmartyKit firmware written by Sergey Panarin.

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Back to work after a long overdue several weeks off sailing! This week we look at the memory map of the Ember design...

The Ember Console — System Architecture Design: Memory Map
https://www.iaritech.com/post/the-ember-console-system-architecture-design-memory-map

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Switching topics to I/O and game controller support, this week we look briefly at the PIA for Project Ember

The Ember PIA — Initial Design Part 1: Peripheral Interface Adapter
https://skicat.medium.com/21f7f4abb2e8

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Baby steps in getting my Apple I reproduction PCB up and running. 6502 CPU booting with just RAM and ROM attached. It grabs the reset address from ROM and starts executing code...until it tries to do something with IO, which is not attached yet...

I'm monitoring the bus with an Arduino MEGA attached to my MacBook Pro.

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Boards look great! Starting the slow bring up with just the CPU, RAM, and ROM...and, of course, clock circuit and logic analyzer...

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Next, we'll explore the details of the GPU and the initial design of the first simple text mode display!

The Flame GPU — Initial Design Part 2: Tilesheets, Tilemaps, and Graphics Registers
https://medium.com/the-ember-project/the-flame-gpu-initial-design-part-2-tilesheets-tilemaps-and-graphics-registers-8c638a19ec4f

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The Ember Console — System Architecture Design: Basic Requirements
https://medium.com/the-ember-project/the-ember-console-system-architecture-design-basic-requirements-97de358a952a
Moving on to the system design, this is an overview of the remaining parts we need to design in order to create a working system capable of playing 80s and 90s-era homebrew video games.

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