Dupont An Phu

Game developer, retro-computing enthusiast

Z80 Computer graphics (TMS9118)

Posted on 2018/09/18.
Because I made a couple of mistakes on my pcb design it took some time to fix all the bugs before it even booted. And when it booted it still didn't work because I had some errors with the assembly code as well.
I thought my emulator would show any obvious errors like bad stack management, but it just worked unlike the real board.
For my implementation I used the TI VDP Programmers Guide. It was very clear and it even had example schematics of how a computer circuit would look like.

Of course when it did boot fine I was so happy that new additions like the disassembler worked fine.
The next thing I wanted to do was to add video. My choice of video chip is the Texas Instruments TMS9118 because the implementation is quite simple and does not require too many components. There are a lot of more sophisticated chips but this one was adequate and also it cost just over one euro coming from China.


As you can see, there are still some errors. I think there is a bad connection on the breadboard that it is currently hooked up to.
I do plan to make a second pcb in the future if I can get some more components to work on here.
I hope someday I can play my own game on my own computer.