Atari 800XL/65XE/130XE and VBXE

[frx]

Hello everyone.

Atari 800XL/65XE/130XE for MiSTer is a great but... In 2006, Elektron/TQA (Tomasz Piórek) develop procject Video Board XE (VBXE), hardware extension on FPGA for Atari 8 bit.
Short, VBXE can:
-up to 1024 colors on screen from 21 bit palette
-graphics resolution up to 640x480i (640x240p) in 64 colours, 320x240p in 1024 colours, and 160x240p in 1024
-true 80 char mode for text display
-blitter with 7 modes of operations capable of zooming displayed data, transparency, collision detection and many other features
-full downward compatible with GTIA chip
More and more productions are made using VBXE https://madteam.atari8.info/index.php?prod=vbxe
I found VBXE programmer's manual https://www.mathyvannisselroy.nl/VBXE/VBXE%20fx_en.pdf and some cores (without sources) on Lotharek's site https://lotharek.pl/productdetail.php?id=53.
I also found the sources in Altirra emulator over there https://www.virtualdub.org/downloads/Al ... .01-src.7z
VBXE extensions You can turn on by pressing <alt>+<s>, then go /Peripherals/Devices <Add> /Video Board XE (VBXE).

VBXE is a great extension and it would be nice to have it in MiSTer. Can anyone develop VBXE for Core Atari 800LX?

[RealLarry]

Unfortunately this core is only a stepchild and need some more love and is lacking an active maintainer. There are already some (still) open issues regarding enhancements:
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Atari80 ... /issues/10
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Atari80 ... /issues/16

Maybe we should do a fundraising and ask @FPGAzumSpass if he is interested to do the job.

[frx]

What a pity that such an Atari 8-bit core doesn't have an active maintainer. If there's no other option, we may actually need to start fundraising to implement a few things.

[frx]

I think I'll try something easy. I went to implement option QMEG in XLBasic place. I converted binary QMEG file to Altera, extended some code in Quartus and ZONK. Complie errors project messaes "Peak virtual memory"... I tried complie raw Atari800 sources code - the same result.
I think developming FPGA is to hard for me, it makes me mad

[cathrynmataga]

I did get the Atari 800 core to build, but it is a pain because I never got the zpu source to build on PC -- though I did get it to build on Linux. But then I got Quartus only to build on PC. Hint, you need a specific version of Quartus for it to work. Implementing VBXE is medium-advanced level project, there is a lot to this. It is pretty well-documented in the docs and from the Altirra source code, which has a pretty functional implementation of everything Atari 8-bit.

[frx]

I've got to it yesterday. Quartus v.21 for Linux generates errors. On Kubuntu 22.04 it failed to install Quartus v.17, but on W10 it's OK.
I managed to integrate ROMV3+QMEG44_W27C512.bin also with the frontend, but Atari doesn't boot with it. I need to change the pyload or work on the conversion it. Implementation VBXE is too hard for me on 100%.

edit: Now I've added a separate menu QMEG44.

[moebiusrising]

VBXE is a great extension and it would be nice to have it in MiSTer. Can anyone develop VBXE for Core Atari 800LX?

I mentioned this among other implementations in this thread:

viewtopic.php?t=294&start=90#top

Crowdfunding I think would be an excellent idea, as I'm sure the 8-bit community is sizeable enough to make it feasible, but where to start?

[foft]

On the topic of vbxe… it looks like it’s at least partially reimplemented here by @ijor
https://forums.atariage.com/topic/35024 ... t-on-fpga/

[Theenemy]

I also would be very interested in a go fund me or alike for vxbe to be added on the atari Mr core