Category Archives: FPGA

128K ZX Spectrum on FPGA loads from SD card

So as promised I spent a bit of the bank holiday weekend hacking on the FPGA Spectrum to fix a few bugs.  In the end I got carried away and finished up with a full implementation of the 128K Spectrum +2A running ResiDOS and loading emulator images from an SD card.  It’s still not cycle [...]

VHDL BBC B Design Notes

As promised, some more detailed design notes for my BBC B design are now available. Planning to revisit the Spectrum design next for some bug fixes, as it is clear there is still quite a bit of interest in that.

BBC on FPGA in action…

I added a video of the FPGA BBC in action, shot straight off the TV. You can see the MMBEEB ROM extensions providing access to multiple disk images on the SD card, then some messing about on Chuckie Egg and Boffin.

BBC Micro on an FPGA

It’s been a while since the Spectrum project and, although there is still work left to do on that, I eventually gave in and did another great British computer from my childhood – the BBC B.  Getting this machine up and running has been an interesting job given its complexity.  For something that first came out [...]

ZX Spectrum on Altera DE1 – Source Code

Sorry it took so long, but I’ve finally cleaned up the source code ready for publishing, and here it is.  This contains a Quartus project file, so it should load and compile straight away.  I used Quartus 9.1 Web Edition, available from the Altera website.  There is also a pre-compiled .sof image which should work [...]

ZX Spectrum on Altera DE1 – Teaser

Last week I was made aware of this post on RS DesignSpark about a project, currently in the very early planning stage, to build a Sinclair Spectrum on an FPGA.  As it happens I have a similar project well under way, and I have promised to write it up… Several years ago I implemented most [...]