Typically that ageing laptop sitting beneath your desk is simply less than the duty that you’re asking of it. That may be mounted, after all. By putting in a brand new CPU, or maybe one other stick of reminiscence, or some specialised {hardware} like a GPU by way of a regular enlargement interface, the efficiency of that outdated laptop can get a significant enhance. However upgrading a pc was not all the time really easy as it’s at this time.
Flash again to the early days of the non-public computing revolution. Machines of that period, just like the Commodore 64, Tandy Colour Pc, and the ZX Spectrum, had been missing industry-wide requirements and interfaces to simplify upgrades. You may have the ability to purchase a cartridge with just a few kilobytes of RAM with out an excessive amount of hassle, however if you happen to needed to improve the CPU or graphics chip, you wouldn’t solely have to get out your soldering iron, however you may also have to considerably rearchitect your entire system.
A glance contained in the cartridge (📷: Christian Forstreuter)
Because of this, seeing substantial upgrades to those computer systems is kind of uncommon. A Commodore 64 is a Commodore 64, kind of. However engineer and retro computing fanatic Christian Forstreuter has demonstrated that it’s attainable to provide the Commodore 64 a significant graphics replace by simply plugging in a cartridge. This practice graphics card leverages know-how from the Yamaha MSX2+ private laptop, which was first launched within the late Eighties.
Solely about six years could have handed between the preliminary launch of the Commodore 64 and the Yamaha MSX2+ computer systems, however technological progress was screaming alongside, so the variations of their show applied sciences are very substantial. The cardboard is constructed across the Yamaha V9958 Video Show Processor. It helps graphical modes with resolutions as excessive as 512×424 pixels — the Commodore 64, by means of comparability, natively helps a most decision of 320×200 pixels.
The upgrades prolong properly past only a greater pixel depend. The graphics modes assist as much as 19,000 colours, and as much as 32 {hardware} sprites of 16×16 pixels can be found. The Video Show Processor additionally helps vertical tender scrolling and has {hardware} acceleration for frequent operations like filling the display, drawing traces, and copying areas of the display. A 128 kilobyte reminiscence chip can be included within the cartridge to function VRAM.
An illustration of the graphics capabilities (📷: Christian Forstreuter)
A binary saved on the cartridge makes a variety of new instructions, like CLEAR, LINE, FRAME, BLOCK, and VCOP, obtainable to simply work together with the graphics chip. The V9958 can be reminiscence mapped, so all of its capabilities can be found from both BASIC or meeting applications.
Forstreuter has offered some good examples exhibiting what this graphics card is able to. However naturally, simply plugging within the cartridge won’t instantly give all of your favourite video games upgraded graphics. Software program must be written particularly to work together with the brand new cartridge, and not one of the classics had been. So if you wish to benefit from the V9958’s capabilities, you will want to get busy writing your individual software program.
If you want to mess around with this fascinating machine for your self, particulars are obtainable on GitHub below a Inventive Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Worldwide License.
