Building a New "Retro" Computer - Part 1: VGA on the ESP32-S3

[@bitfixer6502]

Hi, I realized I should have mentioned what a "bounce buffer" was in the video - it's basically a chunk of main memory holding a horizontal stripe of pixels, a few lines in width. Since it's in main memory, the DMA out to the VGA lines is able to keep up with the pixel clock. Generally a small fraction of the whole screen and it gets filled just in time by a callback. Hope you enjoy the video, more coming soon.

[@RudysRetroIntel]

Very interesting project! Thanks for sharing and excited that you are back!

[@cianmoriarty7345]

What would be nice would be a LUT/DAC implementation so you could have however many colours chosen from a 24 bit palette.

[@globalhell5046]

Looking forward for updates of this project. Very cool🎉

[@wangxiaoer-pr1oc]

Hi，can you share the VGA demo shown in the video? The VGA demo with horizontal lines, vertical lines, and circles moving

[@tmbarral664]

I can wait to see how you will be able to program this with the emulated cpu... Mem shadowing, SPI like, etc..... I'm hooked ;)

[@DimiEG]

This is a very interesting project. I looked at it with interest, thank you. There are practically no videos on using C++ on the IDF on KZbin. It's also an interesting topic.

[@bouchtaouibouchtaoui3434]

What a cool project, I really enjoyed watching this video 👍🏼

[@erenaydin]

no fucking way I got rickrolled in a esp32 video.

[@andre-le-bone-aparte]

Just found your channel. Excellent Content - another sub for you sir!

[@ZXESPectrum]

Nice video and very interesting project! Great job!

[@DonutellaTimbit]

Yay a new video!

[@bitfixer6502]

Thanks! It's been way too long. More to come soon

[@Catmengi_2g2b]

I possible discovered why lvgl wasnt working properly, it possible tried to use RGB565 and as just example with lines it broke, and lvgl current doesn't support 8bits pixels

[@DirkEibach]

Nice work. This is really a neat platform for tinkering. Do you have a link to the module?

[@bitfixer6502]

Thank you! The dev board I'm using is a "ProS3" from Unexpected Maker, you can get it direct from unexpectedmaker.com or from your usual online stores.

[@lanealucy]

Just saw a video by bitluni on KZbin building a S3 version too... XD

[@lanealucy]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/o6bYmZqonsyYa7M

[@Xalior]

Ohhh, cute VGA DAC boards! Any plan to sell/release the files for those? -Dx

[@Idontknowhowtoreadandwrite]

any idea how we can make a NEW emulator on this esp32 and use a VGA monitor as output and BTW the rick roll was genius

[@lanealucy]

And now add it to the romulator XD

[@SadiqueKhan449]

Hi, can you post a hello world program?

[@SquallSf]

Let me share few thoughts: - 3/8 bit is really low. You will need at least 12 (444) for dissent image or even 18 (666) as it was in DOS age VGA - What CPU you gonna emulate? Z80 or 6502 variations? Seeing how ESP32 struggle with VGA, I doubt it has the power to emulate all components of a retro computer. So I would suggest to do what already many others has done - use real CPU with own memory, but use ESP32 to do all the dirty work - video, sound, I/O, SD. What makes any system unique is the video/sound. The minimum a modern Video should be as I call it - between NES-SNES like quality. That mean Layers, Sprites, H/V scroll, Bitmap/Tile modes. If you want SNES+ that mean extra things like DMA/HDMA. Ofc you can add even more fancy things like affine transformations (Rotation, Scaling, ..) on layers and/or sprites. For Sound obviously some sort of PSG (min 8 channels) , PCM capability. You can add things like OPL/OPM xx (or even use a real chips for that).

[@lucilaloken7218]

"Promo sm"