Posted By
TLC
on 2023-07-30
16:58:42
|  Re: LittleSixteen V4
Looks neat! 
I might ultimately build one*. (*I haven't even built the reSeed yet, actually, so I might be just better off not talking junk, see also: Life & Co.. After some struggling I seem to have a dedicated place to work on these things now, at l(e)ast.)
Two suggestions that come to mind for a possible V4b or V5 design (if you happen to plan on implementing one someday).
- A ROM mapper, something that maps 16k pages of two 27c512 chips (the maximum available capacity in 28 pins) according to ROM CS and some other signal inputs --> to Basic, Kernal, Func1lo and Func1Hi. (That'd at least help one to use alternative Kernals; for example, a localized Kernal with Hungarian characters, maybe some other language, or, JiffyDos, or the like. I'm not sure of the details, actually.) Maybe the use of a single 128K or even bigger Flash exclusively, could ultimately add a heap of available 16k pages  , though, as I understand, with the addition of such factors, complexity and chaos escalates quickly . (One example, the addition of some huge / in-system programmable Flash, might just imply in-system programming capability).
- An alternative, dual PAL/NTSC oscillator (and some logic in the ROM mapper to automatically switch in a dedicated 16k Kernal page from onboard ROM). It isn't very difficult to modify a PAL machine to work in NTSC TBH, I have actually done that, however, some simple additional circuitry, which supports both systems by a matter of some config switch, could come handy, especially when we're talking about an already fully custom design. (Not a lot of people in PAL and NTSC lands own machines of the alternative systems, so, fixing and compatibility testing, if applicable at all, usually has to be resorted to emulators... so a by-design dual standard machine, might just add practical value.)
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