Project Ember

Project Ember

Tom Gambill

The Flame GPU — Initial Design Part 3: Initializing the GPU

With a basic design for our Flame GPU complete, we now write some assembly code to initialize the device and display some text on screen…

1d ago

Flame GPU chip on a circuit board

1d ago

Tom Gambill

The Ember Console — System Architecture Design: System Software and the Boot Process

Now that we have a basic system design for the Ember CPU, GPU, and PIA, we need some startup firmware to get things up and running…

May 28

AI Generated image of Start button on a keyboard

May 28

Tom Gambill

The Ember Console — System Architecture Design: Memory Map

With a well-thought-out CPU and GPU design, and an input-handing Peripheral Interface Adapter, we will look at the memory map of the system

Apr 23

Ember memory map

Apr 23

Tom Gambill

The Ember PIA — Initial Design Part 1: Peripheral Interface Adapter

In order to support keyboard and gamepad input, the Ember Console needs a Peripheral Interface Adapter, or PIA, that can interact with…

Mar 31

Girl playing video game

Mar 31

Tom Gambill

The Flame GPU — Initial Design Part 2: Tilesheets, Tilemaps, and Graphics Registers

Next we will look at the fundamental structures we need to implement a display processor for the Ember Virtual Console

Mar 24

AI-Generated image licensed from FreePik

Mar 24

Tom Gambill

The Flame GPU — Initial Design Part 1: Basic Requirements

Now that we are sufficiently far along with the Ember CPU design, we will begin looking at the Graphics Processing Unit, or GPU.

Mar 14

Flaming CPU

Mar 14

Tom Gambill

The Ember Console — System Architecture Design: Basic Requirements

This time we look at the higher-level systems the GPU and PIA, as well as other parts we will need to design for the Ember Homebrew Console

Mar 7

Sega Console Motherboard

Mar 7

Tom Gambill

The Ember CPU — Initial Design Part 8: Instruction Set Architecture (ISA)

A look at the Instruction Set Architecture, or ISA, of the Ember CPU

Feb 28

The Ember CPU — Initial Design Part 8: Instruction Set Architecture (ISA)

Feb 28

Tom Gambill

IARI Post — Building an Apple I Computer From Scratch

Looking at retro computer kits like SmartyKit from Surgey Panarin has gotten me thinking about designing an Apple I board, having it…

Feb 26

Timing circuit PCB CAD design

Feb 26

Tom Gambill

The Ember CPU — Initial Design Part 7: Interrupts

We only need a few more instructions to complete the basic ISA or Instruction Set Architecture for the Ember CPU. Rounding out those few…

Feb 21

Woman Interrupts conversation to take call

Feb 21

Project Ember

The Plan: Design and implement a fully functional “retro” video game console, with a custom CPU, GPU, Audio Processor, and development architecture from scratch. Engineering background, while helpful, is not required to follow along. Please join us!

Editors

Tom Gambill

Software Engineer, Retro Hacker, World Traveler. And also: sailboats, fish tanks, nature, family, startups…

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