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Retro Computing

The BlackIce Mx with its SDRAM, Flash memory, SD card reader, and plentiful Mixmod/Pmod sockets is particularly suited to emulating older computers.

Some of the implementations currently available on BlackIce Mx are:

• Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
• Acorn Atom
• Jupiter Ace
• Apple One

All these implementations use the Digital VGA Pmod and a VGA monitor, plus (apart from NES) a Digilent PS/2 keyboard Pmod and a PS/2 keyboard. NES requires a 7-pin original Nintendo controller or a 9-pin clone controller.

Some of them require an SD card created for them to stores games and other programs.

Nintendo Entertainment System

The NES implementation is based on the up5k-demos version by David Shah, which is based on the Mist version, which was based on the original fpganes version by Ludwig Strigeus.

It uses a non-standard (512 x 480) VGA mode that does not work on all monitors or most TVs.

Acorn Atom

The Acorn Atom implementation is based of David Bank’s Ice40Atom. It is built by build.sh.

It needs the software archive for the SD card.

You need to write this as a raw image to ad SD card by:

dd if=archive.img of=/dev/sdxxx

where sdxxx is SD card drive.

Jupiter ACE

Another David Banks port.

The Jupiter Ace was a Forth machine.

This port is a simpler one that does not require custom firmware. It can be build using the build.sh file.

Apple One

This implementation of the Apple One is by Alan Garfield.

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