Homemade VIC-II 6567/6569 for the Commodore 64 - Part 4 

Great work!

This is exactly what the C64 needs for longevity. Every time I turn one on I think "oh please don't die on me VIC"

Love it, especially the new modes.

Hey, I'm the Pi1541 author. I am truly sorry about that. It is a known problem with Pi1541 and Krill's loader. The timings are just too tight and that's why it is best to turn off some of the features. Also check that you don't have "GraphIEC = 1" in your options.txt file. That will improve compatability as the Pi will not be wasting time drawing to its screen. Great project by the way. If you want any help then please reach out. You could make it a lot smaller and cheaper. Perhaps a iCE40 or a ECP5. An ECP5 could drive the HDMI directly. Edit: I am also developing a SuperCPU clone cartridge. It will be great with your new modes.

Your 80 column implementation is just perfect. Tastefully done.

Amazing VICellant stuff! Might have to retire the VIC-II² soon! Keep it up sir 👍🕹️

It would love to get my hands on that little device, especially the 80 columns mode makes me jump of joy!

I have been waiting close to 20 years for a stand-alone VGA output! :)

The 80 column mode by itself makes it a fabulous upgrade. I look forward to the final version.

Very cool! Amazing work!

Like at lot of people said: 80 col mode: love it! The C64 really needs that 80 col mode.

This thing is so sick, I can't wait to buy one whatever it costs. It's like a more C64 appropriate version of the VERA board for the Commander X16. It will be great to help keep original machines going with bad VIC-II chips, an upgrade for VIC-II quality on original hardware (no jailbars, sparkles, weird PAL color fringing), and an 80 column upgrade all in one. That 80 column mode is hot 🌶🌶

Brilliant work. I do electrical engineering stuff and retro stuff, and would like to advise you to whatever degree you’re comfortable. A few thoughts for you when you move forward with your design: Depending on the clock rate and logic element requirements of your HDL design, you might consider either the Lattice iCE40 or ECP5 components. Both have open-source toolchains which are far more pleasant to work with, if you ask me. These parts also come in smaller and more modern packages (QFNs and BGAs). Do not be afraid of BGAs! They’re a lot easier to work with than you might think. As for PAL/NTSC switching, many FPGAs now feature PLLs with fractional ratio capability. So it’s possible that a single deliberately-selected commercially-available oscillator frequency could provide switching between PAL and NTSC frequencies, with the right PLL configurations. As for drive strength and ground bounce, I think you’ll see that clear up to a great degree as you move toward a single circuit board design. I highly recommend using a four-layer PCB design. There are many vendors (most in China) that can produce reliable four-layer boards inexpensively and quickly. PCBWay, JLCPCB, and King Credie all come to mind. Depending on how much you want to simplify/cost-reduce, it may be possible to remove the microcontroller or replace it with a soft-core (like a RISC-V) inside the FPGA. For VGA, it may be possible to do a simple resistor ladder DAC with resistances chosen to get the right color hues. For DVI, I think the signals are LVDS, and at the low pixel rates you’re dealing with, could be produced directly from the FPGA IO blocks. Feel free to hit me up if you want to bounce ideas back and forth. I have plenty of projects already in progress, but would love to help you out where I can so you can get this to where you want it.

wow, this is a great project! Congrats! Especially like (as a graphician) the new bitmap modes (though I think there is a mistake in the presentation, for the 16 colors you need 4 bitplanes). With thew original VIC-II these modes were not possible as the 1KB Color RAM is hardwired SRAM. The new bitplane modes with the flexible palette could make conversion of PC EGA gfx rather easy.

This is just great 😬👍👍. Love to see that we get replacement chips for every part of the C64. Thank you for the effort. Will have a look at your final „Chip“ when its done. Love to assemble one and looking forward to do that 😊

Perfect timing as my VIC-II is starting to give out.

Nice work. Hopefully these will become available as a drop in replacemet at a decent price

Great job. I had a go at implementing a VIC-II myself using a Cmod A7 and a custom board, but never got around the signal integrity issues due to my poor electronics knowledge.

Although late to see this, great work, amazing you have managed to get so far when you claim your not a electronics engineer. Although mentioned, There are others that could help if you wanted to move this to alternative FPGA's Although they maybe too 'small' there are devices which can be blown like an EEPROM rather than loaded, also 5V working so no voltage converting to 3.3 or lower voltages reqired with some FPGA. Again well done.

Superb work Sir! The extensions will be a massive hit of fresh air to the C64 scene.

wow. looking forward to getting this. 80 col looks amazing. New graphics modes. Take my money! thanks Randy! Joe in Waterloo.

those pictures are very nice!

All I can say is Wow! Absolutely amazing how far you have come along with this project!

Cool and much needed for all these new builds. Would be nice to get analog signals on pin 14 and 15 as well so you'd still be able to use the original output. What about adding sound to the HDMI output? IMHO don't think you should spend a bunch time on extra features before finishing a release, offer a VIC-II replacement and then add those extra features for people that want their C64 to behave in non-C64 ways. Great work!

Excellent! Would be cool to have this kind of solution for VIC-20 as well.

Great project! I also want one for the VIC-I in the VIC-20 :)

You Sir - you are a wizard. I can't wait for Adrian to test a clone of this production ;)

Wow, I can hardly belive it. Wonderful, everything.

Fantastic stuff! The extra features you've built are super neat too. Looking forward to seeing where this project goes from here!

This is amazing. Modify and extend, this is how we keep things fresh.

Great Project! I would also like to have a VGA output on the C64. In general chip do not last forever, so it is very nice to hear that you are working on a replacement for the famous VIC-II

Hello ! .. I am associated with current C-64 scene(s). .. This project is pretty neat and this video is entertaining, informative, and it has come to the attention of many sceners. .. As such, there has been some discussion (in scene) over 'new features' wished for here in comments section. Going by scene opinion, some cold water is necessary counterpoint. Almost no one in demoscene will code for, or even care about in any serious way, new modalities on vic-2 or sid replacements. Consider how difficult it is to motivate scene to code for the C-128 or SCPU or 1571/81 or other enhanced options. The pulse of scene discussion (and game theory) suggests at best one/two demos and maybe one game of interest, assuming this project takes off at all. .. This is all self-evident in line with historical precedent(s). Speculation is a fun game in social media but let's keep it sane. GREETINGS TO .. CCR .. KRILL .. ALGORITHM .. BURG .. FUNGUS .. DEADBEAT .. jESSiKA .. GROEPAZ .. DJINN .. and shoutout to :: commodore128.net/ .. etc ..

Absolutely great, fantastic work. When can i have it. Additional features are great, but I would be happy with a simple replacement. I want it now. :-)

So basically, you have made a GPU, with VRAM, for the C64... Nice! :D

This is a totally awesome project! Brillant work! 😃👍

The project is great, the video is interesting, and the comment section is awesome ! Could RU-vid be always like that ! Thank You.

This is fantastic!!! The new modes are perfect, I wish Commodore had expanded the VICII with a configurable palette with the C64C.

awesomeness jobs Randy u have beat the tech moving forward

Amazing! How much will it cost and when will a commercial version be ready? Would you consider creating a Vic-20 VIC chip with similar features. 80 columns,wow!

Wow, that is fantastic work Randy, well done and congratulations. I must admit, I got super excited about that 80COL mode. Amazing.

You, Sir, are a saint.

This is like a window into an alternate reality where Commodore published all the specs for the C64 like IBM did with the PC or Apple with the Apple ][ so third parties started creating upgrade chips for the VIC-II!

cool! Sure, 6502 was weak signals so inline resistor makes for better impedance matching. Excellent.

Really interesting project indeed. In general, all extended features will be pretty much a sales argument but won't be used beyond a few tests. I can't see people retrofitting existing software for it. I do have a question; can I assume the new modes - both 80 column and the extended bitmaps - cannot coexist with sprites. I would see a technical challenge of mixing sprites fetching data from normal RAM and your new graphics, fetching data from your separate video ram and generate a consolidated output.

Absolutely awesome project, so skilled 👍 Can't wait to see the first dedicated PCB 🤞 This project and your BMC64 will definitely increase the amount of C64´s in my house 😁

Looks great, well done! Looking forward to the finished product!

Wauw Randy, nice development. Keep up this very good work.. I hope it will be in a suitable PCB one day! Stil the 6526 and 6510 to go!

Nice work :D Only possible addition I can think of would be a simple "copper" with DMA support that could be programmed. Cheers,

Awesome!! I can hardly wait to buy one.

Congratulations for the whole project and finding that last pi154 issue! Truly outstanding work!!!

I didn't understand much of this series, but even the stuff I didn't understand I loved. Awesome work!

In the future, every chip in the system will be its own independent super computer capable of doing a lot more than emulate that particular circuit. But it will still all operate like a Commodore 64.

great presentation, showing text notes with your talk.

Love the 80 columns, and I dig the new video modes. Well done!!!

Tremendous work. I’m highly impressed!

Great work. Would be nice to have extra (separate) $d011 and $d016 x/y scrollbits for the new bitplanes too. With optional AND mask-output when pixels in the bitplanes overlap to generate different output colors. And how about a (small) Copper-list like the Amiga to poke some values at a certain rasterline? You might can use one of the extra $d0xx adresses to point to a list in RAM.

Great work. I will look forward to buy one or two pieces... I am waiting also guthub code to use it also in my other 65c816 projects...

Thank you for taking on this project, it is needed so very much.

Holy crap... That is really impressive! Can't wait to see how it evolves into the final product.

Great work, would buy if you get through to producing them.

8:05 I would like for he user to be able to use their preferred palettes. Frankly the C64 default "palette" needs all the help it can get. Persisting would be good! Raster configurable palette would rock! I hope you offer other versions of the Kernel screenmode (now at $C800) so the routines can reside elsewhere in RAM. Just in case C800 is in use by some program a user needs to run

Simply outstanding.

BONUS FEATURE!

You are excellent mister :) great, fantastic and interesting work.

This is a great Thing you have done. Gratulation!

Fantastic project and great work - obviously a labor of love. Would you consider a derivative version for the C128 - the VIC is very similar with some extra IO ports/pins as I understand it. C128's could use the HDMI/VGA options too, especially in C64 mode. I would love to help with that project if you are interested.

wow. just wow. i want, i need pre-order one!

Amazing! Congratulations!

An amazing achievement, very well presented and look forward to the next video update

very cool. Now I wish I had a c64 to tinker with this when it becomes available.

Super awesome. Can't wait to buy one. :)

You sir are a legend!

I heard about the NovaTerm 80 col support. That's worthy of its own video! I think I speak for a lot of of folks when I say that the software based 80 cols isn't the best. NovaTerm's C128 80 col in C64 mode is also a little buggy. I would be really curious to hear more about what you did with NovaTerm to support the Kawari. Is it just a coincidence that you share the same last name as the NovaTerm author? :)

This is fantastic work Randy - Can't wait to try the finished product!

Fantastic ideas ! Thanks.

Great project

Impressive!!

Really amazing. When will it be out? Will you set the VHDL opensource?

This is truly amazing. I really dig the new modes and what possibilities that might unleash. Hoping thru continuous improvement the cost can become affordable too.

Another idea: add support for using a C128 in C64 mode: I am NOT suggesting to emulate an entire C128, just the features a coder can take advantage of when a C128 runs in C64 mode (like doubled color ram and faster speed when the beam is on the border.) This feels less arbitrary (to me at least) than adding support for brand new features that have never existed earlier. My 2 cents.

Awesome I am the 1000th sub. Can't wait to be able to buy this!

to port new software is important to reach the 800x600 (4:3) graphic resolution (or even just 768x576), if not even 1024x768

Awesome stuff! I hope you do keep the new. modes as I can see some great uses for those even if it means added cost because of increased RAM. Amazing, keep up the good work.

This is awesome. Since it’s NTSC and PAL, I assume it could be used in either type?

Awesome work. Some features like more sprites or maybe a fast mathcoprocessor would be awesome. That combined with some fast line fills would allow some flat shaded polygons. Well done

Loving the progress on this more and more. I really hope you'll either start manufacturing and selling these yourself at some point, or reach a deal with someone, because I'd love to have a re-programmable VIC-II to complement my (also re-programmable) SwinSID Ultimate - it uses a similar "register knocking" principle (5:12) to access the new features. Since you're already implementing the old and new NTSC VIC-II and the new PAL VIC-II, any chance you could squeeze in an old PAL VIC-II as well? It should be similar to the old NTSC's behaviour, with three luma bins instead of seven.

Wow. Impressive! Does having no badlines mean that the raster interrupt will always come in time? Would be nice if no seperate timer is needed that synchronizes with the raster interrupt for reliable timing. And, since you're asking for features... I always missed a good multicolor mode and extended color mode sucks. A normal VIC-II only uses the low nibble of each byte in color memory. Could the upper nibble by used for background color?

This is amazing... I have an idea though... As for HDMI, by seeing the board you have a 2 ribbon cables that connect to an HDMI daughter board. What would be nice if the HDMI used a Micro HDMI connection and this was part of a daughter board that actually replaces the entire RF module (much like other projects like the Super VIDEO board, or the Shuriken). Getting rid of that RF module is a win all around, even if it requires work to remove. 1) This Would allow the micro HDMI port to use the RF connector hole in the case as the location you can plug the micro hdmi cable to, so no case mod would be needed or running a hdmi cable out the corner of one of the rear IO slots. 2) Would be able do a A/V Jack bypass so that that port could still be used if desired. Also I think IIRC there is a +5vcc from one of the 8 connections at the RF module that can be used as a power source.

Need a "Buy Now!" button. Please! :)

What happens to sprites in 80 column mode? Do they retain their 40-col size and aspect ratio, or are they scaled in the x to match the new pixel size?

Some questions, and I hope they don’t annoy you - Anyway you can remove those borders in 80 column mode? What is the highest resolution that you push it to with maximum colours considering the REU’s or the 1541 Ultimate II + or by using maximum block RAM in the FPGA? Any increase in the number of sprites? The NES using the same 6502 could push around a 100 sprites( read it somewhere) please don’t fizzle out ....do release this......I am sure you’ll have many buyers......

Legend.

Amazing, simple amazing! just a (maybe dumb) question: starting from your awesome work, do you think it will be relatively easy to make a 6560/6561 replacement (and maybe also the TED chip -264 series- and the graphic chips for the C-128) ?

This project is a really dream come true! Well done! Is there any hope to get extra features support to BMC64?

Adrian's Digital Basement sent me

Coming along nicely , Very Impressive. Have you got a dedicated thread in the Lemon64 Forums now you have a name for your Project ?

That is insane. Can I ask what you do for a job?? I mean how did you learn all this? I have loved my C64 since I was a kid in the 80’s but am only now starting to actually teach myself how to actually use it, basic, machine code etc. Still early days but love it. Would love to have half the understanding you have.

When you say VGA, I understand it as line-doubled 480p/576p output also with probably optional scanlines with RGsB. Please include support for the originally intended 240p/288p output but with RGB+S so that we can use it on our 1084S with RGB input or a CRT with SCART input (basically any recent PAL trinitron) or even better on a PVM/BVM instead of having to only use it on a rotten VGA LCD or CRT.

Fantastic

Take my money, I want one. True 80 column mode and a huge colour palette, the C64 is now perfect.