Un article de theBrave's wiki.
Well, in that article, some MIT students were bragging about the possibility of repurposing an famiclone
to be used as a very cheap home computer.
Good idea, but...
- They haven't done the product
- Famiclones will be harder to find, and as they are unlicenced-pirate-clones, compatibility between models could be a problem.
My idea
What is the absolute cheapest cost to build a small home computer.
We don't want to use outdated technology, but current one.
US/EUR $15 ?
Rules
- Suggested price is per 1k units
- Suggested price does not include pcb or case
- Suggested price does not include common I/O component, valid ones are
- Simple PS/2 / USB keyboard or mouse
- VGA or TV screen
Ideas
Well, it seems that the hardest part will be:
Tackling bigger problems first, I think that the solution to the video problem will
shape the resulting hardware.
Cheapest: versatile µC ans SW video generation
Looking at the ZX 81 home computer on the wiki page, I stumbled upon a picture
of its motherboard and noticed that there isn't any video chip.
More recently, the Uzebox and the ThatOtherSceneBoard did the same thing.
So a 20 MHz chip should be sufficient to create an QVGA video signal.
As 20 MHz rated chips are cheap, we also can imagine an homebrew dedicated video processor.
Where to think next
- Could we use a dirt cheap CPLD to achieve the same purpose ?
- Could we imagine an HL langage to make things easier ?
- How a shared memory framebuffer works ?
Simple: versatile µC and dedicated video chip
First idea
Candidates
- Epson S1D13746: (5.83€/u) Chip with integrated CIF (352x288) frame buffer.
- Epson S1D13506: (9.50€/u) Chip without frame buffer, support up to SVGA resolutions.
Powerful: current SoC with video generation built-in
