Ulti-PET

[Blacklord]

André Fachat's Ulti_PET is now at prototype status.

Snippets from his page :

The Micro-PET: a PCB that clones a Commodore PET, and adds modern features like SD-Card, USB, DAC audio, Network support, and colour VGA video output
The Micro-CPU: The CPU and modern tech part of the Micro-PET (SD-Card, USB, DAC audio, Network, VGA video) as CPU for the CS/A bus.
The Ulti-PET: a Micro-PET-based PCB with many many new features like Dual-SID, I2C, RS232 / TTL UARTs, fast serial IEC, Joysticks,, ...

• Ulti-PET features
  
  
  • Commodore 3032 / 4032 / 8032 / 8296 with options menu to select at boot
    
    
    • Boot-menu to select different PET versions to run
    • 40 col character display
    • 80 col character display
    • 8296 memory map emulation
    • IEEE488 interface (via PETIO board)
    • Tape connector (pin, via PETIO board)
    • PET graphics keyboard, or alternatively a C64 keyboard
  • Improved system design:
    
    
    • 512k video RAM, 512k fast RAM accessible using banks on the W65816 CPU
    • boot from an SPI Flash ROM
    • up to 17.5 MHz mode (via configuration register)
    • VGA Colour video output (RGBI in 768x576)
    • Write protection for the PET ROMs once copied to RAM
    • lower 32k RAM mappable from all of the 512k fast RAM
  • Improved Video output:
    
    
    • Multiple colour modes (Colour-PET, C128-VDC-compatible, Multicolour)
    • Colour Hires graphics mode
    • Sprites
    • Modifyable character set
    • 40/80 column switchable character width
    • Flexible timing, with up to 72 lines and 96 characters per line
    • multiple video pages mappable to $8000 video mem address
  • Audio output:
    
    
    • PET beeper :-)
    • DMA engine to play audio samples on stereo DAC sound output
    • Dual-SID
    • Audio mixer and small audio amp (Ulti-PET only)
• Extra I/O features on top (mostly Ulti-PET only)
  
  
  • Colour-PET compatibility (as defined by Steve Gray's colour-PET project)
  • RS232 interface
  • Fast serial IEC bus (like in the C128)
  • Both IEEE488 and IEC bus are capable of being used as device for another computer (ATNA capability)
  • An extra 8-bit I/O port in addition to the Userport
  • Simpler and more versatile system bus (using the Ultra-BUS backplane:
    
    
    • CS/A bus (my standard)
    • Some Apple-II bus compatibility
    • RC2014 bus connectors
  • Built-in Userport extensions, like Joystick ports

http://www.6502.org/users/andre/ultipet/index.html

[RobertB]

Oh, I didn't know about the UltiPET.  Thanks for the information.

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group - http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm
Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network - http://www.portcommodore.com/sccan