📰 New article from RetroRGB
An Inside Look at the GameTank
https://retrorgb.com/an-inside-look-at-the-gametank.html
Remember when building a computer meant soldering through-hole components and praying to the silicon gods? Well, the GameTank is here to remind us that nostalgia is a powerful drug. I recently spent a few months diving into this unique project, and let’s just say my soldering iron has never been hotter.
At its heart, the GameTank runs on the classic WDC 65C02 processor, the modern CMOS successor to the legendary MOS 6502. But don’t let the vintage architecture fool you. While it sports a modest 128×128 pixel display, the graphics are surprisingly sharp. It achieves this by using an 8-bit indexed color palette that supports up to 200 unique colors per frame. The real magic? It pulls off all this visual trickery using nothing but old-school 74-series logic chips—no FPGAs or modern microcontrollers required.
Audio gets its own dedicated 14MHz 65C02 co-processor, acting as a 4-voice FM synthesizer. Think of it as a slimmed-down version of the chips found in classic arcade cabinets, allowing you to compose music in MIDI and feed it straight into your games.
If you’ve ever wanted to code for hardware that feels like a time capsule but plays like a dream, this is your ticket. It’s not just a console; it’s a masterclass in retro engineering.