Atari 8 bit computers, NES and SMS game consoles on your TV with nothing more than a ESP32 and a sense of nostalgia
Atari 8 bit computers, NES and SMS game consoles on your TV with nothing more than a ESP32 and a sense of nostalgia
ESP_8_BIT is designed to run on the ESP32 within the Arduino IDE framework. See it in action on Youtube. Schematic is pretty simple:
-----------
| |
| 25 |------------------> video out
| |
| 18 |---/\/\/\/----|---> audio out
| | 1k |
| | ---
| ESP32 | --- 10nf
| | |
| | v gnd
| |
| | 3.3v We are using an Audio PLL to create color composite video and a LED PWM peripheral to make the audio, a Bluetooth radio or a single GPIO pin for the joysticks and keyboard, and gpio for the IR even though there is a perfectly good peripheral for that. We are using virtual memory on a microcontroller. And it all fits on a single core. Oh how I love the ESP32.
# Keyboards & Controllers
**ESP_8_BIT** supports Bluetooth Classic/EDR keyboards and WiiMotes along with an variety of IR keyboards and joysticks.
**On boot the software searches for new Bluetooth devices for 5 seconds**; if the device is in pairing mode the software should find it and display its name at the bottom of the screen. Some keyboards will require you to enter a "0000" to establish the connection the first time. WiiMotes should automatically pair and reconnect. WiiMote Classic controllers are also supported.
A number of IR input devices are supported if to add a optional IR receiver (TSOP38238, TSOP4838 or equivalent) to pin 0. The IR Wireless Controllers from Atari Flashback 4 work well and have that classic Atari joystick feel. Retron IR controllers are supported as are WebTV keyboards that come in various guises: WebTV, MsnTV, Displayer, UltimateTV etc. They all should work just fine. A few places have the nice Philips variant new for $11.95 w/ free shipping (search for 'SWK-8630'). If you made a [ZorkDuino](https://hackaday.com/2014/04/30/the-zorkduino/) you will have one of these.
# Time to Play
If you would like to upload your own media copy them into the appropriate subfolder named for each of the emulators in the data folder. Note that the SPIFFS filesystem is fussy about filenames, keep them short, no spaces allowed. Use '[ESP32 Sketch Data Upload](https://randomnerdtutorials.com/install-esp32-filesystem-uploader-arduino-ide/)' from the 'Tools' menu to copy a prepared data folder to ESP32.
Play through the included demos. Load up your own. Write some Atari Basic masterpiece. Type in a game from an old Antic magazine. Finally get around to finishing Zork.
Enjoy,
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