Wildbits Computing Company

[Mu0n]

Wildbits Computing Company

(Re-)discovering the joy of personal computing.

wildbitscomputing.com

Wildbits Computing acquired the rights for the F256K2 and F256Jr2 one year ago, which were designed by Foenix Retro Systems (now rebranded as Foenix Labs)

In a nutshell:
* The K2 is the 6502/65816 based wedge computer (12.6 MHz) variant while the Jr2 is the SBC variant. Both have the same capabilities, but the K2 has a bit more ports and more space for bootloading cores.
* They are now marketed for learners of simpler-times machines that are not terminally connected to the web. A cozy platform to play around with superbasic, but with ridiculously plenty of room to expand your knowledge go into more advanced stuff. I've not run out of stuff to play with in 3 years.
* Compelling combination of audio options that you can't find anywhere else that rope together what micros had in the late 70's, 80's and 90's.
* Its large FPGA (Artix-7 XC7A200T for the K2, the Mega65 is now in parity with it!) means you can install cores for 6809 (running at 20 MHz!), Atari ST, Amiga 500, Commander X-16 (experimental) and more!

Onboard hardware:

* 65816 from WDC that starts in 6502 compatibility mode. A MMU lets you eplore the whole 2MB of SRAM but a bit enables flat addressing mode and 65816 native mode
* Watch-sized mini LCD on the K2 case, which can be addressed by code and used as a small alternate screen
* SAM2695 midi chip from Dream, same that's used with Serdashop's S2 DreamBlaster and many other hobbyist MIDI hw projects
* VS1053b mp3/wav/ogg/wma/mid/etc decoder, just shovel it the contents of your files and it streams its playback. Weird for an 8-bit platform at heart!
* WizFi360 chip as well as ethernet
* Pico 2040 bootloader that selects which core gets loaded during boot time. Is now entirely reconfigurable from the Wildbits computer itself with an online tool
* 2MB of flash memory (512k per core) that "acts like ROM chips" of old time with prepackaged software
* external SD card (fat32), 1 interal uSD card for bootloader purpose and another internal uSD card for whatever you want
* MIDI in/out ports
* Atari style joystick ports (x2)
* specialized port to the FNX4N4S that can plug 4 NES gamepads and 4 SNES gamepads at the same time (costs extra)
* 4 addressable RGB lights on the case, normally for network, caps lock, sd access and power, but you can take over
* PS/2 mouse port

Video FPGA features (the "Vicky"):

* 320x240 8bpp (but alpha transparency is in the works), 3 layers
* text modes are 80x60 and double sized x or y, can use this to weasel your way to 640x480 glyph based graphics with 16 colors
* Scrollable tile layers, 3 layers
* 2x banks of 64 = 128 sprites: 8x8, 16x16, 24x24 or 32x32. Mirror image in x,y with a bit
* Fast "hardware" line blits offloaded from cpu to fpga
* Bonus "memtext" layer with 8bpp color and 8b of extras like blinking, reverse color, etc. Can be used for yet another complex 640x480 with 256 colors

Other FPGA features:

* dual SID chips
* dual SN7 PSG chips
* YMF262 OPL3 chip
* FPU Math block
* VDMA controller for fast bitmap blits

 

[Mu0n]

Cool stuff by community member jbaker8935:

1) Uses the VS1053b sound chip's digital signal processing power to perform 3d wireframe graphic transformations. So here's a tempest remake:
(this is 4 months old, so it's much improved now, but no public video)

2) exploring a 3d wireframe world, very inspired from the cyberspace levels from the original game System Shock for msdos:

3) using the font glyphs to effectively get 2x the resolution that the bitmap layers have. The trick is to replace the memory address of the glyphs in RAM before the screen has finished rendering, so that all the screen can have its data:

4) Synth with 2 oscillators, working the real time mode of the VS1053b audio chip. Code shovels the right wafeform in its fifo buffer

 

[Mu0n]

Cool stuff from "superbasic champion" Ernesto C.:

1) Suite of software to allow sprite, tile, font editing running natively, all done in superbasic

2) F256 port of "Star Trek", in superbasic:

3) Tracker with 6 square wave channels and 1 noise channel for the PSG, done in superbasic

 

[Mu0n]

Over on the 6809 core side of things, which recently was at 8MHz, but got bumped to 20 MHz in the last few weeks,

1) Flight Sim 2 port by RTaylor:

2) scrolling beat em up game by JFed:

3) Port of studio9 by Matt Massie:

 

[Mu0n]

Cool stuff by yours truly:

1) Whiskers' Audiophile Lounge - a multiple format music player. Supports 6 file formats and targets the SID, OPL3, MIDI, MP3, PSG. 2 years of combined projects!

2) Firejam, lets you play with a MIDI controller through the MIDI in port, and dispatches it to the sound chip of your choice. Supports polyphony to the maximum of each option.

3) OPL3 Snooper, lets you open a vgm file, play it, pause it and inspect the registers of the YMF262. You can navigate the instruments that were used and play test them with a MIDI keyboard

4) Every peripheral plugged in at once

 

[Mu0n]

Stuff from Michael W:

1) VCF East 2026 (him standing) workshop on programming with superbasic. Class with multiple Wildbits/Jr2, each with their screen and ps/2 keyboard, while following the intro guide he also wrote:

2) SIDLab: midi in, midi playback and SID output

3) A series of newsletter articles, served as a foundation reading material almost if the 80's were talking to us about it

 

[Mu0n]

User Matthias (Cibee) has been doing fpga core work and the whole pipeline of how to update your machine (core, flash, bootloader) as simply as possible.

1) Amiga 500 core:

2) Atari ST core:

3) 68040 core:

4) Commander X-16 core:

 

[Trash80toG4]

Wow, just wow! Nice work you did there.