I was working on a Macintosh clone project (a clone of the original
128k), but I'm not willing to invest any more time in something that Apple would probably kill with a C&D order.I'm now working on a hardware replica of the Altair. I'm scanning the PCB layout and creating historically accurate replicas. I've come to the conclusion that the average person is not going to be able to afford a kit "just for the fun of it". There are literally square feet of PCBs required and a lot of the components will be expensive.
This leads me to the idea of putting the Altair into an FPGA for people who want the blinking light effect but could care less about the guts. This would be similar to the PDP-8 clone that is an inch thick and can be hung on a wall like an interactive picture. I don't have any experience designing logic for FPGAs, but like learning C/Assembler/Visual basic...I can probably use code examples to teach myself.
Basically what I'm looking for is an FPGA development board that would be suited to hold the 8080. I would also like to integrate an "optional" boot ROM, RAM, serial card, cassette card, etc. These devices wouldn't take up too many resources I'd think.
The only possible problem I can think of for an Altair FPGA is that I would want all the bus signals brought out for the front panel and for optional interface cards. Is the T80 core accurate enough to produce the two clock phases and all of the bus signals?
What development board would you suggest I buy for this purpose? I've heard about schematic entry for the logic, and I'd like to have that tool as an option.
Thanks for your time, Grant