April 08, 2015

DAN64 - an AVR-based 8-bit microcomputer

April seems to be the month of the home-made computer, earlier we showed you the Apple II emulator based on an Arduino and today we discovered the "DAN64" by Juan Martínez. The DAN64 is a home-brew computer based on the Atmel ATmega328 as used in our Arduino and compatible boards.

However it is true to the systems we used in the 1980s, the DAN64 emulates a 6502-based computer and includes video output as shown below, input with a PS/2 keyboard and a simple method of saving and retrieving data and code via an audio/cassette interface. Furthermore the use of external SRAM negates the requirement of trying to squeeze too much into the ATmega's limited RAM. 

For much more information, design files and links to code please visit Juan's excellent project page. And for more, we're on facebooktwitter and Google+, so follow us for news and product updates as well.

If you're prototyping Arduino projects on solderless breadboards, blown the MCU on your board, or making your own such as the exposure board mentioned above - save time and hassle with our new ATmega328 microcontroller pre-loaded with the Arduino Uno bootloader:

It's the same one as found on our Eleven, KitTen and the original Arduino Uno, plus it has a very useful pinout sticker attached to save confusion when wiring it up. So for more information and to order, click here. And we also sell the stickers!

 

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