Finally spent my fathers day doing some projects for the retro stuff. It was finally time to upgrade my TI99/4A over to an F18 video upgrade, as well as to try out this new ppeb upgrade.
The F18A is a direct pin-compatible replacement for the TMS-9918A VDP Family that was used in many retro-computers and game consoles from the early to mid 1980’s. The F18A’s primary goal is to provide a pixel-perfect output video signal that can be used directly with a modern computer display.
Great effort has been put into making the F18A physically, electrically, and software compatible with the original 9918A VDP, so all existing software should run correctly on a system with an F18A installed.
For new software development, the F18A is programmed exactly like the 9918A, so any existing documentation, techniques, and development environments that work with the 9918A will also work with the F18A.
While I do have 2 of the orig F18, I’ve used them in a coleco and an adam system, so this was part of my F18MK1 inventory. This is a much smaller unit and is handy in some cases.
The “ppeb-cr”
This is a smaller, more flexible alternative to the peb, It allows emulation of carts, disks, speech, etc. all via one small microsd card, and the price was right (50$ shipped) 3d printed case done myself.
I’ve only used about 3 of the things it can do, but am told it can also emulate BT controllers as a joystick, as well as connecting to wifi to do “other” things.
