While browsing Ni-Wumpf's website, I noticed that their new boards can be reprogrammed by the user using their GUI "Integrated Development Environment." It looks like you can rewrite software features on their System 1/80 replacement boards, and write the to the ROM, and use them in game. Looks like a really neat feature, and I've never heard of it until now. Given that, does anyone have experience using this feature? How well does it work? What are its limitations?

Max

Thanks for the information. I knew when I saw "java applet" in their description, it wasn't going to be all that great. Looks like it's not really worth the effort. Interesting that they chose to use a custom language, instead of something more tangible, but I'm guessing they did that to make it more approachable--which was negated in the difficulty to use the software anyway.

Kind of a shame that it isn't more developed. It'd be nice to see similar abilities on other platforms as well.

Looks like the CPU for the System 1 board is a STM32F103 which runs an ARM Cortex-M3. Sorta overkill for a System 1 CPU, I'd think. I couldn't find a spec sheet for the System 80 CPU though.

Ace,

Wow! Thanks for that explanation! I completely understand the cost analysis for your reasoning. Despite the difficulties, thanks for giving us the opportunity to give it a try. Interesting that RS-232 was used for the development of this. Wasn't USB pretty well adopted at that point though? Last time I really saw a serial port was on an old laser printer. I think there's genuine interest in coding games, I see threads pop up all the time around here asking about ROM hacks or rewriting certain rules, but it looks like the interest lies in newer games from the mid 80s onward to give them more depth--not so much System 1s or 80s.

You know, after I typed that up, I thought about that. It's easy to forget just how fast SoCs and CPUs are advancing! Even the cheapest "off the shelf" chips are pretty fully featured these days. Could you tell that to TI though? They STILL use Z80s in their graphing calculators that cost way too much...

Anyway, Ace, thanks again for your response. Really appreciated it. And thanks for your contributions to the hobby.

Max