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The current project of Marek is a perfect combination for all those, who want to understand 8-bit architecture, memory map implementation and more complex chip select on the one hand, but on the other hand are inclined towards the topic of FPGAs.

Both definitely skills that would suit pretty much any hardware / software pro, and both fundamentally super interesting.

So what is it about? The C64 PLA chip. Responsible for generating the chip select signals of the breadbin, the thing is actually just combinatorial logic. But if you replace it with your own, you pretty quickly arrive at such great things like memory banking and hence more than just 64kB of RAM. More magic waiting in the dark.

Anyway, in his current article Marek goes into building a replacement for the C64 PLA using an FPGA.

I think, super exciting. For you maybe only 🥱. Let’s find it out!