It's March, and I've already started three embedded systems projects and completed two. Let's talk about them!

The most recent, Lionheart, is an assembler for the Motorola MC6800. It was an idea I worked on about 7 years ago in Python that I never completed. I revisited it again from scratch and finished it in a week, in C++.

My first takeaway is that, one, of course, my compiler theory and embedded architectural knowledge have improved quite a bit since then. And two, I really, really, really appreciate working on older microcontroller chips.

                 /\
   Lionheart  ( ;`~v/~~~ ;._
              ,/'"/^) ' < o\  '".~'\\\--,
            ,/",/W  u '`. ~  >,._..,   )'
          ,/'  w  ,U^v  ;//^)/')/^\;~)'
        ,/"'/   W` ^v  W |;         )/'
      ;''  |  v' v`" W }  \\
    "    .'\    v  `v/^W,) '\)\.)\/)
              `\   ,/,)'   ''')/^"-;'
                  \
                ".

The second project I've completed is Serpent, the "snake" game for the VMU (Visual Memory Unit) of the Dreamcast. This one I originally worked on immediately after a course on x86 assembly as a "graduation" project, almost 15 years ago! I was a little too junior to work on something so ambitious back then.

I came back and completed this one in about a week, too, including forking Comstedt's emulator and assembler so they compiled on modern platforms, such as Apple Silicon.

Let's make a Game Boy!

Some background: in my last post, I said I wanted to work in hardware in 2026. Since then, I've bought an ESP32-S3-EYE, and a bunch of similar Arduino gadgets. I've decided to build the Game Boy with a Teensy 4.1 Development Board, 2.8" TFT LCD Touchscreen, and an Elenco Breadboard.

Over the last few months, I've learned that I'm much more interested in bare-metal embedded systems than "IoT" and home applications, and I already have the expertise for it. I thought about researching computer vision on the ESP32, but there are so many available frameworks that are either required or strongly recommended to get started, it would have been very unfun.

I'm going to 3D-print, solder, and build the game engine to build my own "Gameboy" device! Lionheart and Serpent were simply the warm-up projects. Stay tuned!