AVR Laptop Pushes The Limits Of 8-Bit

If you noticed a tool that had a laptop computer kind issue taking part in sound and video, alt-tabbing over to play a recreation or take some notes, then again to the video — effectively, that’s regular; that’s what laptops do. If you realized the center of this machine was an Arduino-compatible AVR microcontroller board, you’d in all probability do the identical spit-take we did. Well, put down your espresso, as a result of [Vladimir]’s AVR Laptop project actually is that spectacular.

The micro on the coronary heart of this superb laptop computer is an ATmega2560. That’s a reasonably highly effective chip by 8-bit microcontroller requirements, nevertheless it’s nonetheless an 8-bit microcontroller, so getting the FreeRTOS-based system and all the capabilities he needs onboard took some cautious coding. The ST7920 128×64 monochrome LCD isn’t being pushed by any commonplace library, for instance — [Vladimir] constructed his personal driver that does solely what he needs. Even in 1-bit shade, getting 24 fps video playback was a problem, particularly with sound, and the write-up will get into how that was completed.

The code is pending evaluate earlier than launch, however we do sit up for seeing how he pulled all of it off. In the meantime, we will a minimum of watch it in motion within the demo video embedded under.

The vibe of creating an 8-bit machine do stuff you don’t count on to slot in 8 bits reminds us of SymbOS for the Z80. For the sysadmins on the market, we’ve additionally seen an AVR web server.

Thanks to [Vladimir] for the tip!