FPGA RETROspective

FPGA RETROspective by Dušan Grujić, Dragan Toroman

µGalaksija project started as a tribute to the “forgotten” GALAKSIJA computer, designed by Voja Antonic in the early 80's. The idea was to use pure FPGA design to achieve near 100% hardware compatibility sticking as much as possible to the original design, and maintain 100% software compatibility (even when changing/adding something to the design).

The project has been successfully finalized, and the result is a very small factor, single chip computer, with all GALAKSIJA's blows and whistles, plus some extra features, like the low resolution color mask graphics, turbo mode, memory snapshots etc.

Project is open hardware, in the spirit of original GALAKSIJA. Complete circuit schematics, PCB, VHDL and other files needed to reproduce (and improve) the design are placed in public domain. Significant effort has been made in component selection & PCB design so that electronic enthusiast can build it with minimal investment and equipment, again in the spirit of original design.

FPGA once again proves to be a very powerful platform, enabling a single chip reincarnation of an old computer.

Full programmability allows the use of any CPU and peripherals for which the design is available, and the creation of new ones, providing a perfect tool for experimentation in computer architecture. Together with external RAM & ROM it makes a Linux-ready hardware with flexible architecture, which can be customized to meet the specific needs.