Hi, Clyde here! We’re almost three fourths funded and have two weeks left.
We’ve had some interesting developments from GameTank community members this week, and I have a new video to share that gives a highly technical deep dive on composite video.
I’m writing to you from the security line at LaGuardia as I head to Vintage Computer Festival SoCal. If you’re attending, come visit the GameTank exhibit!

Knowledge Share: Composite Video

For a while now I’ve wanted to make a video explaining my method for generating the GameTank’s NTSC color composite signal. Much of the console’s character comes from this circuit, such as how the palette is created by directly manipulating the chroma carrier wave.

I knew it’d take a lot of work to make this video, and I still underestimated how long it’d take! Hopefully the result is somewhat interesting and not too confusing. :)

New Programming Language Support: BASIC

After building a hand-soldered GameTank and finishing a port of Minicraft, kaosctrl on our Discord server has now started customizing XC=BASIC to add the GameTank as a compile target! This means you can now write software in this dialect of BASIC and cross-compile to a GameTank ROM file, resulting in efficient machine code without running an interpreter.

DIY Paddle Input

Dan Shimmyo has continued his controller hacking, and created a prototype paddle controller using an Arduino to read a potentiometer. Currently he’s working on replacing the microcontroller with a simple circuit using an ADC chip.