Homebrew 6809 Computer: Conway's Game of Life

Even at only 2 MHz, my little computer can do some awesome stuff. To test out the video and sound chips, I implemented Conway's Game of Life with fading, color-changing cells and procedurally-generated "music."

I call it "9thlife," and it's written in highly optimized assembly language. It manages to crank out about 50 generations per second. Who needs Processing when you can do stuff that's just as cool with late-'70s technology? :)

The TMS9918A video chip has a fixed palette of 15 colors (and only 4 of them are used here), so dithering is used to simulate smooth gradients. It uses Graphics Mode I.

Recorded directly from the computer. Sorry about the faint vertical lines in the image, the video chip is still on a breadboard and I haven't perfected the filtering circuit.

Видео Homebrew 6809 Computer: Conway's Game of Life канала Matt Sarnoff