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In contrast with these limited platforms:

SNES Doom - 128KB RAM, I think a 2MByte ROM, CPU is 65816 at 3Mhz + SuperFX RISC CPU at 21Mhz, which also had its own 64KB of RAM.

PSX Doom - 2MB RAM + 1KB fast scratchpad, able to load from a standard 650MB CD, CPU is a MIPS R3051 at 33Mhz + the PSX accelerated graphics, not used except to draw strips

So doing this in a device that has not too much more RAM than the SNES and also has to livestream the VGA signal Atari 2600 style is exceedingly impressive. It's a dual CPU unit but basically having to spend a core manually bit banging the VGA signal like that is what fascinated me the most.




I haven’t checked but don’t think that the second core was bitbanging the VGA signal. The RP2040 has PIO (programmable I/O) mini cores that can read directly from RAM (DMA) and address the GPIO pins directly. They most likely used that to their advantage.

Edit: yes, see https://kilograham.github.io/rp2040-doom/rendering.html


FWIW, it's possible to bit-bang DVI at 640x480 on the 2040. Takes about half of the available resources:

https://github.com/Wren6991/PicoDVI


That requires a hefty overclock though (252MHz instead of 133MHz).


DOOM overclocks it to 270MHz. :)


I'm not sure why you are just comparing RAM when the newer system has a huge advantage in being dual core and faster clock.




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