My DIY FPGA board can run Quake II (blog.mikhe.ch)

by sznio 70 comments 225 points
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70 comments

[−] rasz 51d ago
I find first version https://github.com/petrmikheev/endeavour much more impressive. Dude somehow managed to get 100MHz DDR1 ram working on 2 layer board with no ground reference :o Its one of those things you only attempt when crazy or dont know any better. Anyone with EE experience will tell you its impossible, like flying commercial grade SoCs in satellites :) Mad lad.
[−] unethicalinfo 51d ago
Cool write up, getting initial bill shock from 2 layer to the 4+ layer PCBs is a rite of passage :)
[−] markus_zhang 51d ago
This is very impressive. How did you learn to design a real computer, not the toy ones a lot of people made? I read part 1 and part 2 and looks like you just “thrown in” Ethernet and other stuffs and it was done. Really hope to learn from the process, thanks!
[−] wadewatts 51d ago
Section 6 where you link to Quake II is 404. (at the time of this post)

URL: https://blog.mikhe.ch/quake2-on-fpga/part6.md

404 File not found

The site configured at this address does not contain the requested file.

If this is your site, make sure that the filename case matches the URL as well as any file permissions. For root URLs (like http://example.com/) you must provide an index.html file.

Read the full documentation for more information about using GitHub Pages.

[−] argulane 54d ago
That's some mad dedication to go from kicad schematics to running Quake. Very impressive!
[−] UncleOxidant 51d ago
Cool! Have you considered offering this board on Crowd Supply or similar? There don't seem to be many boards available for Efinix FPGAs.
[−] Liftyee 51d ago
Willing to solder BGA, but not willing to use 0402 components while using the stencil anyways?

Nonetheless, impressive project!

[−] xracy 51d ago
This is really cool and impressive... but relatedly...

Has anyone figured out what the minimum specs for Quake are?

I feel like the first thing everyone does with a computer is to determine whether or not it can run quake, and I'm just wondering what the like, most simple computer that could exist is, that could run quake?

[−] bee_rider 51d ago
Quake 2 was the one with the clever approximate inverse square root code, right? I wonder (especially since there’s an instruction nowadays to draw inspiration from), can you implement it “in hardware,” so to speak?
[−] phendrenad2 51d ago
Hey, routing your own length-matched traces, nice. Is this Altium?
[−] klodolph 51d ago
The diagonal traces and the empty spaces are throwing me for a loop. Is this the autorouter in action? (But… still, nice work.)
[−] wowczarek 51d ago
Good to see I'm not the only weirdo still using Midnight Commander.
[−] brcmthrowaway 51d ago
With Claude, a software engineer can now be a hardware engineer.
[−] JoachimS 51d ago
Very impressive, and I'm sure satisfying. Kudos!
[−] ge96 51d ago
What's the deal with the diagonal squigglys
[−] nacozarina 51d ago
Quake II had the best fn soundtrack.
[−] tkapin 51d ago
Very impressive project!
[−] absynth 51d ago
Another board has become Frag complete. Important milestone!