Craig,

Delayed responding to this thread although i have given this some though many times.

After all the platform issues are settled the question becomes, what would you do with this device?

Who's binaries would you run other than your own. Perhaps this is what fuels the 6502 simulator comments.

Regarding video, if the ATARI level of functionality is the model then you could consider an old CGA Card for TV/Monitor display as this probably models ATARI capability color vs resolution and i/o capability (assuming the composite video output).

CGA is easy to write to. An 8 bit VGA card (this is a "one of" isnt it?) would be a tad harder but very do-able and would accomodate higher res/more color and generality of display type. (note the spec creep)?

A separate '51 could host either adapter and building just this you have a stand alone intelligent video adapter. Perhaps for pairing with those small LCD TV's made for in vehicle video. Either way the adapters provide their own memory and sequencing reducing the video design component.

There are lot's of interesting IDE xface/device solutions and a '51 dedicated to this task would again model ATARI disk capability (or am i thinking comodore?).

are you being whimsical regarding this platform or are you in danger of actually considering devoting effort to such a device?

regards,
p