NOTE: THIS HAS BEEN REPLACED WITH THE MK1 MODEL.. https://www.arcadeshopper.com/wp/store/#!/F18A-MK1...

The F18A is a direct pin-compatible replacement for the TMS-9918A VDP Family that was used in many retro-computers and game consoles from the early to mid 1980’s. The F18A’s primary goal is to provide a pixel-perfect output video signal that can be used directly with a modern computer display.

Great effort has been put into making the F18A physically, electrically, and software compatible with the original 9918A VDP, so all existing software should run correctly on a system with an F18A installed.

For new software development, the F18A is programmed exactly like the 9918A, so any existing documentation, techniques, and development environments that work with the 9918A will also work with the F18A.

The F18A also provides many enhancements over the 9918A, and those features will be the focus of this documentation. Having a basic understanding of the 9918A will help understand this documentation, since there is a lot of information covered in the original datasheet and programmer’s guide (see links above) that might not be repeated here.

The original F18A, or just “F18A”, was released in 2012 and continued to be available until late 2017. In total, around 550 F18A boards were produced. The F18A was physically larger than the DIP-40 package of the TMS-9918A IC, mostly due to manufacturing limitations of the time at the production quantities of the F18A.

Because the F18A is twice as wide as the 9918A, there were problems fitting the F18A into many of the various systems in which the F18A could be used. To accommodate some of the more popular systems, two variations of PCB-pins were used: a “tall pins” and “short pins” option was offered, as well as a custom adapter board for the Coleco ADAM computer. Even with these options, the F18A was still not able to be used in many systems due to its size.