Since my original concept was to power this with an Arduino microcontroller platform, I’ve decided to see if I can power it with an Arduino Pro from Sparkfun.
Why Arduino? Why not code to the bare uC? Â Arduino has got a nice IDE, which makes development easier, and it’s got lots of pluggable hardware that simplifies interfacing with stuff like SD cards.
There are a couple of possible problems with this.
- The Arduino Pro has a incredibly anemic 5V regulator.  In a previous project, it couldn’t handle an ethernet shield’s additional power draw.
- The Arduino uses a ATMega 328, which will only give me about 30K of program space. Â Still, Zork used to run in a lot less memory.
If power is a problem, I could always throw an UNO in there, or build my own regulator. Â But if I just can’t squeeze the z-code interpreter into 30K, then maybe I’ll use a Sanguino, or a Mega.