Introductions

[RchGrav]

Hi Everyone...

I am new to the board! So I wanted to say hello... Also.. Hi Mark, thanks for creating my account.

I just started learning HDL on the Altera DE1, so far it is very rewarding.

I just wrote my first tiny bit of code that controls the LED's on the DE1 board with switches, so I really have a far way to go. But I'm out of the gates. I figure you have to start someplace! I'm starting to feel comfortable with the basics of Quartus II.

Is there a file area for the PACE project? Where would I find the actual cores and other files for the projects being discussed on the board?

I would love to check out the Scramble/Frogger source for the DE1. Where do I find this?

I'm sure I will have a TON more questions.

Regards,

Rich

[tcdev]

I am new to the board! So I wanted to say hello... Also.. Hi Mark, thanks for creating my account.

Welcome to PACEDEV.NET Rich!

Is there a file area for the PACE project? Where would I find the actual cores and other files for the projects being discussed on the board?
I would love to check out the Scramble/Frogger source for the DE1. Where do I find this?

http://pacedev.net/forums/showthread.php?t=8

I've been a bit slack and haven't yet sorted out some issues with the sprites... :( You may find they work in some video modes and they're off a little in others...

I'm sure I will have a TON more questions.

Fire away!

[FrenziedEngi]

Greetings!

New member here.
Stumbled across PACE while looking for more information about putting an NES on an FPGA. Found that.. and a whole lot more :D

I am a computer engineer, I work mostly in digital design field in both design and testing. I am most familiar with VHDL and Xilinx devices/software. I also have experience with Synplify (for synthesis).

I have access to a Spartan 3AN Starter Kit board on which I will be doing any development. I hope that I can contribute something as I learn!

[apprentix]

Hi everyone. I am an electrical engineer and I got a Commodore 64 back in 1985 as a gift from my parents. I got another one in 2003 but it broke. The first arcade game I ever played was Space Invaders in 1980 and I remember it was so exciting.
I remember playing on an Atari 2600, TRS-80, Nintendo, SNES and N64.

I am new to FPGA design.

Regards!

Carlos

[tcdev]

Hi everyone. I am an electrical engineer and I got a Commodore 64 back in 1985 as a gift from my parents. I got another one in 2003 but it broke. The first arcade game I ever played was Space Invaders in 1980 and I remember it was so exciting.
I remember playing on an Atari 2600, TRS-80, Nintendo, SNES and N64.


Myself, I played Space Invaders at the local "Putt Putt Golf" center, which was also the first place I saw the likes of Galaxian and Frogger! My father also bought a TRS-80 Model I in the late 70's, and I was still using a TRS-80 Model 4P when I graduated from Computer Science in '88!

Aside from the odd pong-era TV game, I never had any consoles in the day, but now own 2600, NES, SNES, N64 and plenty of others!

Hope you find the site of interest. It might not seem like there's a lot happening, but we are actually busy (when we can find the time) working on some hardware, and of course bits and pieces of functionality improvements that go along with it!

And of course I've always got a dozen projects in the fire and another dozen on the drawing board... too little time... :(

[FrenziedEngi]

Welcome!

I second the "not enough time" thing. I have gotten started on a few different PACE related things, but time has been short recently for me. I am still thinking through build scripts that could build all of PACE for all targets... got some good ideas going.

[roglio]

Hi everyone! It is nice to be here!

I'm very noob then please don't hit me if I say something silly...:rolleyes:

I own an Altera DE1 development board, at your service for tests and experiments.

Cheers!
Leo.

[tcdev]

G'day Leo, Welcome to PACEDEV!

Not a lot happening atm - just got back from a 3 week holiday. Right now I'm working on the Zet project. Also working "offline" on another PACE-related project that I can't disclose right now.

Feel free to ask any questions etc. Let me know if you have any problems getting any of the DE1 projects to work!

[roglio]

Hi Chris, thanks for the warm welcome. :)

I've just installed Quartus Web 4.0: it is time to learn ;)

[MiniMorph]

Hi Chris, thanks for the warm welcome. :)

I've just installed Quartus Web 4.0: it is time to learn ;)

What is Quartus Web 4.0 ??

I use Quartus II V9.0 Web Edition !

[roglio]

Ops, sorry! I mispelled it: you're right.

Quartus II 9.0 web edition.

Btw, tomorrow I'll download the newest sp1 (1,33gb :eek:)

[invzim]

Invzim here! Long time arcade and emu enthusiast, and lately dabbled a bit with electronics (http://jvspac.kirurg.org/).

Just got the terasic altera DE1 board, and looking forward to learning something new.

[MiniMorph]

Welcome.

You have picked a good place to get started.

Check out my posts to see what used to work ;)

All the best!

[nunya_bizness]

http://smileys.on-my-web.com/repository/Respect/bowing-036.gif to tcdev for letting me join PACEDEV!
Well, I am brand new to FPGAs. I do some PLC and HMI programming for a living, and I have several years of hobby based experience in microprocessor(Atmel or Microchip - depending on my mood :p ) programming and PCB design/fab and am looking forward to being able to finally move up to FGPAs. :D
I have been SW & HW hacking on my C-64 (amongst other things) lately, and the C-64 port looked like a familiar platform to learn from. Glad I ran into this forum and the group of talent here. I hope to add something worthwhile when I do finally get up to speed. I am using the terasIC DE2-70.
-NB

[wheedal]

Greetings!

I've been lurking for the last month or so, waiting until I found a supported dev board. I'm fairly new to fpga's, but I've been doing embedded work for a few years now. It doesn't get much cooler than to fit an entire 80's computer inside a single chip.

I grew up with a commodore 64, and ran my Amiga for quite a long time. It was very cool to run minimig on my board, it brought back tons of memories. (took a bit of fiddling, but eventually got it going (I've got the newer DE1 with the PSC memory)). Didn't seem to get the C64 yet on the DE1, but am looking forward to it as well. (I too have just recently picked up an ebay'd C64 to get my son playing with it). Its amazing that my 25 year old disks still work (wierd I kept some of those, but none of the machines).

Thanks for your efforts! I was able to get some of them running on my new DE1 board right off! (just got it in the mail yesterday). Frogger was first!

Pretty jazzed about digging into the old hardware to see how it worked. It's a bit different running inside a PC doing emulation than synthesizing actual hardware. Much more satisfying to see the old software running on original clock cycles.

-Dal

[vanfanel]

Hello there!

I am from Spain. I just received my Altera DE1 too, and I'm amazed at Caro & HRA's work in the msx.org forum: they have ported a great msx2+ core to the DE1 with a lot of expansions!

So I was wondering about C64 on this system, and I found this forum. Full C64 with DSK or cartidge images loading would be incredible on the DE1, just I am not into electronic logic programming so I can't complete the FPGA64 port... but I'm sure someone will, someday.

Thanks all! I see very inspired people here! And yes, seing those systems perfectly working in a hardware simulation is miles away from emulation...

[Talus]

Hello all,

I guess I should also introduce myself, having lurked on and off for a while, I finally got the account setup a few days ago (thanks!).

I've been looking for a place where people discussed how to implement arcade(-like) hardware. My initial interest was doing my own design, not recreating existing platforms, but then I'd need to do the games as well...

Plenty of people out there doing are this kind of thing, but it's scattered all over the net and there doesn't seem to be many suitable discussion groups. Even these forums are very low bandwidth, but hopefully that will improve over time. I'll do my part to help ;)

I can see I'm part of the minority here, using Xilinx parts. My current target is a Spartan 3AN-700 development board. It has flash and a nice set of I/O devices, but no SRAM beyond the FPGA's own. There is a lot of DDR2 RAM, but it is not trivial to use.

This is really a limiting factor :(

However, despite the small amount of RAM, I have successfully implemented systems that run Phoenix and Defender. Defender, in particular, is a tight fit, and it already requires converting logic resources into distributed RAM. I'd love to add sound, but I don't think it'll fit.

As far as PACE goes, I have only browsed the repository so far, and not tried synthesizing anything. Phoenix doesn't seem to be among the implemented platforms, so maybe I can port mine, when I get better aquainted with the PACE structure.

My initial plans are finding a suitable 3.3V SRAM and making a daughterboard and implementing a PSX controller core.

[tcdev]

Plenty of people out there doing are this kind of thing, but it's scattered all over the net and there doesn't seem to be many suitable discussion groups. Even these forums are very low bandwidth, but hopefully that will improve over time. I'll do my part to help ;)Each group tends to be focused on their own 1 or 2 projects with little interest in anything else, with the possible exception of MikeJ.

However, despite the small amount of RAM, I have successfully implemented systems that run Phoenix and Defender. Defender, in particular, is a tight fit, and it already requires converting logic resources into distributed RAM. I'd love to add sound, but I don't think it'll fit.

As far as PACE goes, I have only browsed the repository so far, and not tried synthesizing anything. Phoenix doesn't seem to be among the implemented platforms, so maybe I can port mine, when I get better aquainted with the PACE structure.Nice work! I've had my eye on Phoenix for a while, but obviously never got around to it. It was my first attempt at a software emulator way back when MAME only had a few games... Would be great if you could port it! I'd also be more than happy to do a port to, say, DE1 (which would give you a "template" to add your target to PACE) but of course would understand if you wanted to have a go yourself.

You'll note Defender is there (that's no reason not to port your version as well though) - but I think it's a bit "broken" atm. It was playable at one stage, but lately I notice it doesn't seem to be running properly. I haven't had time to look into it though... :( I was also going to attempt one of the later Williams games - same hardware base but they added a blitter chip IIUC. And sound would be cool.

A general note on ports - to preserve the original project intact, my strategy is to include a zip of the original project in the repository, which gets extracted into an "unzip" directory in the platform source. The extracted files are never modified - if modifications are necessary, a copy of the file is modified in the platform source directory.

My initial plans are finding a suitable 3.3V SRAM and making a daughterboard and implementing a PSX controller core.I'm pretty sure one of the ported projects in the repository has a PSX controller... or am I thinking SNES? Hmm... in any case, I think it has been done by someone else... as you're no doubt aware we have DC & NGC controller cores; NES/SNES/N64/PSX would be great too!

[Talus]

Nice work! I've had my eye on Phoenix for a while, but obviously never got around to it. It was my first attempt at a software emulator way back when MAME only had a few games... Would be great if you could port it! I'd also be more than happy to do a port to, say, DE1 (which would give you a "template" to add your target to PACE) but of course would understand if you wanted to have a go yourself.


The very reason it was my first one, was that it was reported as "easy" to implement, and apart from the colour decoding, which had me confused for a while, there were no major obstacles. It still needs sound, but the sound system appears to be partly analogue, and I haven't really looked at it.


You'll note Defender is there (that's no reason not to port your version as well though) - but I think it's a bit "broken" atm. It was playable at one stage, but lately I notice it doesn't seem to be running properly. I haven't had time to look into it though... :( I was also going to attempt one of the later Williams games - same hardware base but they added a blitter chip IIUC. And sound would be cool.


Yeah, I noticed the port, but there's nothing like doing it yourself and Williams documented it nicely (if with a few errors) so I thought it was a good choice for honing my skills. Really, it is just a point of entry for the blitter games (Robotron!), which I'd really like a stab at as well :)

In the end my version doesn't appear too different from the one in the repo, except obvious things like the way memory and ROM (flash) are configured. It also really bothered me, that I had to use a separate clock for the CPU and PIA "chips", so I modified the two cores to use rising edge and a clock enable flag instead (like T80). Now everything runs off a single clock on the rising edge only, and I feel I can rest more easily at night ;)


I'm pretty sure one of the ported projects in the repository has a PSX controller... or am I thinking SNES? Hmm... in any case, I think it has been done by someone else... as you're no doubt aware we have DC & NGC controller cores; NES/SNES/N64/PSX would be great too!

There's a PS/2 and a Game Cube controller, but I didn't find any other ones. If it's embedded in one of the projects, I'm likely to have missed it, though.

I mainly want PSX, because I have controllers lying around and it's a nice simple serial protocol (and Sony's controllers reportedly run at 3.3V meaning no hassle interfacing to the FPGA). I think most systems from this era are based on a similar serial protocols, however.

[tcdev]

The very reason it was my first one, was that it was reported as "easy" to implement, Which CPU core did you use?

Really, it is just a point of entry for the blitter games (Robotron!), which I'd really like a stab at as well :)Yeah, I was looking at Robotron & Joust in particular!

It also really bothered me, that I had to use a separate clock for the CPU and PIA "chips", so I modified the two cores to use rising edge and a clock enable flag instead (like T80). Now everything runs off a single clock on the rising edge only, and I feel I can rest more easily at night ;)Good call. I was lazy. If you don't mind adding it to PACE it'd be appreciated.

There's a PS/2 and a Game Cube controller, but I didn't find any other ones. If it's embedded in one of the projects, I'm likely to have missed it, though.DC == Maple (Bus). IIRC my colleague only got it working on the Astropad (clone of the stock DC controller). Would be cool to get the other controllers working - joystick, steering wheel, fishing controllers & even light gun! :cool:

I mainly want PSX, because I have controllers lying around and it's a nice simple serial protocol (and Sony's controllers reportedly run at 3.3V meaning no hassle interfacing to the FPGA). I think most systems from this era are based on a similar serial protocols, however.Yeah, it would be fairly trivial, and it's been done by plenty of students for uni projects - don't think I have a core though. Good idea to find some extension cables to avoid hacking up a perfectly good PSX controller!

[Talus]

Which CPU core did you use?

T80, which has an 8080 mode. Actually, I used T80 and an 8080 wrapper written by someone (MikeJ?) It's not a cycle exact 8080 clone as I recall, but the game doesn't seem to mind.

I don't remember where I downloaded the code, except it wasn't opencores.org, where I refuse to register due to the very un-open source way the site is run (but don't get me started on that). It was however a newer version than the one available on Daniel Wallner's website, so someone must've checked it out.

Good call. I was lazy. If you don't mind adding it to PACE it'd be appreciated.

Subversion write access complements the posting privileges, I take it?


DC == Maple (Bus). IIRC my colleague only got it working on the Astropad (clone of the stock DC controller). Would be cool to get the other controllers working - joystick, steering wheel, fishing controllers & even light gun! :cool:


Light gun would be fun, then someone could implement Operation Wolf!

[tcdev]

T80, which has an 8080 mode. Actually, I used T80 and an 8080 wrapper written by someone (MikeJ?) It's not a cycle exact 8080 clone as I recall, but the game doesn't seem to mind.Ah, I didn't realise the 8085 was binary compatible with the 8080... if I'd known that I would've attempted Phoenix a long time ago! :o

Subversion write access complements the posting privileges, I take it?Yes, I have to tell me colleague to add write permissions for you... I'll do just that...

Light gun would be fun, then someone could implement Operation Wolf!Awesome!

[enliteneer]

Hi,

Found this site as I was searching for emulation answers on fpgas! I guess I was smitten when I ran Katsumi Degawa's DE1 port of Pacman and it worked great (I can post the zip if anyone is interested).

Unfortunately his next port (Donkey Kong) targets a different fpga board, and I haven't had much luck porting it to the DE1. (If anyone is interested in that, let me know as well!)

Anyhoot, hoping to learn about PACEDev and see how it works, and possibly fix donkey kong with it, or possibly just work with PACEDev!

Total noobie question here, but I noticed the repository doesn't actually have any source files in the /sw/dev/target/de1/ldr/src folder. Perhaps it's my svn client, but I would have expected to find familiar pin assignment files, etc.

I guess that also brings me to a more general point of synthesis environment. Does everyone working on the DE1 use Altera Quartus 9.1sp2 to compile? Windows or Linux? Like I said, I looked around a bit in SVN and didn't see the usual suspects of Altera files (.pin, .sof, .bsd, etc).

Cheers!

[tcdev]

Unfortunately his next port (Donkey Kong) targets a different fpga board, and I haven't had much luck porting it to the DE1. (If anyone is interested in that, let me know as well!)
There is a port of this very project in the PACEDEV SVN that runs on the DE1. At some point the sprites started to flicker, and I haven't had a chance to work out why. It should run and be playable, however.

Total noobie question here, but I noticed the repository doesn't actually have any source files in the /sw/dev/target/de1/ldr/src folder. Perhaps it's my svn client, but I would have expected to find familiar pin assignment files, etc.
The /sw/dev branch of the tree is mainly "development" software used in the actual development of various projects. It does not contain any code required for the actual finished project. In particular, the /ldr project is itself used for loading files off compact flash. It's not pertinent to Donkey Kong, and perhaps not any DE1 projects, hence the reason it's empty.

I guess that also brings me to a more general point of synthesis environment. Does everyone working on the DE1 use Altera Quartus 9.1sp2 to compile? Windows or Linux? Like I said, I looked around a bit in SVN and didn't see the usual suspects of Altera files (.pin, .sof, .bsd, etc).
I'm using v8.1 at home and v9.0 at work, both on Windows boxes. My colleague builds on Linux.