I've been a bit busy lately as recently I graduated from college in Michigan and returned to my hometown in New Jersey. I'm in the process of packing up all my stuff for a cross-country move to start work in California. Things are a bit hectic, so I haven't done much work on the project, but i will very soon! Most recently, I've been working on some boring freelance webdev work to help recoup some of my expenses on this project which I'm hoping to wrap up within this week.
When I get back to this project I plan to tackle a bunch of stuff (in this order, i think):
- Bring up the usb port on the board: I want to be able to load code to the fpga over usb. This would save me a lot of hassle right now, since my laptop doesn't have a parallel port, and all I have now is a parallel port jtag cable. I've been using a second computer as a "Cable Server" which more or less works, but it's totally not ideal. I realize now that there are actually low-cost usb cables for loading code to this fpga (digilent makes one for ~$40USD) but my board was designed to be programmable from usb using an onboard 18f PIC, and I'll assuredly be using the PIC for some other stuff, so I might as well start with this.
- Start working on the menu to select games from the sd card: The venerable lint_ has spent a good deal of effort writing SNES code to help with reading files from the SD card. He's done a great job so far, and it's about time i start working on the hardware side.
- Special chip support: I'll probably start with the DSP chip (used in super mario kart) just because it's KILLING me that whenever I show off this cart to my friends, we can't play SMK! My plan is to synthesize a small CPU on the FPGA and write some code to emulate it (the original dsp chip was just a microcontroller running some code). I originally planned to use the xilinx picoblaze, but it would be nice if I could use something with a C compiler. My only concern is code size (if the code is too large, it won't fit in the fpga block ram). I also don't know how much block ram i'll end up needing for runtime memory.
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Good luck!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeletelol, I thought Super FX would've been the big priority. But, good luck on your mario kart playing.
ReplyDeletewhy would super fx be big priority?
ReplyDeleteit would be nice yes.. but come on .. no SMK.. thats killing ;
agreed, SMK is great!
ReplyDeleteSuper Fx is a very widely used chip pretty much any good game (excluding mario kart) runs on this chip.
ReplyDeleteAre you sure?
ReplyDeleteI was sure there were more, like secret of mana, SMW and so on, but whatever, i'll admit defeat. Good luck with SMK!
ReplyDeleteThere are a few games that the DSP chip, like Street Fighter and SMK. I think all of Capcoms games did.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.neoflash.com/forum/index.php/topic,5633.0.html
It can be done though. They have a cart that will play dsp games.
I hope you get this sorted. A cart that would read roms off a SD card would be the ideal situation.
Hey we haven't had an update since june, what's going on?
ReplyDeleteLife! I started my new fun kernel hacking job which has been kind of hectic. I also have some other paying side projects that are coming to fruition so my non-work time has been monopolized.
ReplyDeleteI'll be back on this soon enough
I don't know if you still need it but I do have the Captain America cart...
ReplyDelete-- Josh
joshlohrman@gmail.com
Hi
ReplyDeleteThis project has really inspired me to learn about programming FPGAs. I have come across a DE2-70 and decided to use this as my first major project on the kit. I'd love it if you could find the time to continue working on this, as the progress so far has been a very enjoyable read.
Bob
somemadeupname at gmail