The Future of FPGA



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Cashed 128 MB Posts: 192 System 7 Newcomer!	Reply #15 on: August 28, 2025, 01:58 Ha, that’s is funny, I described something that actually isn’t available -I see my mistake. That alone blew my mind. It would make much more sense to be able to copy data of from chips, paste it into blocks, and then use hardware description language code for the circuit connections. I do see the freedom in blank pages and using Verilog HDL -but one starts from scratch. Now I understand what you mean by having electrical engineering knowledge. I’ve always lived by a simple rule, if one can think it, then it can be made -otherwise one would not be able to have the thought in the first place. I read up on the subject, there’s also some great short videos explaining it. The most fun is the comments, lots of people who took digital circuit classes -finally get it from watching the videos. You are not alone —in being alone, many of us are. Thank you truly for expressing it so clearly, in depth, and how you and many of us feel. You have my deepest respect and I fully support the desire for more social activities. You also cast light on why I seek to the past. I wish we could all meet up at least once a week at a makerspace -maybe a place is near you. Otherwise start your own -there are people just like yourself, around and near you. Awesome to hear about the Mega 65 project, sorry to hear about the board jump, DE25-Nano is next. Someone ought to write a piece of software that can assist in converting cores. No need to spend time on a write-up, these will make most other people fall asleep very quickly -I did fall asleep. Get Started With FPGAs and Verilog in 13 Minutes! Verilog, FPGA, Serial Com: Overview + Example The best way to start learning Verilog The "Do Anything" Chip: FPGA I can vouch for “Dang! That’s an INCREDIBLE amount of work to do!” —OK that is a steep mountain! If you do find and join a team, make sure they are building for the MultiSystem2 board -that will at least last some time. Ps: clarifications, yes for challenge I meant the Mac II, knew you’d pick that Apologies if I at time can be hard to follow, I talk and write in a visual language, images -as I try to conceptualize and spark seeds for new ideas and progress.

wove 1024 MB Posts: 1363	Reply #16 on: August 28, 2025, 03:07 Is an FPGA used mostly as a process control server? Kind of like a PIC controller on steroids? I find it hard to believe you could feasably create these chips and boards if their only use was for emulating retro computers. What are they most commonly used for?

lauland 512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!	Reply #17 on: August 28, 2025, 19:20 @Cashed: We can always meet virtually, like pick a time and just hotline or discord ourselves until we have circuitry coming out our various bodily orifices. I'm sure I could talk your ears right off your head! What I could do, if anybody's interested, is a deep dive into all the chips and circuitry that make up a mac. As in the various parts you'd need to do in an FPGA. It'd be thinking out loud and I'd describe the bits I do think I could do, and then the parts where I'm totally clueless. Like, I understand the CPU very well, and there are existing implementations that could be re-used...although not sure if its just 68000 or if there's any '020's out there. Memory maps, the scsi, scc, and via chips, etc. Doing a frame buffer that looked like a Mac II video I probably know enough about. But then...aha...the timing, the clocks...the ram refresh, chip selects...and, most important, putting all those pieces together. I think I probably have 50% of the knowledge that is needed, or could with moderate work...but then there's a point where it'd be all new to me and I barely (maybe?) understand the issues, but just don't have the electrical engineering to get the rubber to hit the road. But...maybe I can find other people who do...or who are missing what I have, but have what I am missing, eh? @wove: An FPGA chip is just a very large array of programmable gates, called the "fabric" fancifully, and they'll vary on how fast they can run , and how many gates they contain. These can be programmed at a very low level to do the same jobs that gates inside chips do. Put enough gates together and they do the job of an entire chip. Rinse, repeat, etc. So the FPGA will do the job of multiple chips, in a way that mimics, or if you do it right and are hard core, is exactly identical to the real chips. This almost always includes a CPU, but also all the other hardware, such as the various IO chips. So, in a way, it is a "hardware emulator". It can be done closer or more "fake" than software emulation, depending on how it is done. (ie sometimes you do JUST enough to get the code from the roms running, other times, you need to do quite a bit). Then, these FPGA chips come on various pre-made boards that hobbyists buy. The boards will have the FPGA chip, but then also everything else needed for an entire "computer". ie a clock of some sort, many kinds of parallel and serial io interfaces, these days almost always a vga or hdmi output, usb, flash to store the contents, and ram of some sort. They will include led displays, switches, knobs, etc, that are readable or writable raw. The boards save countless amount of time and let you skip the hardware parts of soldering everything or whatever together that you'd need anyway. These days a trend is to also include an ARM cpu core or two, this can be part of the FGPA chip (on the wafer), but not part of the "fabric"...or a separate chip on the board This is optional, but highly desirable, because it can help as it can run SEPARATE code from what is running on the FPGA's simulated "CPU". It may be used JUST to load the FGPA fabric via usb or sd card, or it could be used for software emulation or whatever other task you might want. One of the boards I have runs an entire Linux distro on the ARM core(s), making it much simpler to "talk" to the FPGA. ---- Board problems: The issues I've been describing, where a project will use a particular board or other, then switch and leave you in the lurch, are due to everything else that comes on the board other than the FPGA chip and/or which exact pins the extra stuff are hooked to (or just how) on the FPGA. There are NO standards. Every board is different. Here is just ONE example: VGA hookup on nexys 4 board (for early Mega 65) to FPGA pins (modern browser) That is how one particular board hooks up its VGA port. If you have a different board, even using the same exact FGPA chip, but they hooked it up to different pins, then your VHDL or Verilog code needs to take that into account. If you were attempting to use a core written for a different board, you need to fix all that by hand. And that's JUST the VGA port, which is actually VERY simple as interfaces go. Now, imagine how complicated it gets when the RAM is interfaced differently, or the clocks are different. Then you are getting DEEP into electrical/computer hardware engineering, not for the faint of heart!
Last Edit: August 28, 2025, 19:31 by lauland
lauland 512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!	Reply #18 on: August 28, 2025, 19:40 A nexys 3 board, with "extras" labeled (modern browser) What if you wanted to make a "Mac" out of that? Lots of decisions to make... You could emulate the hard drive and/or floppy completely, just as disk image files, and skip all the trouble...OR...you could be hard core, and use the pmod's (which expose "GPIO" pins), which are just raw undifferentiated io ports, and hook up a real floppy to it, and use the FPGA to simulate the IWM mac floppy controller. Same, you could hook up an actual 25 pin SCSI connector and REALLY simulate the SCSI chip. What about the keyboard and mouse? You could fake the ADB controller and use a USB mouse and keyboard...OR...hook up an ADB din connector to the pmod's and use real Mac keyboard/mouse. Heck...if you were EXTREMELY hard core, you could even hook up a nubus connector to the pmods, and plug in an actual Mac video (or other) card. But...usually you don't want that...you'll just use the built in VGA port and the "video card" is mostly faked. Would you bother to emulate the Mac ethernet interface using the built in connector? Or not? Skip it for now to save time? The things like the 7 segment LEDs, the slide switches and push buttons maybe you wouldn't use at all. Or you could. For whatever you wanted. The LEDs would be very useful for debugging as they could show states of various things. And...ALL of those ports and switches are different from board to board...what they include...how they are hooked up, etc etc etc. ---- So, if people out there were doing an "FPGA Mac" they need to make all those decisions...and some of them are hard to take back later if they change their minds. Maybe your FPGA chip just doesn't have enough gates to do all you want...or things are too poorly documented or reverse engineered...so, an example, nobody knows fully how to do nubus, etc etc. Just how closely you simulate or replicate the original hardware can vary quite a bit! ---- de10 nano board, similar to MISTer (modern browser) note how radically different it is from the nexys board This one tries to color code the parts, to show the "extras", but, even this is a little misleading. I suppose the green "FGPA" are things that are DIRECTLY connected to the FGPA chip. the blue "SYSTEM" are things that are needed to talk to the board. The orange "HPS" are the "extras". I say "misleading" because notice the dotted lines...you can debate which parts are "needed" vs "extra". (ie you're not getting anything done without a clock). Side note, the (cheap) nexys board does not include ARM cores, but the (much nicer) de10 does. The cyclone V has the FGPA fabric, an ARM core (or two) inside it.
Last Edit: August 28, 2025, 19:59 by lauland
lauland 512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!	Reply #19 on: August 28, 2025, 20:56 @wove Whoops! Didn't answer your actual question: What are FGPA's used for? (Other than emulating retro) They are sometimes used just in the prototype process of designing chips or circuits made up of multiple chips. They are more expensive, slower, and less reliable than actual "ASIC" chips, which are not re-programmable. Other times, and I believe Google and Amazon are doing some cool things, they are used as "upgradable hardware". As in if a bug is found in the hardware design, just update the core loaded into the FPGA. Some people believe there might be a future where FPGAs will be used in place of custom chips, ie they will never get out of a "prototype" phase.

ShinobiKenobi 256 MB Posts: 362 System 7 fan	Reply #20 on: August 28, 2025, 22:26 I've been wanting to get into FPGAs for over a decade. I bought a book on it, but my ADHD had other plans, which I struggle with every single day. It's a never-ending battle just to stay focused, no matter what I'm doing. But I tinker with MCUs such as PICs and AVRs. I've been wanting to build my own 68030/40 computer for a while. But after attempting to replicate my original homebrew computer based on an 8088, I ran into a problem with the keyboard controller, and have not been able to get it to work like my original one, so to be honest, that has damaged my confidence to be able to build any systems.

Cashed 128 MB Posts: 192 System 7 Newcomer!	Reply #21 on: August 29, 2025, 03:51 Quote from: @lauland “. . . until we have circuitry coming out our various bodily orifices. I’m sure I could talk your ears right off your head!” I’m all ears! -Nothing in-between them other than a black void, waiting to be filled up -I wanna hear ya out! Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious idea! Yes please! I’d really much appreciate that! “50% . . . But…maybe I can find other people who do…or who are missing what I have, but have what I am missing, eh?” Firesoul! That’s the spirit! -even if it’s only the initial first 5%. Fork one of the Mac Plus Cores on GitHub -create a new Mac II Core Project -a magnet that draws like minded to it. I changed my focus to other things, that usual free up space for a playpen where new ideas merge and pops to mind. What could speed up the process? Could the hdl from the original chips be optimized? -Meaning bare minimum coding required in Verilog. Are there applications that can optimize the code? What hdl were used in the original Macintosh II hardware? -Assembly language. Are there applications that can covert Assembly to C? Took to the net to research some of my questions and found YES to all of the above. Turns out there are several options available like VerilogCoder, and RTL design assistance etc, and AI is integrated into Vivado. So don’t need a GPU and run it locally. The Apple HMMU Chip (VLSI VI475 chip) in the Macintosh II, translated 24-bit addresses to 32-bit addresses for the OS. This chip's function is related to memory management, and the "data language" for such hardware involves assembly language. -if that info is correct, the original chips were programmed in the Assembly. If we already have all the data off from the original on board Mac II chips, couldn’t one convert the Assembly language into C, then optimize it using AI, boil it down to the “bare minimum required functions” and past those into Verilog for each gate? The Verilog hd language resembles very much C. Macintosh Hardware Overview Macintosh Classic II Logic Board Schematic FPGA on Mac: What About VHDL? -programming like it’s 1979. @wove Apparently FPGAs are used everywhere -I wasn’t aware of that. They are especially useful for quick iterations, overwriting a FPGA in a satellite -from ground. From what I read the other day during reading up on the subject, PLCs are expensive due to they are designed to meet industrial standards, they are certified for reliability, used for keeping power plants running, life support systems online etc. For anyone interested, last link in my previous post explains more usages, skip to 5:00. I forgot to link this video, FPGA Overview (CPU · FPGA · ASIC) I watched, in my last post -that’s the one where I fell asleep. @ShinoKenobi Awesome! Did that book happen to be, Steven Hugg’s Designing Video Game Hardware in Verilog? Sorry to hear of your daily battles, have you already tried white noise? -there can also be many benefits of having ADHD, like e.g. being excellent problem-solvers! And the locals here at the Cheers hangout can assist you with your cool projects! @lauland Thanks for those pictures, that Nexys 3 board is interesting -which other board did they switch over too?
Last Edit: August 29, 2025, 04:01 by Cashed
lauland 512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!	Reply #22 on: August 29, 2025, 17:06 "Languages": a lot of early hardware predates things like vhdl and verilog, so it was laid out completely "by hand", and not in code. And, even if Apple did use languages, that code is either lost to history, or deep within vaults never to be seen by the public. "Assembly language": This would be 68000 or powerpc (etc etc), which is vastly different from hardware description languages. Assembly is lower level, verilog and vhdl "look" more like C (but are NOT in any way actually related). They are for vastly different purposes, and one of the problems with learning hardware languages is wrapping your head around concepts that seem completely bizarre to traditional programmers. Chip design does not involve assembly language. There is no way to reverse engineer what a chip does magically into a hardware description language...maybe one day with AI, but we're nowhere near that. The assists that exist are pretty trivia, and more for optimization, or acting like "templates" like predefined bits to skip having to do the same thing over and over again. 68k Mac memory maps: The physical memory layout is non-contiguous, and vastly different from what MacOS expects. Different models being very different too, etc. So in all but the original Mac II with an HMMU, the MMU built in to the '030 or '040 is used. The original Mac II could use either the HMMU or a motorola 68851. What the HMMU does is pretty trivial, so you wouldn't care about "simulating" it as FPGA hardware, instead you could skip all that, and set up the memory contiguous. But, that brings up a point, doing an FPGA Mac II correctly would require either a fake HMMU (or just doing what it does) or having the CPU core support Motorola MMU instructions. So you couldn't use a pre-existing "68000 core" out there without adding a lot to it...which would be a lot of hard, very low level, esoteric work. MMUs are very complicated beasts. I think MAYBE I have enough knowledge to do something like that (I've got a 68851 manual on the shelf)...but it'd be the equivalent of a full time job or over a year of work on the side. Very hard, grueling work. And, again, this brings up a point: How closely are you reproducing the hardware? Do you just want to run the Mac II roms, or do you want to reproduce it fully...at what level exactly? If you aren't going to run A/UX, the MMU is barely used by 68k Macs. So do what the HMMU does.

Cashed 128 MB Posts: 192 System 7 Newcomer!	Reply #23 on: August 31, 2025, 02:27 Homemade Chips https://sam.zeloof.xyz/ Interesting last comment Hackaday Reverse engineering old chips altruism sharings
Last Edit: August 31, 2025, 02:56 by Cashed
Cashed 128 MB Posts: 192 System 7 Newcomer!	Reply #24 on: September 04, 2025, 16:25 altruism sharings wrap up, it's not for everyone -it's for others. Newcomers and gamers - see 1st & 2nd OP for current options. When I see dots, I see connections and I can’t help but -connecting the dots. Beliefs serve a purpose until -replaced by new convictions. One cannot change other people’s beliefs -changes occurs by self-recognition from within. By exploration -experiencing it for themselves Leaving hints, since it’s impossible to relay the whole image at once. In peculiarly words, phrases, titles and nestled inside links -serves that purpose. Many avoid making mistakes -many more neither admit nor acknowledge their mistakes. Mistakes are underrated, regarded as taboo. Many new ideas, inventions and innovations of momentous were appropriated -because of them. All studies consists of a compilation compendium, from previously epiphanies and revelations -many originally from ideas derived from mistakes. When I was a kid I always told, one day we’ll have flying cars -ridiculous I was told. Since the mid ‘90s, I’ve been jotting down ideas. When I reached the first 500, only 3 of them had been materialized by others. It’s not my ideas, I just “download” them from what I’ve always referred to as the thought-ocean -our collective black void. How does one go from being a daydreamer, a gamer, a fantasy and sci-fi reader, to being science-oriented? -one feds the left brain. In the last 15 years I’ve daily been listening to podcasts with the latest breakthroughs in science and astrophysics -the reality is way more astonishing than any fiction. Once, in a cave, the first spark occurred, from hitting two stones together. That was a mistake, because a chip flew off and hit one of the others -but another one noticed the spark. Sam started out by -dipping a rock into chemicals. Quote from: Sam Zeloof “When I set out on this project I had no idea of what I had gotten myself into, but in the end I learned more than I ever thought I would about physics, chemistry, optics, electronics, and so many other fields.” Sources of interests left -to do stuff Robert Baruch How I reverse engineer a chip https://project5474.org The Half-Baked Maker - https://www.richis-lab.de/semiconductors.htm http://www.righto.com/ https://siliconpr0n.org/ http://visual6502.org/ https://zeptobars.com/en/ Like with the Macintosh SE, the Macintosh Classic II also consists of a four-layer PCB. Sometimes one needs to see more. DEFCONConference: DEF CON 26 - George Tarnovsky - You Can Run but You Can’t Hide Reverse Engineer Using X Ray Xilinx, Inc. was founded in 1984, and renowned for inventing the first commercially viable FPGA. . . . “people thought that Ross's idea was pretty far out" Xilinx started out with programmable logic devices (PLD), for reconfigurable digital circuits -Motorola offered the XC157 in 1969. Xilinx later offered complex programmable logic devices (CPLD) -with features of both a programmable array logic (PAL) and a FPGA. The Joint Test Action Group (JTAG) was formed in 1985. An in-circuit emulator (or, more correctly, a JTAG adapter) uses JTAG as the transport mechanism to access on-chip debug modules inside the target CPU. Those modules let software developers debug the software of an embedded system directly at the machine instruction level when needed, or (more typically) in terms of high-level language source code. Doug Brown’s blog on, how Apple made a mistake in the ROM of the Macintosh Classic II Don’t be fooled by the general AI options offered to the public, teach your own toddler -progress is of the essence. The Myth of the Genius Programmer What’s your narrative, where you headed, how will you start out -where will you end? -stay hungry, stay foolish. P.S. @lauland -I’ll reach out when I've settled in. Upd: @lauland -great questions ;-) I bet it'd work, hardware is usually backwards compatible -answers to some of the others found in the links. Edit: DEF CON channel link corrected + few typos fixed.
Last Edit: September 05, 2025, 01:17 by Cashed
lauland 512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!	Reply #25 on: September 04, 2025, 18:17 As far as FPGA's and me, here's my TODO list: 1. Actually test the Mega 65 core build on my Nexys 4 board. I followed all the instructions, using Vivado and all the command line tools (over 60g in size!). I believe it fully built, but there are so many moving parts, it isn't even clear what goes where. There's the "bitstream" which loads into the FPGA's fabric...somehow...but then there's also the Commodore-ish firmware which runs on the simulated 6502-ish cpu, and then finally disk images, etc of software that runs on top of THAT. It's a very complicated, obscure process, but I've found a lot of good videos from this guy (and others) doing the same thing. As I mentioned before, officially they've moved on to a different board, but the older version I have I believe built successfully...even if there were COUNTLESS warnings and scary looking messages. (Which I only half understood half of them!) https://retrocombs.com/mega65-nexys4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfsNLwCtIjo Diglent Nexys 4 page (modern browser) 2. Get my Alinx ax7020 running ARM linux working well. When I bought it there was a note that USB mouse support did not work, even if keyboard and HDMI video did. This seemed very odd, and some sort of linux driver thing, completely unrelated to FGPA. This is one of the boards whose FPGA also contains ARM cores. I want to just get it running Linux in a similar way to what a Raspberry PI does (so I can ssh into it, and build and run ARM packages, etc). On top of that, I have NO idea how to even access the FGPA part of the board, and most of the available documentation is in Japanese or poorly translated. ('Adhering to the "exquisite, practical, and concise" design concept, it is not only suitable for software verification of software workers, but also for hardware design of hardware developers, that is, system cooperation of software and hardware, and accelerate the development process of the project'). I bought it knowing even if I didn't use the FPGA part, it could at least run ARM linux. Zynq-7000-SoC/AX7020 page ---- Questions a plenty... So one big question in my mind is "how easy is it to port an open source core from one board to another"? From what I can tell, it would be extremely difficult for someone with as little ACTUAL experience as me. Everything I've said about the "extra" devices being connected to "different pins" from board to board SEEMS correct...but what about when the rubber hits the road? For example, I've got two different boards that have a Cyclone IV chip on them. Both boards even seem to use the same ram chip, with no other chips on the board other than tiny ones that look like just glue, interface (near the usb ports), or clock related ones. So very "simple" designs, as far as FPGA goes. What would EXACTLY happen if I loaded a core for one on the other? My theory is, if things like the video and usb are connected to different pins on the different boards they would completely not work. They'd "run", but the IO wouldn't work...right? But what would it REALLY take to get it to work? Would it be as "simple" as changing pin assignments in VHDL or Verilog? Possibly. But I also might need to deal with different clocks or ram refresh, which could be RADICALLY different from board to board...or...maybe(?) "relatively" similar? This having to buy a new board to match whatever other people are using for a project is a real pain. (And I'm not going to invest unless they will stay with the same board for a while). I've already got multiple boards and would love to use them. Another question is could my Cyclone IV boards even hope to "run" a core for a Cyclone V (like the MISTer), even poorly, as long as the core was small enough to fit in the number gates, etc? Or are the FGPA chips just "too different". And ANOTHER question is that there's more than one "family" of FGPA chips, two major (but different?) ones are owned by Intel (Altera) and AMD (Xilinx). If the code is in VHDL or Verilog, are they compatible at all?
Last Edit: September 04, 2025, 18:23 by lauland
Cashed 128 MB Posts: 192 System 7 Newcomer!	Reply #26 on: September 10, 2025, 03:22 @cballero I got some great news! By chance, I stumbled over an old website yesterday from 1996 -site had everything! An archive of video arcade info: Microprocessors, Assemblers, and Disassemblers Processor Reference Cards (40 different) Hardware Descriptions Processor Descriptions Game Board Pinouts Game Board Switch Settings (Loads of arcade games dating back to the 1974-86+ that we don't have Cores for yet -checked.) Memory Maps Schematics IC, Clocking, NAND, XOR, NOR, XOR Gates, Flip-flops, etc, And games, that I archived. - - All very useful for simulating old games on FPGAs. I'll make sure this archive gets to the MiSTer FPGA Forum community. We'll eventually get all our old arcade dreams fulfilled @cballero For those wondering. No, it's none of the 3 major sites that's still around -this site died a long time ago. For anyone else interested. See Charles Clayton's, What's an FPGA (1:25) -is the simplest and shortest explanation I've seen so far. He ended up working for Altera 3 years later, doing walkthroughs -see Altera's channel for guides. For anyone else, still hanging in there and even more interested. See EEVblog, #496 - What Is An FPGA? (37:00) -is the best overall explanation I've seen. For FPGA developers, see Reply #24. For Newcomers and Gamers - see 1st post & Reply #7 for current options. I gotta admit FPGAs have grown on me, I'm seriously contemplating learning it. Reading the datasheets and application notes is food for left brain for a year alone. Starting out hard have always made everything else that comes after easier.
Last Edit: September 10, 2025, 03:25 by Cashed
cballero 1024 MB Posts: 1179 System 7, today and forever	Reply #27 on: September 10, 2025, 04:46 Oh wow! Really? That's fantastic, Cached! I know it's like asking for the moon, especially when Lauland broke it down to how the standards weren't really standard, with different game makers making their hardware somewhat differently and all. But I still have hope, and your treasure find certainly sounds quite promising to at least understand it all just a little better; that is how to eat an elephant after all! But how cool would it be to have all the games from when we were kids all in one cabinet? Hey, if we can dream it, we can build it, right? I thought MacMAME was the ultimate prize, we then realize that we can still shoot higher, or at least dream higher dreams, you know? You made my day with this post my friend!

lauland 512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!	Reply #28 on: September 10, 2025, 16:10 @cballero, I checked to see if the MISTer has any arcade cores, and it has a whole gobsmack of them, many I remember loving to play: https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/cores/arcade/ (modern link) There is also the "MISTercade", which is an extensive adapter that lets you connect it to many actual arcade cabinets, that use the common "JAMMA" standard, so you could use actual real arcade monitors and controllers: https://misteraddons.com/products/mistercade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Amusement_Machine_and_Marketing_Association (modern links) (One problem is arcade cabinets can be specific to particular games, ie the button layout, number and kinds of joysticks, etc that work with one game won't with another, or will at least be awkward). So I'm thinking you might be pretty happy getting a MISTer! ---- So revisiting my personal projects, it looks like the AX7020 board just has a single USB port, so my memory of the keyboard working and not the mouse in linux was wrong, it looks like USB doesn't work at all. I'm wondering if its because it is hooked up to the FPGA chip, and the ARM core can't directly access it. If so, an FPGA "core" could be loaded that all it did was decode the USB, and present it in some way ARM linux could get to it. I'll look into that, but is much farther outside my knowledge. I know a lot about the older hardware that goes into something like a Mac II, but little about how actual USB hardware is decoded. Loading "cores" onto FPGA boards can vary a LOT on how you can do it. If you're lucky, there may be extra hardware that can load it from an onboard SD card, then its as simple as putting the core on a FAT formated card. This may use an ARM core if the board has one, or a tiny embedded circuit just for that. For the Mega 65 on the Nexys I'm not so lucky. Instead I need to use something called a "USB Blaster" which is an adapter that hooks up either to a specialized port (connected to pins on the FPGA?) or the JTAG port. (The Nexys came with one). You then also need a windows or linux driver, and special software. This is the last step I need to do, as I believe I do have the core built. It's quite tricky to do, and the hardware and software is "weird" and very low level to say the least. There are different vendors, but I don't know if they're all compatible. It's also possible they are only needed (or work?) with one kind of FGPA and not others...all the ones I see seem to refer to the ALTERA chips. https://www.amazon.com/waveshare-USB-Blaster-V2-Programmers/dp/B08CV3L6LF https://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?No=46 https://www.crowdsupply.com/terasic/usb-blaster (modern links)
Last Edit: September 10, 2025, 16:14 by lauland
Cashed 128 MB Posts: 192 System 7 Newcomer!	Reply #29 on: September 18, 2025, 07:02 Thread link to the MiSTer FPGA Forum. https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=9612 (Awaiting confirmation) Edit: -will update the link if/when it gets approved. Here are a few things for simulating old arcade video games, or writing new games for old hardware. This archive may be useful for missing arcade cores and optimizing the cores already made. Archive index · (files): Datasheets (24) Emulation · CPU Reference Cards (40) · gameHardware · Hardware Descriptions (19) · Memory Maps (20) · Processors · Specific Processor Info (25) · 2901 · 6502 · 6809 · Cinematronics · Z80 · TMS9900 Family Game Board Generic dip & pinout (CPDIST) Game Board Pinouts (247) Game Board Switch Settings (306) Game Conversion (25) Manuals (124) Misc · cartList (28) · Info (84) · Mailingslist Archive · Vectorlist Archive · 1997 (9) · 1998 (6) · Randy Fromm Articles (26) · repairHints Schematics (559) Download WiTs.Arcade.Archive.zip -Y2KP (603MB) Available for a week · (Archive Contains NO Arcade ROM Images)
Last Edit: September 18, 2025, 07:07 by Cashed
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