@Nightmaretony

Wouldn't an acceptable solution to the "secret sauce" problem be to put things like contest rules in config files? That way all the code can be open and you get to keep things like number of points required to win secret (of course, if your game rules are complicated enough to ...

@ChuckT

Unfortunately I know very little about FPGAs myself. I took a course on PLDs years ago and learnt ABEL, and that's about the extent of it. I put the idea out there since it seems to be in the general direction that Daryl and his 65xx hardware consortium are looking at, and there's a real ...

Wow, that thing looks amazing. A good project for the 6502 programmable logic guys here could be to take this, replace the SPI interface with a parallel one so it's indistinguishable from a slow 62256, and make a little PCB with a wide DIP footprint that exposes all the SRAM emulation lines plus the ...

I believe one can use Zener diodes to get random numbers like this, however I've never tried it myself.

Something like this?
http://www.parallax.com/tabid/708/Default.aspx

The Parallax Propeller was designed to provide this sort of functionality.

If it compiles fine but the simulator croaks I'd say there's a bug in the simulator. I haven't programmed in VB in aeons but I'm pretty sure that by default it makes case-sensitive string compares. I wonder if the simulator was written for a compiler that generates simulation files that are case ...

Just chiming in to say thanks to the guys maintaining the different emulator libraries. I like to simulate everything in software before building anything, so it's great to know that I can count on you guys to keep refining your code. It lets guys like me not worry about the CPU so we can ...

Wow, I seem to have touched a nerve here. I was commenting on the paradox of both lamenting the multitude of incompatible standards for PLDs on the one hand while also lamenting that most desktop software follows one single standard on the other. Since Microsoft seems persona non grata around these ...

4) Programmers sold separately, which couple to ports no longer in production. It's as if vendors are incapable of making USB-native programmers.
Huh? USB programmers are readily available from a variety of sources (including eBay, where you can buy lame 50 dollar Chinese units that connect to a ...

It depends on your copy of Windows. If you're using a server OS, sure. If you're using a Home Edition (premium or otherwise), I don't think those ship with the remote desktop server (only client), so you're left in the boonies there.

So, note to anyone who wants to use Windows as their primary OS ...

@kc5tja

Nice explanation, I miss the Amiga too (A1200 owner)

One thing though... if something locks up your Windows desktop, most of the time you can use Remote Desktop (or telnet, if you have it installed) to kill the offending process and get your machine back. Same concept as with Linux.

Toshi's got a point. At some stage you're going to have to start choosing between feature A and feature B (because of lack of room in the FPGA, or because of conflicting requirements) and having a very clear idea of exactly what you want makes those sorts of decisions much easier. As a bonus the ...

Thanks guys. From my research Willem programmers don't work with PALs or GALs (some work with Altera and Xilinx CPLDs using a JTAG cable, but I expect to very rarely, if ever, use those). I'll look into the TOP853.

@8BIT

You might want to look at the PC-104 form factor. They're doing a very similar thing and you should be able to use their connectors for your bus.

Sortof on-topic, is there a reasonable, low cost PAL/GAL/PEEL burner that the pros here would recommend? preferably one that doesn't require a parallel port. It doesn't need to support whiz-bang Xilinx and Altera devices, just the simple PLDs that one would use to replace a handful of TTL chips for ...