MARC-2 project
With a lot of help I figured out how to replace glue logic with a CPLD. At first I bought a couple of XC9572XL PC44 CPLD’s which are 3.3V. After some struggle I can report that they work quite well with NMOS / TTL logic. However MARC-2 will be CMOS and I want to use 5V. So I ordered some chips from eBay.
Using up and until webpack version ISE 10.1, I can use the homemade Xilinx parallel Cable III and use ABEL. I tried to get into Verilog, but I haven’t got the feeling for it.
XC9572-7PC84C $4,00
XC9572-10PC44C $5,00
XC95108-7PC84C $10,00
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/XC9572-7PC84C ... 5651395ccfhttp://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/XC9572-10PC44 ... 56513a9f9ahttp://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/XC95108-7PC84 ... 589aeab55bI didn’t receive them yet...
So far MARC-2 is planned with the following IC’s:
• CPU W65C816S PDIP-40
• RAM AS6C4008-55 Alliance Memory SRAM 512K x 8 PDIP-32
• ROM AT28C256-15PU Atmel EEPROM 32K x 8 PDIP-32
• GPIO W65C22S VIA PDIP-40
• GPIO W65C22S VIA PDIP-40
• RS232 SC26C92C DUART PLCC-44
• 65SPI XC95108 PLCC-84 / XC9572 PLCC-84 / XC9572 PLCC-44
• GLUE XC95108 PLCC-84 / XC9572 PLCC-84 / XC9572 PLCC-44
• VGA XC95108 PLCC-84 / XC9572 PLCC-84 / XC9572 PLCC-44
• SOUND ??? *nervous*
Because of the programmable logic, I could make it as simple or difficult as I want / can. But I have some things already in mind:
Depending on the extend of I/O pins and used macro cells 65SPI, GLUE and VGA will be spread over CPLD’s
Firmware will be loaded from EEPROM to RAM during reset.
If 512kB SRAM shouldn’t be enough, I could stack them on each other! So I leave some pins reserved for that.
My search results regarding VIDEO:
http://www.ulrichradig.de/home/index.ph ... it_c_grakahttp://www.lucidscience.com/pro-vga%20v ... or-14.aspxhttp://www.pyroelectro.com/tutorials/fp ... istor_dac/http://elm-chan.org/works/crtc/report.htmlhttp://sbc.rictor.org/sbc/info3.htmlhttp://www.xess.com/static/media/appnot ... vgagen.pdfhttp://www.xess.com/static/media/appnotes/vga.pdfhttp://excamera.com/sphinx/gameduino/porting.htmlThere are so many possibilities,
• CPLD
• FPGA
• VDC VIC VICII Yamaha 99xx
interface with:
• bitmapped
• a bunch of video registers
• SPI
On MARC-1, I have the gameduino going. It’s interfaced with 65SPI.
After a reset, the gameduino normally comes with that stupid startup screen, it can be prevented by clearing it’s memory right after reset. By not clearing everything, you can leave the charset and use it for displaying text.
For MARC-2 I’d like to consider video with the CPLD’s. I’d choose for VGA 256(X) x 240(Y) x 256(colors), those 60kB somewhere mapped in the SRAM. A charset would also be loaded from EEPROM to RAM during reset.
Some doubt remains regarding the VPA and VDA issue BDD addresses.
viewtopic.php?p=29748#p29748The only thing I’m concerned about is that I also will choose for the SC26C92C and W65C816S. However, connecting VPA and VDA to the CPLD would solve any upcoming problem.