6502.org

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their CPU! heh

I've got some IC's in my sights maybe all of us could use, maybe some are already using... Feel free to add to the list and comment!

for I2C, by NXP: http://www.nxp.com/documents/data_sheet/PCA9538.pdf

for USB, by Cypress: http://www.cypress.com/?docID=18559 . Although it seems specialized for cell phones

Daryl is ahead of the game:
for PS2 keyboard: http://sbc.rictor.org/io/pckbavr.html
& SPI interface: http://sbc.rictor.org/io/SPI.html

EDIT: Some are 16-bit. Edited Title.

Personally, I plan to try and use generic AVRs with a serial to the 65XX series as that can handle both I2C and USB ports. The SPI of Darryl's also uses the generic CPLD.

A fantastic reason for using generic chips is that an upgrade chip version or one 5that is downwardly compatible can handle the code and firmware you throw at it. For example, the Tiny 6 code is compatible with the Mega16 or 32, albeit different sockets.

I didn't know AVR's could do USB. I'll look into that. Looks like PIC's can too...

I would like a simple to use, (doesn't even have to be USB 2 ultra high speed), 1 IC solution for an 8 bit cpu interface. An interface that can be used to transfer data between the 6502/'816 and the PC.

I've seen Daryl use a memory interface using an MMC? card which I could use to. But now that 8GB USB sticks can be bought cheap, interfacing to USB seems logical to pursue.

Looking into the ULPI standard. I thought it was specific to cell phones, but it's some kind of 8bit interface standard.

http://www.maxim-ic.com/datasheet/index.mvp/id/3639 (which Samuel alerted us to here) and
http://www.microusb.org/

There are a few Microchip devices with a parallel slave port (for interfacing to the 6502) and USB slave/host/OTG capability that look interesting as I/O processors provided you run at 3V or convert the levels

from a recent SBC Topic: viewtopic.php?t=1508&start=33
Add PS2 and USB to that and an IC like that would be a killer interface to any project. As long as it was 8-bit compatible register oriented. Question is, if it could've been done then why hasn't it already?...

Initiative. Relative cost. I'd think those are the two big items.

It's clear that it can be done. The Xess Spartan-3 board (for $200) comes with 9-bit VGA, 32MB SDRAM, PS/2 port, 64-bits of raw I/O available for anything you want, and an FPGA big enough to completely replace the need for a 6502 or 65816 in the first place.

But, who wants to spend $200 for a super-I/O chip?

Then there comes the task of documenting the chip so that others can use it.

$200 would be outrageous. Maybe $50-100. $100 max if it included other memory stick/card interfaces.

You got your eyes on the Spartan 3 Dev board, kc5tja?

That Spartan 3 sure has some potential, as seen by "FPGA 64 project" posted here: viewtopic.php?t=1634&start=10 recently. He fits an awful lot into the Spartan 3...

This Xess product has been in my radar for the last several years:

http://www.xess.com/prods/prod035.php

In additional to the on-board resources (which makes the purchase price worth it), it also supports 64 I/O pins for external devices to use.

They are nice.

Be sure to buy the USB-Parallel adaptor to go with it. Parallel ports for device programming are a bit of a rarity these days.

Hi

Digilent has a nice fpga board's too.

http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Cat ... 400&Cat=10

This IC: http://www.cypress.com/?rID=14164 from Cypress seems a much better 8/16 bit solution to USB, than my original post in this thread.

The 100-pin TQFP package has 4 USB ports, IDE (PIO Mode 0-4), multiple 48MHz PWMs, SPI, and I2C EEPROM (not general I2C), and more.

I need to do more research on the 100 page datasheet, but it looks promising. Digikey has them for ~$15US.

The 4 USB ports (multiple config's for Host/Peripheral), could be used as USB keyboard and a USB memory interface controller, and still have 2 ports left over. Also there's an IDE interface, which would be nice to use, to put some of our older (rotting in the garage?) 3.5" HDD's to use.

It is register oriented.
It is Cypress's First IC of this type.
But, if you browse the Xilinx app notes, you will see this Cypress IC is also used along side a 32 bit PowerPC core: http://www.xilinx.com/support/documenta ... app925.pdf . Meaning, although it was Cypress' first IC of this type, Xilinx apparently has given the CY7C67300 it's blessing 3+ years ago...

Vinculum 2 from FTDI looks pretty good for USB also. It's 2 USB host ports, and it's about half the price of that Cypress one.

PIC32 looks really nice, and is what I'll be using for peripherals in my next design. They upgraded the parallel port from the older PICs, now it has a 4-byte FIFO (or can be in an addressable mode with 2 address bits) and it can operate a parallel master port, as well. It also supports 1 USB "on the go" port which seems to be able to operate as a host or device. What's great too, is that it has 5V-tolerant inputs.

I keep losing the link to this post... so to summarise: it's the XSA-3S1000 for $200, with a nominally million-gate Spartan-3 XC3S1000 FPGA on it, with mouse, vga and parallel port, the GPIOs you mention (not 5V tolerant), 32Mbyte SDRAM (16 bits wide), runs off 5VDC.

In fact the pictures tell that story (but aren't so searchable!):

The XSA-3S1000 is only offered in BGA style packages according to the Spartan 3 datasheet, yet the pic on the site makes it look like a QFP style package. What's up with that?