FPGA meets ARDUINO meets C64

I always wanted to make my own Joystick - so I decided to connect an Arduino UNO together with a JoyStick Shield to the FPGA64. I know, not really my OWN Joystick, but at least I can program it the way I like (e.g. configure one Button for "UP" for Jump'n'Runs, RapidFire, WiggleMode for Decatlon .....)

Further I added one more Bit to the Video-Output, so now we have 9 Bits (3 Bit for each color). Much closer to the real thing than before!

Small but important preparations

Nono, this project is still NOT stuck! Just the pace is a little down.

To achieve the next milestone (which is an expansion port), I need to switch to another FPGA Board with more I/Os. I already have one here, but as I always tend to overread specs, I missed that there is no SRAM, but only an SDRAM on this Board.

And no, I'm really not in the mood to write an SD-Interface. So I've ordered some SRAM-ICs which I will hook up later.

In the meantime, I was able to programm and read the Flash IC (CIF) on the Board. So all Roms (Kernal, Basic, Charset) are no longer occupying valuable BlockRam.

If everything goes well, I will have an expansion port up and running still on 2012 :-D

Time passes by...fast....

Long Time no updates, which does not mean I abandonned the project.

In the meantime, I was able to find a solution to do the Level Conversion ...

This is the new FPGA-2-IEC-Board with the Level-Converter (5 Signals) on top:

(BTW: Those two boards are the first PCBs I etched myself using the method described here: http://thomaspfeifer.net/platinen_aetzen.htm)

Further I have found a new FPGA-Board with enough I/O for nice Stuff like a Cartridge Port or real Joystick ports. As the new Board does not have a VGA-Connector, so I need to make a new VideoConverter-Board too. This should keep me busy for the rest of this year....

BadCopy by Emulamer - 66% success

As I've no real updates to present.....

Emulamer striked again at the Dekadence Dataparty 2011 with "BadCopy"

As of today, BadCopy does not work 100% on any emulator yet, also not on the Chameleon.

There seem to be 3 emufuxxors (Sprite, Music, "Picture") in this demo.

And well, it also fails on my FPGA :) While the sprite is correctly hidden, and the right music is played, the "Picture" shows the wrong charset... 66% success - better than nothing.

Thank you for all the Help!

I got many Mail with inputs how to solve my problems - thank you very much for support!

So the first thing I'm gonna do is to build some level-converters as on this page:
http://www.rocketnumbernine.com/2009/04/10/5v-33v-bidirectional-level-converter/

First I will try to get the SID-Socket running with a real SID and BiDir (the current solution is "write only" to the SID).

The Creative Break.....

.... didn't yield any fruits.

I'm stuck at several ends at the moment, mostly hardware-related as

- How to interface a larger number of 5V BiDir-Port to a 3.3V FPGA (Cartridge Ports and such)

- How to build some kind of SDCard-to-SPI-Interface which would enable upgrading the FPGA-Core, simpler than using a byteblaster.
 
As soon as I have figured out all hardware issues, I could advance to next next step(s)

On the HDL-Side, I can say that the solution fairly usable yet :) CPU/VIC/CIA are doing mostly fine, for the SID we have the SwinSid...

If anyone of you out there have any knowledge to share and would like to participate with this project, please contact me at d@c64.ch!

SpriteEnableX fixed

Thinking about Emulamer, I just had to fix the "SpriteEnable"-Stuff (Sprites can have DMA turned on, but still they can be inactive). Vice 2.3 (normal Version) fails at some of those tests, we (and Vice SC) pass all now :)
(Sidenote: Ruined Art still not working...)