Fpga

• 06 Feb 2021

  

  My third FPGA (for 10€)

  Sipeed Tang Nano FPGA development board I like FPGA development boards and I’m excited that there are products that exist outside of the Xilinx / Intel duopoly. This branch of the Chinese …

  5 min read - fpga hardware
• 04 Jan 2021

  

  CHIP-8 in hardware - part 3 (drawing, VGA)

  In the last part I ended up with a partially working CPU with most of the single-clock instructions implemented. So far, all of the testing was done in simulator only, and it’s about time to to get a …

  7 min read - emulation console fpga verilog chip8 vga
• 24 Dec 2020

  

  CHIP-8 in hardware - part 2 (CPU)

  Continuing with the implementation of CHIP-8 in Verilog, I wanted to continue with the CPU module and get it to actually execute some instructions, so we’ll build an instruction decoder, CPU states …

  5 min read - console fpga verilog chip8 hardware
• 14 Dec 2020

  

  CHIP-8 in hardware - part 1 (ALU)

  I got into FPGAs with the intent of building a retro-computer. A couple of popular hardware implementation targets are Gameboy, NES, RISC-V and CHIP-8. Last year I’ve done my practice round with 6502 …

  4 min read - console fpga verilog chip8 hardware
• 13 Dec 2020

  

  FPGA VGA serial display

  VGA on an FPGA In the previous articles I’ve mainly interfaced with LCD displays. I thought it would be nice a produce a VGA output from my FPGA board. I’ve already had a working framebuffer-based …

  5 min read - verilog serial vga hardware fpga
• 06 Dec 2020

  

  ModelSim and testbenches revisited

  There seems to be a better way to run ModelSim than I originally described in the LCD controller post , where I was a bit lost with the tooling. (Optional) - setting up ModelSim paths If you didn’t do …

  3 min read - verilog testing fpga
• 31 Oct 2020

  

  Adventures in hardware, part 8 - PS2 Keyboard Typewriter

  What will we do with a drunken keyboard? What will we do with a drunken keyboard? What will we do with a drunken keyboard? Early in the morning! A sea shanty from early 19th century After I …

  7 min read - fpga verilog lcd hardware
• 25 Oct 2020

  

  Adventures in hardware, part 7 - Stopwatch with a memory-mapped LCD controller

  I wanted to play a bit more with the 128x64 LCD display and the FPGA board, while also exploring the memory-mapping concept of the retro computers. I thought I would like the LCD to display …

  6 min read - fpga verilog lcd testing hardware
• 16 Oct 2020

  

  Adventures in hardware, part 6 - 128x64 display

  Displaying things on a 128x64 display from an FPGA One of my FPGA boards came with a connector for a parallel-interface 12864 display, so I ordered one online, soldered 20 pins, used sample code …

  7 min read - fpga verilog lcd hardware
• 04 Oct 2020

  

  My First Altera FPGA

  Over a month ago I bought an Altera Cyclone IV board from a local seller, it seems to be listed on Aliexpress as well. It’s marked as A-C4E6E10, and features: Altera Cyclone IV EP4CE6E22C8 FPGA chip …

  6 min read - vhdl fpga hardware
• 01 Sep 2020

  

  Adventures in hardware, part 4 - LED expander

  Why more LEDs? During the process of developing a 4x4 keypad reader I realized I need more LEDs for diagnostic information. As my Elbert v2 has plenty of digital input/output pins, it should only be a …

  2 min read - vhdl fpga hardware
• 07 Aug 2020

  

  Adventures in hardware, part 3 - display and a calculator

  Let’s do a calculator Let’s make a very simplistic 3-bit calculator that will: add or subtract number A and B number A is entered by DIP switches 1,2,3 number B is entered by DIP switches 4,5,6 …

  4 min read - hardware vhdl fpga calculator
• 02 Aug 2020

  

  Adventures in hardware, part 2 - even lower level

  I’ve went through the first part of From Nand to Tetris course where I learnt to build a simple 16-bit computer called Hack from the digital building blocks (NAND gates). The course used its specific …

  6 min read - hardware vhdl fpga