Mega wing not working?


Guest terryfryar

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Guest terryfryar

Ran the hello world program on the papilio, I see the leds blink and the serial output so I know the papilio board is working.  Attached the arcade board and loaded the "pong on pacman" bitfile.  Not getting any vga output, and I tried a newer samsung lcd and a very old tube vga monitor.  Nothing on either one.

Am I missing a step?  The loader said OK during the programming.  I see the power led on the papilio, but get no other leds and no vga output.  Is there a better bitfile I should try to see if the arcade board is working?

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Hello,

I would recommend trying out the Arcade Blaster app. It has the Pong demo and is another way to test with, it also makes it easier to load MAME compatible ROMs.

One thing to check is to make sure that the Arcade MegaWing is properly connected to the Papilio One. The VGA port should be on the top side (where the USB connects to the P1) and verify that the pins are lined up.

The other thing to test with is the Test Plan for the Arcade MegaWing, it was run on the board to verify it before it was shipped out. It is a ZPUino based solution that should be pretty easy to load.

Let me know how it goes.

Thanks,

Jack.

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sorry to butt in Jack, just thought I would mention to

terryfryar that if the lcd is a TV it may not work with those.

it def. didnt work with my tv but once i put it on a normal monitor

all worked fine.

terryfryar, once you load with the arcade blaster app, if you still

dont see video, try putting in headphones and hitting the

up button on the wing itself (for pacman) and you should hear the coin insertion noise.

regards,

felix

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Guest terryfryar

Well, the test plan and the arcade blaster both worked.  I can synthesize the pong demo, but loading the BIT file gives me a black screen and a loud buzz on the audio.

I am using the 2.0 beta loader.  It loads the papilio board test fine, but none of the arcade wing BIT files seem to be working at all.  This is quite puzzling, as the arcade blaster loads pong ok.  Haven't figured out how to load any additional games yet.

I only have video and audio connected....would this matter?  Don't have a joystick as of yet.

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did you supply your own ROM files?

if you are trying to use the standalone app, you need to click on 'install game' and point it to your MAME compatible .zip

if you are using the code from github you need to place your ROM files in the rom directory, in a folder named after a supported romset. for example  "roms/pacman" then go to the scripts directory and click the proper .bat file (build/merge depending what you are trying to do)

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Hello TerryFryar,

It sounds like maybe you did not run the script that converts the Pong ROMs into VHDL files for the project. The VHDL files included with the project are blank files which would explain why you get a blank screen and buzzing. It would be like turning on a Pacman motherboard that has empty EEPROM chips, no code, sprites, or audio.

Before synthesizing the project you need to run the "scripts/build_roms_pong_homebrew.bat" script. That will convert the contents of the Pong ROM files into the VHDL files the project needs. Alternatively you could run merge_roms_pong_homebrew.bat which will merge the contents of the pong ROM files into a pre-synthesized bit file. It only takes a couple seconds and then you will have a bit file that can be loaded under the "bit_files" folder.

If you look under roms/pong_homebrew you will see the ROM files that get converted. Since there is no copyrighted material with these ROM files we can include them. But if you look at the other ROM directories you will see that they are empty and you will need to provide the ROM files yourself. Visit the Games page and click on the "info" links to see what ROM files are needed.

Jack.

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Guest terryfryar

Don't see any "scripts" directory anywhere or any of the batch files you mentioned?  I downloaded the "Papilio_PacMan-P1-500K-1.0-source.zip" file, which has a build_roms.bat, which I did run.  There is a roms directory that has a bunch of .vhd files that look like they were generated from the rom files?  The readme file in that directory indicates these rom files are for the pong game.  I opened one of the vhd files and it appears to be defining some type of memory, as I see a bunch of hex codes that look like memory values.

I followed the three steps listed in the readme-papilio-one.txt:

1.  Run "build_roms.bat"

2.  Open the pacman.xise and generate the programming file using Xilinx webpack (ver 13.4).

3.  Using beta2 of the loader, I programmed the resulting pacman.bit file into the board.

All of this went fine, with no errors.  But, I get a blank vga output and the buzzing.

Am I missing something simple here?  Thanks for the help everyone!

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Terry,

I think you must be working from an older version of the documentation or something, the latest and greatest information for the Arcade MegaWing you have is at the Arcade Wiki and the downloads are here. There is a pdf version of the User Guide available here.

I suspect you must have downloaded the old source files from somewhere on the papilio.cc website? If you can remember how you got to that download I will clean it up and point it to the latest so other people don't have the same problem.

Thank you!

Jack.

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Guest terryfryar

Yay!  The github version worked!  For the pong game, I built roms, synthesized and loaded the bitfile...all worked fine!!  I have no idea where that version i had came from, but it didn't even come close...I compared it....must be really old??

Also the new github version doesn't match it's readme either.  It mentions a build_xst.bat file...which is nowhere in the zip file.  It is located in the "original source" zip, but not in the folders as extracted.  Doesn't matter...simply opening the .xise project and generating the bitfile works just fine nonetheless.  The only batch files are in the scripts dir and are the "build_roms.bat" and "merge_roms.bat"...no build_xst.bat!

Thanks for all your help Jack!!  It is MUCH appreciated!

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Guest terryfryar

Yay!  Found a pacman rom, did a romgen and synthesize and loaded the bitfile....pacman works!!  This is so cool!!  Video/audio works just fine....don't have a real joystick yet, but I'll wire one up soon!

Thanks Jack!!

PS:  I've been a programmer for 30 years...I have the papilio as an study item....but seeing the entire pacman z80 board running in a 1 inch chip still is amazing to me....!! ;-)

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Ha! It is pretty amazing that the entire motherboard can be shrunk down into one chip. :)

I have a bunch of things on my plate that I have to work through right now, but once I get through them I have a plan for the next changes for the Arcade source.

1) I want to make the directional buttons work in addition to the Joystick so people can still play the games while waiting for a joystick. It should just be a matter of OR'ing the inputs.

2) I spent a good amount of time trying to merge the smaller ROMs into one BRAM so Ms. Pacman and Lizard Wizard can work without requiring a synthesis. But I had no luck with that, I tried to use dual ported RAM but it just wasn't doable. But I have an idea for a new scheme, I'm thinking to change the smaller ROM blocks back to LUT's and then load the contents of those ROMs into a RAM BRAM. Then I will add a startup state that copies the contents from the RAM BRAM's into the LUTs. That will allow us to implement everything we need and give the ability to merge ROMs.

Jack.

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Hey Jack, whenever you try to get Ms Pacman working without synth,

dont use the mame set mspacman use the mspacmab mame set instead

just dont want you to beat yourself over the head trying to get

something to work that frankly just wont without some

semi-major changes to how the pacman vhd files are set up..

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