[Newbie] Papilio Pro and Logicstart boards questions


Guchion

Recommended Posts

Hello,

 

I'm about to take the dive and buy a papilio pro and the Logicstart megawing, or at least I think thats it!

 

I'm really interested in the arcade mega wing as well but the logic start seems to duplicate most of what I want.

 

How easy is it to add the 9pin ports for controllers, how compatible are the boards, i'm not fussed about the ps2 connectors but I do want stereo sound (via the adapter?)

 

I did email support but I didn't realize they weren't technical!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello Guchion,

 

With the Papilio Pro and the LogicStart MegaWing all of the arcade projects are setup to use the micro-joystick that is included with the LogicStart board. Adding a 9 pin joystick is not really feasible since there are no free pins...

 

We also do not have any VHDL code setup to use the ps2 connectors to control the arcade games at the moment. It would be a fun project to take on though if you are looking for a challenge.

 

Jack.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You could also consider doing it the other way around -- using the Arcade MegaWing in place of LogicStart.  That's what I've been doing.  I've got the Arcade MegaWing and haven't loaded a single arcade game onto it.

 

The Arcade hardware gives you the joystick ports, and stereo audio, and its VGA has greater color depth.  You keep the PS/2 ports and lose the micro-joystick, some of the LEDs, and replace the slide switches by a smaller number of push buttons.  Slide switches may be a little more helpful for very basic logic learning projects, but push buttons seem more natural to me for anything more advanced.  More LEDs would be nice, but four is enough for a lot of stuff.

 

As for adding additional ports:

 

Each MegaWing board takes up all the Papilio's pins, making adding new ports tricky.  The Papilio Duo has the Classic Computing shield, which can be split to free up a few pins.  It's probably also possible to get a few pins out of the PS/2 ports or joystick on Arcade but I haven't tried this, due to the effort of finding or building an appropriate break-out cable.

 

(I've deleted comments about PS/2 - serial adapters, as they're not really relevant.  Other edits above, to fix a mistake.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I find I use the Logicstart megawing far more than the Arcade megawing. It's just a lot more versatile for experimentation. You don't really need the wing to play arcade games, a VGA DAC is easy to make with a dozen resistors and a VGA connector or you can buy the ready made VGA wing. Joystick connectors are trivial, just solder some wires to 9 pin D connectors and poke them in the headers on the Papilio. Another thing you could do is add a header to the Logicstart wing that shares pins with the onboard joystick and connect your external joystick or gamepad to that. FPGAs are very versatile in terms of IO, you can freely assign almost any pin to perform any function.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.