VDP on PCI ( with FPGA ) card

By st1mpy

Paladin (900)

st1mpy's picture

26-11-2009, 09:53

So, I was trying to think of a suitable project to use my FPGA board (on a PCI card). And I have this idea now to make a PCI card with MSX VDP on it. I could implement the VDP on the FPGA, but I am going to start by putting a real TMS9918A on the board and implementing video output/VGA out on FPGA because I am lazy. This card will be slotted into a PC and I could write the rest of the MSX as a software emulator. Or I could just use this as a graphics card for the PC (so x86 code will use the VDP to do graphics.)
I could extend this to have the whole MSX implemented on this FPGA (or part real Z80 and sound chip etc) card. At that stage I will have something like the 1 chip MSX inside a PC that uses PC's keyboard/floppy/HD.
Now I've said it and got the parts ready, I will have to do this... but slowly as I don't know anything at the moment.

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By Leo

Paragon (1236)

Leo's picture

26-11-2009, 11:26

but with dont you put the 1chip code into that fpga , so you would only to change the input of keyboard .
Might it be big enough ?

By st1mpy

Paladin (900)

st1mpy's picture

26-11-2009, 12:58

its 100K gates I think. (Xilinx Spartan II)
Eventually I think I might end up with a lot of it (MSX features) on the FPGA, even based on 1 chip code. But I want to actually learn something, so I'll start with something manageable.

I have a great interest in your project as well (FPGA in MSX cartridge), and I would love to make that myself too.

By Manuel

Ascended (19273)

Manuel's picture

26-11-2009, 21:35

Heh, would be cool to start with an emulator (e.g. openMSX ;-) and gradually replace more and more software emulation by FPGA implementations. Smile

By Leo

Paragon (1236)

Leo's picture

28-11-2009, 10:29

i have been playing 2 or 3 yrs ago with 1chipmsx code porting it to xilinx spartan 3 1000 , it depends if we talk about ram block or logic , but it general it was filling half of it . so 100k is too small for 1chip code...
Do you have ram with the board , like a 128k/512k sram or 32mbit sdram : this could be a limit.
I guess your idea is not bad of putting a vdp on board but you will have to hook the vram in real also.
thanks for remembering that project on fpga on cartridge , i have not much touched it since summer , i was thinking to use that fpga module in dip package to replace the Z80 with a kind of Z80 with internal cache and higher frequency ( dreaming ....)