[Coco] Terasic DE-1

[James Ross]

Steve C. wrote:
> > Does the DE10 Nano that is all the rage with the kids these days work with
> > CoCo3FPGA?

Dave Philipsen: 
> Probably not. It is designed around an ARM processor and does not have that 
> much as far as resources for the FPGA (as far as being somewhat compatible 
> with a DE-1).

I’m sure you are referring to the switches, SRAM, PS/2, VGA etc … where the DE2 is quite compatible in those areas, the DE10-Nano would not be. 

The port might be a quite bit of challenge but definitely doable. The VGA output would have to go through the HDMI, and the CoCo3’s 512k RAM could be implemented w/ left over FPGA fabric w/o the need for external SRAM.  

I would like to see it done. I am slowly learning FPGA logic design but still far from capable of doing something like that.   

The De10-Nano can be programmed on the FPGA side alone w/o doing anything w/ the ARM processor. The De10-Nano has 110k LEs -vs- the DE1 20k LEs so, it could ‘technically’ contain 5 CoCoFPGA’s within it! Right? 

A very cool project that uses the De10-Nano (+ addon SDRAM and/or IO Board) is the MiSTer project:

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1870135613286506/

It can run several dozens of retro systems (cores).  It can even run a 486 PC clone which (quoting from memory) uses about 85% of the FPGA and takes a half a day to compile.

Roger has ported his Matchbox CoCo to it. (and presumably still working on it, I don’t think it’s finished). 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/mistercoco/

But Rogers project is close source ... (not a complaint, but I would love to see the open source CoCo3FPGA ported to the MiSTer w/ new options and capabilities).

James