Propeller Parallax P8X32A SIDcog+VGA+Mouse+Keyboard+MicroSD DemoBoard

A Project I’ve worked on during University which demonstrates the multi-cog approach of the Parallax Propeller Multicore Microcontroller in combination with my selfbuilt DemoBoard.

Features

• Commodore C64 SID (Sound Interface Device) MOS8580 Emulation via SIDcog outputted to the 3.5mm audio jack
• Reading dumped *.sid data from a FAT16/32 formatted MicroSD Card via SPI
• TextMode based Terminal VGA Output
• PS/2 Interfacing with mouse and keyboard

Demoboard

The schematic/board-project files are located in the /DemoBoard/EAGLE/ directory. The project files can be opened with Cadsoft EAGLE or Autodesk EAGLE.

Board Layout with Parts

Board Layout ready for print (Single Sided)

Use wire for the top-layer connections. It’s not that much wiring anyways.

How to use

Format an MicroSD Card with either FAT16 or FAT32 as filesystem and use the bundled SID_Dumper.exe to dump the register data from *.sid files. Put the resulted dump-file (*.dmp) on your MicroSD Card.

Presentations

Check out the two presentations I held for university about this project.

• Microcontroller Presentation English
• Parallax Propeller Presentation German

Compiling

Use the Propeller Tool Software and compile src/Main.spin as top module and load it onto the EEPROM or RAM.

Contributors

• Tomas Rokicki and Jonathan Dummer - FAT Filesystem Driver
• Jonathan “lonesock” Dummer - SPI interface routines for SD & SDHC & MMC cards
• Chip Gracey, Jon Williams - Simple Numbers String conversion, VGA High-Res Text Driver, PS/2 Mouse Driver, PS/2 Keyboard Driver
• Allen Marincak - VGA High-Res Text UI Elements Base UI Support
• Johannes Ahlebrand - SIDcog - SID/MOS8580 emulator
• PHENOM - DemoBoard, Bundling everything together in Main.spin, GUI