OrangeCrab Gaming Console - Part 1

RE: OrangeCrab Gaming Console - Part 1

jc2048 — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 11:27:24 GMT

Interesting project. It's good to see you're past the initial problems and now able to work with the board. The ECP5 device is a nice part - certainly a step up from the XP2 part I've been using (I considered competing in the roadtest, but didn't think I could manage the toolchain side of it - there's a lot to be said for just plugging-in a board and clicking a couple of buttons in an IDE to program it).

Looking forward to seeing the game side of things developing. Is it essentially a sprite engine that you're developing/implementing?

RE: OrangeCrab Gaming Console - Part 1

shabaz — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 23:10:59 GMT

The I/O expander as a sound generator sounds very cool and unique! There are also low-cost SPI I/O expanders, maybe that may allow even higher frequency range than I2C. Either way, it's a neat idea to use an expander in this way. Very interested to see how it all goes.

RE: OrangeCrab Gaming Console - Part 1

shabaz — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 22:56:07 GMT

Interesting board, very much Pi Pico sized : )

Only minor/major annoyance (depending on what one has used!) is that the open source stuff is Verilog, not VHDL (and doesn't seem to be any academic drive to have an open source toolchain for VHDL, from what little I know). Still, I guess the normal Lattice development environment could be used with a programmer tool.

RE: OrangeCrab Gaming Console - Part 1

baldengineer — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 17:44:02 GMT

I bought an OrangeCrab a couple of years ago, but I have not done anything with it.

I'm interested to see how your project goes. It renews my interest in doing something with the board / FPGA.

RE: OrangeCrab Gaming Console - Part 1

dougw — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 16:22:20 GMT

Looks good. I'll be interested to follow your progress.