Post : Storing user data on your FPGA
URL : http://hackaday.com/2012/10/16/storing-user-data-on-your-fpga/
Posted : October 16, 2012 at 9:01 am
Author : Brian Benchoff
Tags : fpga, rom, serial flash
Categories : hardware

http://hackadaycom.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/flash.png

We've seen FPGAs used to recreate everything from classic arcade games to ancient computers, but with each of these builds a common problem arises. Once you've got the hardware emulated on an FPGA, you've also got to get the ROMs into the project as well. In a very interesting hack, [Mike] figured out that the serial Flash chip that stores the FPGA settings has a lot of space free, so why not store user data there? (http://hamsterworks.co.nz/mediawiki/index.php/Config_flash)

[Mike] got the idea from seeing a recreation of the classic BombJack arcade game we featured last month. (http://hackaday.com/2012/09/05/building-a-classic-coin-op-game-in-an-fpga/) In that build, [Alex] needed to store 112Kb of game data stored in 16 ROM chips. Unfortunately, [Alex]'s FPGA only had space for 40Kb of data. After realizing his FPGA had a 512Kb SRAM chip, [Alex] decided to put all the sprites, sounds, and levels of BombJack in the SRAM.

Impressed with [Alex]'s build, [Mike] set to work generalizing the hack to work with other projects. [Mike] notes that only a few FPGA boards are capable of storing user data next to the configuration bitstream; the hack is impossible on the Digilent Basys2 board, but it works wonderfully on a Papilio One 250K.

As a very cool build that makes FPGA-related builds even easier, we've got to tip our hat to [Mike] for writing up a great tutorial.

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