[Oberon] Project Oberon on current 'off-the-shelf' hardware

[Chris Burrows]

On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 5:33 AM Pablo Cayuela <pablo.cayuela at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thank you again Chris.
> I did not have the needed Pmods, I will build them, I hope some days from now, because buying them and waiting for them will be eternal with my country's conditions for both the pandemics (we are in a new lockdown) and customs policy (always blocking personal off-shore buyings).
>
> Prof Pablo Cayuela
> Argentina
>

Hi Pablo,

That is a real shame seeing as you are much closer to the USA than we
are here in Australia. I'm more fortunate than you as I regularly
receive shipments here from USA suppliers (e.g. DigiKey) in less than
a week.

However, fortunately, you have a Nexys 4 board so you only need to
build a replacement for a single Pmod PS/2 adapter for the mouse - all
of the other peripherals (VGA, USB keyboard and micro SD Card are
already included on the board.

It is also feasible to manage without the off-the-shelf Pmods when
using the Arty A7-100 board for anybody who is handy with a soldering
iron and can more afford to spend time instead of money. I built a
prototype adapter board myself using a VGA, PS/2 Mouse and Keyboard
sockets which only needs to use two Pmod sockets instead of four
required by the Digilent modules. A 6-pin microSD Card adapter could
share the Pmod socket with the 2 PS/2 connectors (2 pins each plus +ve
and ground) thus freeing up another Pmod socket if desired. If there
is sufficient demand for Project Oberon on the Arty 7-100 I'll put in
the extra work necessary to publish / produce such an adapter.board.

Regards,
Chris

CFB Software
https://www.astrobe.com