GamePal  Mark Fedorak  Vera Casteel  Ron Smith  Kris Pucci

The GamePal was designed to be a handy device used for games that require certain functions in order to play them (i.e. board games). In our design, we include 1 minute, 3 minute, 5 minute timers, as well as a dice rolling function that rolls six dice simultaneously. Our Design Requires: 699 Logic Cells (60%) 8074 Bits of Memory (70%) VGA Monitor 16 Key Keypad WEB SITE: GamePal Introduction

GamePal Hierarchy /Made up of seven entities. /The chip controller is the entity GAMEPAL. /All the other entities either add functionality or deal with input and output.

GamePal /The screens as well as the character set are stored in ROM. /This ROM is initialized from memory initialization files (.mif files). /The data is written to the screen using the same display engine as that of the MIPS program. /The screen data is updated by having place characters in the ROM banks. These characters are screened out during the screen write process and the appropriate real time data is substituted. /ROM banks are switched by a state machine. /Different colors are achieved by reading the current position and switching the video properties appropriately. /Took us many attempts to get it working correctly. Video

GamePal Keypad /Not foolproof in that two keys on the same row can be pressed at the same time. This does not affect our project. /Switches are active low and need pull up resistors. /Pins ABGH are driven by this entity, pins CDEF are read by this entity. /Slowed down the clock to 1KHz to aid in debouncing the keys. /Checks for a key by activating each row and checking for a value in each column.

GamePal /For randomness we decided to have counters continuously cycling through all combinations (this occurs very quickly). /The data is latched when the user press a key on the keyboard. This is random as the user can press the key at any time. This latched data is then displayed on the monitor. /User first chooses the number of dice, then chooses the number of sides. /The random value loop then starts. Dice Roller

GamePal /Our first several tries were unsuccessful. /All three countdown timers work on the same principles. /Quite simple in theory, difficult to actually implement. Timers

GamePal /More information and VHDL code is available at: /We are sending an to Altera to suggest some improvements, inform them about some bugs, express things we dislike about MAX+Plus II, suggest they update the software they send out with the UP1 board and suggest they market a 10K50, 10K70, or 10K100 version of the board. /If you have anything you would like to add to this, please Mark at: Conclusion