Author of FPGAmstrad.

Basically computer developer, I program FPGA chips. I love retro-gaming.

Last year, I realized FPGAmstrad, a Amstrad implemented on FPGA, here you can see the FPGA starter kit in action.

A FPGA starter kit contains a FPGA chip in middle, and several gadgets around : button, switches... For programming a FPGA, you draw a numeric schematic on PC, as ones of electronic books, and you press a button. You currently use components available on library, or download some (Z80 processor is downloadable at opencores)

A part of FPGAmstrad consist on learning USB, in order to plug 2 modern joysticks that are more robust than old ones and 1 keyboard without key timeout (PS/2 keyboard has hardware key timeout, causing problem while playing).

At this state I succeed at plugging one USB joystick on FPGA. I wanna to go further : I want to plug two joysticks and one keyboard at the same time ! For this I need to create a better USB sniffer, without time limit.

Making a USB Protocol Analyser is a reusable part of FPGAmstrad project, certainly needed by some curious, and will be a low-cost solution using FPGA platform : three times cheaper than professional ones, and reusable.

USB Protocol Analyzer

USB Protocol Analyzer