COMPUTER SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE

Memo

To:������� CSA class

From:��� Peripherals Group

Date:���� September 12, 2001

Re:������� Status Report of Meeting 2

��������� Our group met at 1pm in the Computer Science lab to discuss the documents we found about the NES controller that we decided to use for Pong.� Altogether our group found over ten links that were written about several different projects that others had implemented.� Among our findings were the schematics of the NES controller (which ports had what functionalities) and also some source code for the Super NES controller in Assembly language.� We met later at 3:30pm due to other meeting conflicts.� During the time in between, David Wicke and Jenn researched more sites on the NES controller and printed out copies of other schematic designs that would be useful.�

��������� When we later met up again, our group discussed how we would test the controller to know what the signals were for the outputs. �The plan is to allow the controller 8 bits, one for each of the buttons (start, select, up, down, right, left, the A button,and the B button).� The port will read in the lower 8 bits and then latch. �This will go on as long as there are bits to read in to the port.� The only problem with this is that there may be a timing issue, however, we plan to correct this by hardwiring each of the connections individually.

David Perenic offered to build a circuit that would aid in testing the controller and powering up the board.� David Wicke and Jenn agreed to begin research for information on how to implement connections for the VGA.� We decided to meet again on Sunday, September 16, 2001 at 6pm in the Computer Science lab to test the controller.