Comparison of I/O allocation - Propeller Demo, Propeller Proto, and Hydra

LoopyByteloose

It gets a bit hard to keep track without a summary, so I created this reference.

I am quite please with the 5 pack of Proto Boards I just purchased, but at times I can easily adapt code to the Demo Board or Hydra for special needs.

Also, this helps me adapt what other may have done and stay with general conventions.

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"Everything in the world is purchased by labour; and our passions are the only causes of labor." -- David·Hume (1711-76)········

···················· Tropically,····· G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse]·黃鶴 ]·in Taiwan

Forrest

Thanks - looks good.

Skogsgurra

Needed. I had this in my note-book. But this looks a lot nicer.

I would add a few notes to the table, though. One is that the pins used for things like VGA, mouse, kbd etc can be used as general purpose I/O if you develop using the Hyperterminal or Ariba's (forgot the name) thingy. Another note is that the Hydra's crystal is 10 MHz and not 5 MHz, so using some objects need more than just changing pin assignment. There might be more. But I can't remember right now.

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LoopyByteloose

Hmmm... I'd forgotten that the Hydra is 10Mhz. I know the Protoboard and Demoboard are both 5Mhz. But, one can easily desolder and exchange.

The really important note is that the Hydra uses 4 pins for the Mouse and 4 pins for the Keyboard, while the other boards use two. That might be due to the Hydra being a 10Mhz clock. I need to investigate the actual drivers to see how the code differs, but it should be easy to trade out.

Since the comparison is in MS Word, you can easily add your own notes -- but as I look deeper, there will be an update. As it stands, it really makes it easy to make intial choices.

Personally, I have all three and I am glad that I do. Each allows a different kind of deployment. Hydra really allows you to plug and play games. The Demo board is quite sophisticated with audio stereo and a quickie breadboard area. And the Proto boards are going to be used for several dedicated projects that I had originally planned to use the 40-pin DIP Propeller IC [noparse][[/noparse]but this is much easier].

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"Everything in the world is purchased by labour; and our passions are the only causes of labor." -- David·Hume (1711-76)········

···················· Tropically,····· G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse]·黃鶴 ]·in Taiwan

RinksCustoms

The (forgot the name thingy) is the PropTerminal.

The .doc is nice, almost nice enough to use on parallax's site like the BS2 compare page, but you left out the PropRPM.

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Definetly a E³ (Electronics Engineer Extrodinare!)
"I laugh in the face of imposible,... not because i know it all, ... but because I don't know well enough!"

Mike Green

Kramer,
There's a combination Demo Board / Hydra keyboard driver in the Object Exchange. It handles both conventions. I'm working on a keyboard / mouse combination driver, but it may be some time (weeks) before it's done.

Apparently, the convention for the PS/2 interface used in the Hydra was put together earlier. After the Hydra design was set, I believe Chip decided that a simpler convention would work just as well, needed only two pins, and dispensed with a few parts. That became the design for the Demo Board.

LoopyByteloose

Thanks. I think Parallax understands that they are welcome to copy my work for posting; and they are welcome to improve on it.

Yes, it would be nice to add the PropRPM Terminal. I must take a look and see what it does. I was unaware of it and merely listed what I personally have on hand.

Mike,
The combined driver is a nice touch. And it is nice to know that you really don't need to waste two more pins to get to 10Mhz.

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"Everything in the world is purchased by labour; and our passions are the only causes of labor." -- David·Hume (1711-76)········

···················· Tropically,····· G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse]·黃鶴 ]·in Taiwan

Post Edited (Kramer) : 7/3/2007 9:54:06 AM GMT

JT Cook

Nice work! It is good to have a quick reference like this. One thing I did was add a row to the bottom for the crystals that each board has. Also you might want to change MIKE to MIC since that is·a more standard·abbreviation for it.

LoopyByteloose

Please forgive me, but my revision was wrong.
I am posting the correct revision here [noparse][[/noparse]with 10 LEDs not 8 LEDs on the PropRPM].

And I have no choice but remove the other posting.

In other words, if you seem to percieve that something is missing or out of order, it is.· And it is because the information was wrong.

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"Everything in the world is purchased by labour; and our passions are the only causes of labor." -- David·Hume (1711-76)········

···················· Tropically,····· G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse]·黃鶴 ]·in Taiwan

elmicro

Hi Kramer,

thanks for adding the PropRPM!

Not sure if it is clear from looking at the board photo: the LED bar sits on a socket, so the LEDs can easily be removed in order to make ten more I/Os available to the user.

cheers!
Oliver