The FPGA Videogame Console

USB Subsystem

The USB subsystem consists of a standard USB connector and an FTDI Chip FT232BM USB to RS-232 converter. This chip was the simplest and cheapest way of adding USB functionality to the console. It also allows easy debugging of the hardware due to the simple nature of RS-232. Right now, the chip is running at 230Kbits/sec which is 23Kbytes/sec of data transfer. A hardware UART is sythesized on the FPGA currently to load ROMs.