News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Project ideas to appreciate the art of programming by matthewfcarlson on Tuesday December 30, 2025 @06:47PM (#46439605)
As part of undergrad we had to implement space invaders on a Zync FPGA so you got to choose which bits you did in hardware and what was in software. It was a blast seeing what people came up with as you could do “extras” that gave you bonus points. Someone built a simple microphone frequency analysis block so you could go left, right, and fire by playing notes on a recorder.
Re:Project ideas to appreciate the art of programming by thfuran on Tuesday December 30, 2025 @08:02PM (#46440143)
>on a Zync FPGA so you got to choose which bits you did in hardware and what was in software.

You mean verilog vs block diagram, or did those boards have like a microcontroller too for more normal software?

Re:Project ideas to appreciate the art of programming by dandeto on Tuesday December 30, 2025 @10:13PM (#46440873)
The Zync platforms I'm familiar with have an Arm processor, so you can write baremetal programs or have it boot Linux from an SD card. You can integrate hardware (FPGA) and software by reading/writing to shared memory over AXI or similar protocol.
Re:Project ideas to appreciate the art of programming by ChrisMarshallNY on Tuesday December 30, 2025 @09:14PM (#46440591)
One of my first programs was a Space Invaders-style game, in Machine Code, on a VIC20.

Not particularly impressive, but it did teach me stuff.