Atom Pro - Pins 6/7 3.3v and PS2 Controller

[kurte]

I pulled this out of Xan’s thread about the phoenix code…

@kurte

@Acidtech

P6 and P7 opn AtomPro are 3.3v outputs(5v tolerant inputs). They are I2C capable via hardware(which is why they are limited to 3.3v I guess, though you will have to ask Renesas why that is).

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My guess is that there is something else going on other than just the 3.3v. For example I believe these pins may be used internally to talk to the EEPROM. I know that the Propeller chip can talk to the PS2 and all of the IO pins are 3.3V. All 4 data lines are connected to IO pins through a 1K resistor with a 10K pull-up resister to +5V to the DAT pin.

It would be interesting to find out what the actual reason is, on ther other hand it is proably just easier to work around it.

Now back to on subject…

@Acidtech

What PS2 controller are you using? Could also be a current problem more so than a 3.3v problem. Also, no those pins are not used to connect to the eeprom on the modules. They are available for the user to use as I2C but we don’t use them for anything on the module itself.

As I mentioned above I pulled this out of Xans thread. For the most part this is a non issue as the new BB2 has moved the PS2 support away from these pins. I will be honest and say that I have not tried to make the PS2 controller work on these pins as the tutorial said it did not work as well as several posts.

This is more of a curiosity then anything else. I am currently using the Lynxmotion controller. I have also used one called Sector 7. They both appear to work on the propeller with 3.3v IO pins.

I mentioned the EEPROM as the 3694 document mentioned that the 512 byte on chip EEPROM uses IO pins SCL and SDA, so I was not sure if maybe that was somewhat related. Just a thought

Kurt

P.S - Nathan - Have you made any more progress in your experimental releases?

[acidtech]

IIRC the reason we say not to use thos epins is because there were problems with the controllers we tested with originally. i don’t remember if we ever tested Jims controllers. Could be they work fine. Basically it went something like.

Jim: I tried the AtomPro with the PS2 controler and had problems

Me: What pins are you using?

Jim: I was using P6 and P7?

Me: Tray other pins

Jim: Ok…It works

Me: Great, talk to you later.

As for the experimental release I’ve been busy on a new product release so I haven’t had time to touch it in a couple months. It’s not forgotten but I just don’t have the time right now. Once I’m we’ve released this I’ll have more free time(relatively speaking).