Pac-man Running On Papilio Arcade Using Linux

Thanks to reader Sowbug, who sent us this nice tidbit about how he got Pac-Man running on his Papilio Arcade via Linux.  Sowbug says,

“Just got the Papilio on Sunday and was going through converting the Windows-based .bat and tools for merging/loading the Pac-Man bitfile. The first time I ran the loader with the bitfile, it paused for what seemed like maybe 250 milliseconds — far too short in the opinion of someone coming from an Arduino background. Then I looked to my side and saw Pac-Man running on my old VGA monitor. I almost jumped out of my seat! I didn’t expect it to work the first time, and especially with so little time elapsed since loading. Fun stuff!”

Check out Sowbug’s original blog post for an in-depth look at what went in to the project, and for access to the fork he wrote for Linux.  I have to say, I really like Sowbug’s photo on that post.  Great composition!

On the same forum thread where this was discussed, the issue was raised about using a PS/2 keyboard for joystick functionality.  I just remembered that Mike Field had some code pertaining to that in his Papilio Wiki.

The specific entry, with code for using a PS/2 keyboard for joystick controls can be found here.

“This project allows a PS/2 keyboard to be embedded into a project that usually uses a joystick.”

Thanks for sharing your work with us, Sowbug!