Quick Start Guide to the ESP32-SBC-FabGL

A quick-start guide to setting up the FabGL PCEmulator example for the Olimex ESP32-SBC-FabGL.

Purpose

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I'm a complete novice to Arduino and Raspberry Pi development, so I wrote down these steps to help myself and others get quickly started on using/playing with the board.

Explanations are not included, just the steps.

What I Have Installed

At the time of this writing,

• Arduino IDE 2.1.1
• Espressif 2.0.11
• Olimex FabGL 1.0.9

Setting up the Arduino environment

1. Install and start Arduino IDE.
2. Add the esp32 boards by Espressif (Tools > Board > Board Manager and search for "esp32").
3. The Olimex fork of FabGL adds support for the ESP32-SBC-FabGL board and needs to be installed as a local library. Unfortunately, you'll need to uninstall Fabrizio's FabGL library if it's already installed.
   • Go to the Olimex FabGL repo on GitHub.
   • Click "Download ZIP" from the green "Code" drop-down button. I saved the ZIP file as "Olimex-FabGL.zip" so I didn't get it confused with Fabrizio's repo.

     

   • Unzip and copy the contents to a new folder in the "Documents\Arduino\libraries" folder (e.g. "C:\Users\username\Documents\Arduino\libraries\Olimex-FabGL").
4. Close Arduino IDE. The next time the IDE is started, the local Olimex FabGL library will be available for use.

Setup the SD card

1. Format an SD card as FAT32. For SD cards larger than 32GB (e.g. 64GB, 128GB, etc.), a 32GB (or smaller) partition will need to be created.
2. Download the boot image files found in /examples/VGA/PCEmulator/mconf.h and copy to the root folder of the SD card. This saves having to repeatedly download a boot image from the FabGL website whenever the PCEmulator is started.
3. Copy the mconfs.txt file to the root folder of the SD card. The source for this file was created from the DefaultConfFile variable also found in /examples/VGA/PCEmulator/mconf.h, removing C-code constructs, and changing the boot image URLs to local file names.
4. There are many ways to create or add custom boot images, whether it be a floppy disk or a hard drive. My suggestion would be to copy one of the existing image files edit it using WinImage. To make it usable from FabGL,
   • Copy the boot image to the SD card.
   • Add an entry to it in "mconfs.txt".
   • Specify the media type ("fd0" or "hd0") and add "boot hd0" if booting a hard drive image.

Compiling and Deploying PCEmulator from the Arduino IDE

1. Before starting the Arduino IDE, connect the ESP32-SBC-FabGL board to your desktop PC using a USB cable. The USB-C port on the board serves as both power and data.
2. Start Arduino IDE.
3. Verify the Olimex FabGL library is loaded by,
   • Opening the Library Manager (Tools > Manage Libraries).
   • Typing "FabGL" in to the "filter" textbox.
   • Changing the "Type" to "Installed".
   • It should list "FabGL 1.0.9" (at the time of this writing) as one of the installed libraries.
4. Select the FabGL PCEmulator project (File > Examples > FabGL > VGA > PCEmulator). The FabGL examples will be at the bottom of a lengthy list.
5. Configure the board.
   • Select the "ESP32 Dev Module" board (Tools > Board > esp32 > ESP32 Dev Module).
   • Set the board port to upload to (Tools > Port > COM#).
   • Set the partition scheme (Tools > Partition > Huge APP).
   • Disable PSRAM (Tools > PSRAM > Disabled).
   • Set the Upload Speed (Tools > Upload Speed > 921600).
     • If an upload error occurs, lower the transfer speed.
6. Edit "PCEmulator.ino" project file.
   • The wireless SSID and password can be preset in the "tryToConnect()" function.
   • Time zone can be preset in the "updateDateTime()" function with your locale.
   • I would not recommend it but PCEmulator can format the SD card by uncommenting the "FileBrowser::format()" method.
7. Compile and upload to the board (Sketch > Upload).
   • If all goes well, the ESP32-SBC-FabGL board will reboot after the compilation and upload complete.
   • If the wireless parameters were not set, a prompt asking to configure the wireless connection will appear.
   • After that, the boot menu should display.

Copyright (C) 2023 Erik Anderson

Topics: Emulators, Arduino, ESP32, FabGL, Olimex

Subjects: BASIC, IBM PC, Nostalgia, Programming, Video Games, Vintage Computers, Windows