Unconfusing the stupid

Toby Seckshund

That will be me mostly.

Many times the answer to all interfacing (such as XMM) is a magic block programmed up to be al the logic required. Is there anybody out there that could write an artical on how to do this on affordable chips with freeware and home constructed programmers ?

I know that there are chips that can be made to emulate entire systems but I was thinking more along the lines of "glue logic". At least to start with.

The XC9572 sort seem to have Jtag, it has just occured to me that the likes of the AVR love to use themselves to program themselves, and I have never seen anything like that on the Prop.

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Style and grace : Nil point

Post Edited (Toby Seckshund) : 6/14/2009 8:40:56 PM GMT

StefanL38

Hello Toby,

I'm really sorry
I don't understand what you want to say.

Do you want a manual how a propeller can program itself ???

best regards

Stefan

Leon

I think he's talking about a boot-loader, but I don't see what an XC9572 CPLD has to do with the price of fish.

Leon

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Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
Suzuki SV1000S motorcycle

heater

"interfacing", "black box", "glue logic"... sounds like someone fishing for an FPGA or CPLD. Like the CPLD on the Hydra RAM card.

Sorry I'm no help here Toby.

I thought it would be cool to load FLEX CPLDS from the Prop using the flexloader program you can find on the net somewhere. But they are obsolete now. I don't know if the new MAX CPLD from Altera are as easily loaded.

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For me, the past is not over yet.

Toby Seckshund

What I was triyin to ask was

On the likes of the AVR, 8051 ... There are so many interfaces that use AVR etc as bridge chips between the PC and another sort of IC ie the AVR Target would end up being JTAGed via an AVR programmed to be an interface unit. The prop has been used to be a self contained unit via whatever IDE you use and not as say... an EPROM programmer, ISP programmer. I wondered if the blessed beast could become a CPLD programmer (objet) etc and then allow the kind of the CPLD interface logic in the hydra interface to be used for all sorts of other things.

Perhaps an evaluation kit and a hermatage would be a better answer.

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Leon

Any MCU can be used for configuring CPLDs and FPGAs made by Xilinx and Altera, at any rate. They have app notes on how to do it. I've used a DSP to configure an FPGA on the same board.

Leon

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Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
Suzuki SV1000S motorcycle

Toby Seckshund

It was just a plea for some knowledge. I certainly wasn't fishing for the hydra CPLD in particular, I think that there must be sombody out there who thinks that doing this is abreeze because they do it everyday. There was simple stuff out on the web for GALs and PALs byt as already stated these are obsolete.

Remember that I come from the valve era.

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heater

Toby: I see what you are asking. Getting into CPLD/FPGA from the ground is going to be quite a long road. I have started on this road a couple of times but never have time to get very far.

As far as I can tell the way to program all these things now a days is to use either Verilog or VHDL hardware description languages. So first learn one of those a bit.

Then you need a device. Better to get a little dev board than try to make something your self for initial experiments. Altera and Xilinx have such things as do other companies.

To get your design into the chip there is free Verilog/VHDL compilers from Altera and Zilinx and appropriate down load cables etc.

To get started these guys have some nice starter projects: www.fpga4fun.com/
and you can buy the little boards for the projects here www.knjn.com/

Having done all that you will eventually arrive at figuring out how to get your creations into a CPLD/FPGA from the Propeller. It's only a serial link after all and quite a simple protocol.

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For me, the past is not over yet.

Leon

I found them very easy to get into, this web page of mine explains how to get started if you want to build your own hardware:

www.geocities.com/leon_heller/pld_starter.html

I have a design for a DIY programming cable for Altera devices. I'd actually start with the Altera MAX II these days, it's actually a small FPGA rather than a conventional CPLD.

Leon

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Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
Suzuki SV1000S motorcycle

RvnPhnx

Last time I was aware the Xilinix free license was pretty strict, limiting what you could and couldn't do with your own code developed on the platform--even if you then took that code to another platform without the same limits (or some such nonsense). I haven't bothered touching their products ever since, despite the itch to play with some CPLD/FPGA designs.

Does anybody have any advice about non-Xilinix toolchains?

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--RvnPhnx

CounterRotatingProps

> I'd actually start with the Altera MAX II these days

An excellent explainer page, Leon - I just read it. Thanks. The Altera Max II seems not too inexpensive, lower power than the older ones, and fast - even the Dev/Demo board at Digikey's only USD150.

- Howard

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Got Electrons?

Toby Seckshund

And there was me thinking that 800 Mb for the M$ frontend was ludicrus, I just tried to download the Xilinx IDE. How many Gb ??? Even the broadband got fed up and stopped half way through.

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Style and grace : Nil point

jazzed

We programmed FPGAs using a "blob" from a CPU on just about every product I touched at Cisco except a few that used the Flash sequencer method. There should be no problem doing this.

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--Steve


Propalyzer: Propeller PC Logic Analyzer
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=788230

Toby Seckshund

As I will use a homebrew PC3 JTAG lead I have downloaded some older and smaller software. V7 doesn't seem to want too much in the way of licence numbers or disk area (in comparison). FPGA4FUN have a few pointers on that era, so here goes.

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Leon

CounterRotatingProps said...
> I'd actually start with the Altera MAX II these days

An excellent explainer page, Leon - I just read it. Thanks. The Altera Max II seems not too inexpensive, lower power than the older ones, and fast - even the Dev/Demo board at Digikey's only USD150.

- Howard

You can get a Digilent Spartan 3 FPGA board for $99 - much better value.

Leon

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Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
Suzuki SV1000S motorcycle

Toby Seckshund

I had looked at that option. My financial controller would make me sleep in the shed, if she found out.

Onwards with the (cheapscape) callenge !

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Style and grace : Nil point

CounterRotatingProps

Toby Seckshund said...
I had looked at that option. My financial controller would make me sleep in the shed, if she found out.

LOL Toby!

my shed is my electronics workshop - good thing we don't have a dog house !

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Toby Seckshund

I have the choice of a shed, the garage or the small (very) bedroom. The latter has the advantages of heating, access to toilet facilities and coffee making. I have to co-habite with the two bunnies (hers) though. Neither of which help on bit with the programming, when they once chewed through the phone cable. A sadly missed cockatiel did get onto the bench and steal components and keyboard caps.

It might not be art, but I do suffer.

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