FPGA programming!

[Palm]

I thought I´d start a thread on this subject as FPGA is the heart of the MiniMig which is very popular these days. However, the community is full of talented people who wants to contribute and have the guts to do it, but just needs some guidence in how these things work. Since I am one of them, I will start off with my newbie questions hoping that it will elevate my knowledge a notch


The small amount of "FPGA guys" in this forums: Can you elighten the rest of us with information in order to push us into the right direction so we can understand more about FPGA development and one day create a "hello world"-core on our minimigs ?

I am thinking out things like:

* Where to get the best information for self-teaching (books, forums online, teaching videos online, etc.)
* Which program to download (links if you have them) to start experimenting
* What is needed additionally to the minimig board to get going with development/experimenting


I think many guys really would like to contribute somehow, but lacks the knowledge. As Amiga communities kicks ass, and its users as very dedicated, it would be awesome to hear from the hardcore FPGA experts out there.


Regs
Espen

[trekiej]

Try www.xgamestation.com  they have a kit that teaches ABEL.
ABEL belongs to Xilinx, I believe. It it suppose to be like c.
There are plenty of web sites.
Xilinx
Actel
Atmel
Altera

Cheers

[weirdami]

Do they all know my name at the Cheers website?

[countzero]

FGPA4FUN has some nice tutorials and introductory material.

A forum about electronics projects/hobbyists.

[Palm]

Great. Thanks for all the tips. Hopefully, more would find this interesting and start experimenting with the MiniMig (or their kits if they get one).

Regs
Espen

[JimS]

I'm thinking the same thing.... I'd like to learn some Verilog or VHDL.

I'm considering the Nexsys2 board from these folk:
http://www.digilentinc.com/

It has more RAM than the minimig, and a larger FPGA for experimenting.

jim

                                   

[mikej]

"I'm considering the Nexsys2 board from these folk:"

It looks very like the Xilinx Spartan3e board. Note it only has 8 bit colour (better than 3 bit though). There are some notes on www.fpgaarcade.com on how to modify these boards to get 12 bit output, and a test program (with source) you can modify for your board which will output a test pattern. Under platforms if I remember correctly.

/Mike

[billt]

I find Verilog a LOT easier to learn/follow than VHDL. VHDL is more verbose, and the book they used when I was in college was horrible. There's basic files you need to include like you need include files in C, but this book didn't even tell you how to do that. So I very early on developed a (perhaps unfair) bias against VHDL, I didnt' see Verilog until years later and like it much much better in comparison.

Check out icarus as a free verilog simulator. Play with simulation to get a feel for things. Also check out opencores.org for some free verilog and vhdl IP to see what that looks like, and as a free parts library to get you started.

[JimS]

mikej wrote:

It looks very like the Xilinx Spartan3e board. Note it only has 8 bit colour (better than 3 bit though). There are some notes on www.fpgaarcade.com on how to modify these boards to get 12 bit output, and a test program (with source) you can modify for your board which will output a test pattern.
/Mike

Ahh.... good references to have.

The Nexsys2 has 16mb sdram, 16mb of flash, and a config flash.  I'm guessing the 1.2 million gate version could hold the TG68 core ported over from the Altera DE1/2. Put the kickstart in the flash rom. the fpga core in the config rom, and good to go. They even have a little board with the memory card interface for the ADFs.

Of course, all that's easy to say  ;-)

[Palm]

www.fpga4fun.com was bullesye. Very good intro to FPGA and it had all I needed to get me going.

So my next quest is to create a binary to test on the minimig. I guess a easy program to test is to toggle some io pins high and low and look at them using a logic probe...just to see if things work

Anyone else who might have a goode idea for a nice newbie testprogram to try to make ?

[FrenchShark]

Palm wrote:
www.fpga4fun.com was bullesye. Very good intro to FPGA and it had all I needed to get me going.

So my next quest is to create a binary to test on the minimig. I guess a easy program to test is to toggle some io pins high and low and look at them using a logic probe...just to see if things work

Anyone else who might have a goode idea for a nice newbie testprogram to try to make ?

A VGA output with color bars is not too difficult to make.
The synchro/blanking generator is basically two counters with comparators.
The color bars are just a 3-bit counter counting from 0 to 7 on one scanline.
I am training a VHDL newbie at work. I have asked him this kind of stuff.

Regards,

Frederic

[Palm]

Lucky man, who can work with this and also get training at work. Ok, I will see if I can build a core which does some testpatterns. Would be a nice place to start, indeed.

Thankx.


Espen