RE: CPLD/FPGA course

Thanks all,

I finally bought a DE1 and a MAX II Micro Kit
It's really nice, it's a little bit like playdough for kits,
Very easy to experiment, erase and start again

Vhdl is less difficult than I expected 

I'm dreaming... 

Thanks

--
Didier




-----Message d'origine-----
De : owner-cbm-hackers@musoftware.de
[mailto:owner-cbm-hackers@musoftware.de] De la part de Mark McDougall
Envoyé : jeudi 21 juin 2012 00:44
À : cbm-hackers@musoftware.de
Objet : Re: CPLD/FPGA course

On 21/06/2012 5:23 AM, didier@aida.org wrote:

> I've downloaded the latest quartus,  looks nicer than ise...

It is!

> the de1 has sram + sdram  the de0 has only sdram
> what is the use of 2 different type of ram ?   speed ? special use ?

SRAM is much easier to use from an FPGA. SDRAM requires a 'controller' unit
to access the (specific type of) RAM on the board and must be accessed in
bursts which have a significant set-up time (delay/latency) where-as SRAM
can be accessed word-by-word without much rigmarole.

Plus always good to have both on different busses!

Also, DE1 has a number of designs such as Coco3FPGA (Coco3), Minimig (Amiga
500), Zet (PC) as well as C64 and other micro and arcade platforms (Space
invaders, galaxian, frogger etc). It appears to be the "platform of choice" 
for this sort of thing.

> btw if I develop on the max2 micro kit the finaly goal is to finally 
> to program real cpld not only the one on the development board.

Technically, it's an FPGA not a CPLD, but the concepts are the same as far
as programming is concerned.

> If I have correctly understood all the thread on the forum about cpld 
> I have to use MAX7000S (5v) and probably PLCC

Yes, you'll need a device with 5V tolerant inputs if you're connecting to
the Coco/Commodore.

> I am right or did I missed something ?

If a CPLD is a Coco/C64, then an FPGA is a PC. A CPLD will allow you to
provide some combinatorial logic with a small set of registers/synchronous
logic. Good for interfacing logic, for example. An FPGA, OTOH, will allow
you to implement an entire Coco/C64 on-chip. Big difference.

Regards,

-- 
|              Mark McDougall                | "Electrical Engineers do it
|  <http://members.iinet.net.au/~msmcdoug>   |   with less resistance!"



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