anyone with a entry level FPGA development board (VHDL support) they don't need?

Sat Mar 14 17:42:46 EDT 2020

Hey Martin an others,
The manufacturers tools ARE complex and off-putting to us newbies.  But, I do agree with many of the comments on the hackaday story, I really dislike this “everything on the cloud” thinking.  I have enough problems with Internet access at times, or am not at home, or ??? that I want my tools locally on my machine.  I notice that it says there are tools that can be used offline, no sure how good they are.  Plus, I have AT&T for cell service, which really sucks here, and if I don’t have home Internet, my cell is worthless.....

One SHOULD start with a simple board and limited I/O to learn basic concepts.  Some of them are as cheap as an Arduino or Raspberry Pi, so no great monetary loss.  

You can also design FPGA programming using hardware-like design tools instead or Verilog or VHDL, making blocks and interconnecting them much like schematic design.

BTW, I have a MiniZed I just purchased, not MicroZED.  IIRC, it was under $80.  I’ve been more into the Xilinx camp, mostly due to the Charleston SDR board using the Digilent Nexys 2 FPGA board.  Most other hams are using Altera FPGA boards for SDR....  I always seem to get 50-50 chances wrong!!!

I’m thinking of getting the better Papilio FPGA board, but that would be to allow FPGA 8080/Z80/CP/M emulation.  I need more CP/M systems.

Living life in the 70s and 80s, listening to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer....
73, Terry, N4TLF

From: Martin 
Sent: Saturday, March 14, 2020 5:08 PM
To: Samudra Haque 
Cc: Terry N4TLF ; Tacos 
Subject: Re: anyone with a entry level FPGA development board (VHDL support) they don't need?

You are making extra work for yourself going Intel or Xilinx.  Those design tools support a large variety of FPGAs - some of which are very large and complex and cost what a house goes for.  You project requires a small, simple FPGA.  Do you want to spend your time leaning a proprietary tool chain or the FPGA basics?   

https://hackaday.com/2019/07/05/bringing-fpga-development-to-the-masses/ 

--Martin    

On Sat, Mar 14, 2020 at 1:37 PM <samudra.haque at gmail.com> wrote:

  Wow, I am learning a lot thanks to Taco’s forums. I regret not paying attention to FPGA world earlier. I just sat through 30 minutes of a free training course on Intel’s website: and a wholesome review of a tutorial using the flow chart shown below – and it would I am most sure at this point, be easy for me to replicate my manually designed electric rocket subsystem (see pics from 2015) control system, into an FPGA version down to the 10 uS synthetic reprogrammable timebase I had to design, to validate my multi-rocket synchronization routines – I honestly was just paying attention to the physics, and not to the EE techniques then. 

  Back then I was using Netburner hardware, and wholly customized PCB, with IGBT power switches and ~40 amp transient discharges from an inductive energy storage system I calculated manually. Well --- an FPGA containing a soft-core MCU, some external switches, RTOS application (the same possibly that I used in the RTOS of Netburner environment) and some barebones serial comms seem to be practical to implement with these methods, …. And I may be able to develop new control processes and drive other elements .. without much delay ! Perhaps even use the onboard NIOS II DSP section to do mod/demod ? BTW, I liked the training material 100 and 200 level FPGA courses on the intel website, free with registration. Like: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/programmable/support/training/catalog.html?keywords=nios

  From: Terry N4TLF <n4tlf at wb4jfi.com> 
  Sent: Saturday, March 14, 2020 12:54 PM
  To: samudra.haque at gmail.com; 'Martin' <dcmk1mr2 at gmail.com>
  Cc: 'Tacos' <tacos at amrad.org>
  Subject: Re: anyone with a entry level FPGA development board (VHDL support) they don't need?

  Here are a couple of books that might be of interest regarding Verilog:

  This book is interesting, and a little bit different.  It doesn’t require actual hardware for most of it’s content.  I bought the Kindle version.

  https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Video-Game-Hardware-Verilog-ebook/dp/B07LD48CTV/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=verilog+book&qid=1584203304&sr=8-5

  THe title is accurate: a Concise guide to be sure.  Again, not tied to any hardware, and somewhat light on details.  Fairly thin.

  https://www.amazon.com/Verilog-Example-Concise-Introduction-Design/dp/0983497303/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=verilog+book&qid=1584203528&sr=8-1

  I have the Kindle version of this book.  It uses a few specific boards.

  https://www.amazon.com/Programming-FPGAs-Getting-Started-Verilog-ebook/dp/B01M0F1L5G/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=verilog+book&qid=1584203803&sr=8-2

  THis is more expensive, I have the paper version.  It has the most of my bookmarks of any book I have.  That says it all.

  https://www.amazon.com/Embedded-Design-Using-Programmable-Arrays/dp/1589094867/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Embedded+design+using+Programmable&qid=1584204048&sr=8-1

  There are several other books that I have.  Like many other technical references, there is not ONE single book that is best.

  I have used the Papilio and Digilent FPGA boards (among others) to help me learn most of what I have now forgotten, regarding FPGAs.  I now have some newer boards boards based on Zynq FPGAs, such as the Red Pitaya, a MicroZed, and others.  These are MUCH more powerful, but also much more complicated.  My brain hurts whenever I delve into them.

  73, Terry, N4TLF

  From: samudra.haque at gmail.com 

  Sent: Friday, March 13, 2020 8:42 PM

  To: 'Martin' 

  Cc: 'Tacos' 

  Subject: RE: anyone with a entry level FPGA development board (VHDL support) they don't need?

  Hi Martin, thanks for the tip. I went looking for the board you recommended from Lattice (it’s offered at a good price) but if I am not mistaken, it doesn’t have any peripherals such as switches  for onboard experiments? The photos show it comes with LEDs, but no switches.

  Then I went looking for the icestorm documentation and it seems they ship from UK (the blackice boards) so despite those development boards being chock full of accessories for experimentation, the shipping delay and cost sort of makes it expensive.

  So, randomly I searched and came across (comments requested) for about $43.85 total with shipping:

  https://www.ebay.com/itm/STEP-MAX10-Intel-Altera-FPGA-development-board/143318504573?hash=item215e72d47d%3Ag%3AlcQAAOSwARpdGDCw&LH_BO=1

  and according to the website http://www.stepfpga.org/step-max10-development-board/  it is fully supported by:

  Altera MAX10 FPGA: 10M02/10M08

  On board USB Blaster programming circuit

  2-character 7-segment display

  Two RGB LEDs

  Four switches

  Four push buttons

  Eight user LEDs

  Power from MicroUSB connector

  40 pins DIP connector with 36 User I/Os

  ·        STEP-MAX10 Hardware Manual 1.0

  ·        STEP-MAX10 Software Manual 1.0

  ·        STEP-MAX10 Source Code

  ·        STEP-MAX10 Schematic diagram

  ·        Software&Tools

  The software suite is … Altera (Microsoft) Quartus Prime Lite, which includes ModelSim for soft logic analyzer waveform output … and supports Verilog and VHDL. I think that could be ok for mid-level developers, right?

  But since the documentation says “On board JTAG programming circuit”, is an actual JTAG gadget still necessary for this device, or is that functionality already included somehow?

  From: Martin <dcmk1mr2 at gmail.com> 
  Sent: Friday, March 13, 2020 7:26 PM
  To: Samudra Haque <samudra.haque at gmail.com>
  Cc: Tacos <tacos at amrad.org>
  Subject: Re: anyone with a entry level FPGA development board (VHDL support) they don't need?

  You might want to take a look at  https://www.amazon.com/LATTICE-SEMICONDUCTOR-ICE40HX1K-STICK-EVN-Evaluation-iCE40HX1K/dp/B00R3QU9K0  for a board and do a google search for Windows iceStorm support.  The are more expensive FPGAs from Intel/Altera amd Xilinx but the tool chains are awful.

  You also might want to check to see if you really want to invest in VHDL or if Verilog might be better for your needs.  It doesn't hurt to know both but Verilog is more like C and is less trouble to learn.

  Learning to simulate is a really import skill for FPGA development so you can get started with that before you have hardware.

  73 Martin W6MRR

  On Fri, Mar 13, 2020 at 3:50 PM <samudra.haque at gmail.com> wrote:

    I would like to do an experiment with an FPGA development board. I’m looking for something with pinouts or with a switch + LED; My experience with VHDL is very limited. I will be using Windows 10 for my development environment. 

    If anyone has a board they don’t need, would you be willing to sell it at a Tippy’s Taco’s meetup to me? Send me the product manufacturer part number and your ask to samudra.haque at gmail.com. 

    Also, if I had no FPGA board, is there a emulator environment that I can compile the code and get a testbench / diagram of the signals? At least I could begin coding / developing the framework right away.

    73 de Samudra N3RDX

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