[sdiy] FPGA Synth List and Website (was: Xilinx board as sampler)

[Scott Gravenhorst]

I'm now on the FPGA Synth list, for what that's worth, hopefully there
will be rising interest.

My main interest is the Spartan 3E Starter Kit, because I will have one
in just a few days.  My own reasons for purchasing this unit were it's
apparent processing power plus the hardware I/O that's already
available seems to allow for a complete synthesizer with no additional
hardware required.  And of course, the price was extremely right.

I spoke with Jim Patchell at the Pacific SDIY Meet this weekend and it
seems (as he's said) that there is something to be desired regarding
the Xilinx support in terms of reusable downloadable code modules - at
least that's what I understand and please do correct me if that's
inaccurate.  This is rather surprising to me, from a marketing
standpoint, I would have thought that supplying basic I/O code and
tutorials would get people (like me) over the "hello world" hump and
well into serious "trouble".  For example, as a first project, I'd like
to see "Scott" appear in the LCD display using the PicoBlaze or
whatever, but apparently, sending characters to the LCD is somewhat of
a mystery.  It's not impossible, characters do appear there when you
power it up, so some code in there is already capable of this. 
Personally, from a developer's standpoint, the LCD would be orders of
magnitude more helpful than lighting the 8 LEDs for diagnostics.  And
of course, for a synth, there are obvious uses for it as an output
device.  Maybe it's just the documentation vacuum (or twisty little
maze) that's the problem and if any of you have clues, please, by all
means, I'm begging...   One of my quests will be to collect and
organize information I acquire so that I and others needn't keep
reinventing wheels.

It seems to me that some code sharing between those of us that will use
this device would be beneficial.  However, quite honestly, at this
point I wouldn't know where to begin.  If eagerness and interest count
- I'm all there.

"Paul Maddox" <P.Maddox at signal.QinetiQ.com> wrote:
>Jeff,
>
>> Def. need to get a solid web
>> resource for FPGA SynthDIY too!
>
>I began this a while back, but had next to no interest ;-
>www.fpga.synth.net
>
>There's even a mailing list :-)
>
>Paul
>

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