[sdiy] Xilinx 3E board comments

[Magnus Danielson]

From: jhaible at debitel.net
Subject: Re: [sdiy] Xilinx 3E board comments
Date: 13 Jun 2006 10:18:50 +0200,Tue, 13 Jun 2006 10:18:50 +0200
Message-ID: <1150186730.448e74eab3fa5 at www.debitel.net>

> 
> > Although this board has more 'industrial' ADC/DACs on it (not specifically
> > audio 
> > parts), they can be useful.
> 
> The one thing I'm tempted to do is using this for an emulation of the Oberheim 
> 8-Voice synthesizer keyboard controller / voice assignment logic.
> 
> Would be total overkill, of course, but for 150 Dollars, who would complain?
> 
> I have next to zero VHDL skills (except for a 2 day "mangement" VHDL crash 
> course), but if I got this right, I could just use the Oberheim _schematics_ 
> and then synthesize (pun) them.

You could go that route, but I would rather advice you to go on the higher
level functionality and encode that "direct". It's not too hard actually. If
one understands normal TTL level logic (with the special case that you may not
use latches but only D-flip-flops) and synchronous clock system you can quite
soon be productive even if the designs are not as "neat" as you can make them.

What you want to do you can do at a much cheaper board infact.

> In the end I probably won't do it (no time, no time ...), but it sure is 
> tempting.
> 
> I wonder if it makes sense to buy one of these boards and just wait what you 
> guys come up with and share with us, though.

I'm sure there will be loads of nifty code. You still need to learn how to
integrate it, but maybe that is a good way to get started. Also, if you have
alot of example code to read up on, eventually you will do more and more for
yourself.

One of the things to learn tought is really the workflow, to design propper
testbenches, simulate that, then go to synthesis and check the outcome of that
before hitting the board. Back in the ASIC/full-custom days it was much more
important than FPGA requires, but it is a good way of doing things never the
less.

Cheers,
Magnus