[sdiy] FPGAs

[Rainer Buchty]

> Quoth Jason Tribbeck at 28/01/11 19:02...
> ...
>> Xilinx does a Linux version (there's also the free version - the WebPack 
>> version [FWICR]). However, I think it's reasonably strict on what versions 
>> of Linux it runs on.

It will happily run on any other flavor of Linux (at least the earlier 
ones I have installed, did, no idea about the current ISE12, as I only 
switch when absolutely necessary or cursing on new revisions in 
comp.arch.fpga falls below a certain threshold :), too, but in those 
cases you're on your own (or the community) as Xilinx will not give any 
support in case you run into problems.

> People still have parallel ports - wow? ;-)

People still buy PCI cards just for having them :)

> Do you mean that they lost STATE when powered down

Yes. FPGAs are SRAM technology, unless having internal configuration 
EPROMs (which is a minority). You need to boot them, either via an 
external boot ROM or from a microcontroller.

Rainer