[sdiy] FPGA

[Matthew Smith]

Quoth James Elliott at 30/10/11 14:15...
> ...My biggest concern at this point is not necessarily
 > in the programming but in actually building a a
 > complete "system", that is FPGA, clock, ADC,
 > DAC, inputs, outputs, memory.

Are you saying to you want to build a board, and then take the "fix it 
in software" approach?

If so, and if you are using Xilinx Spartan devices, the PlanAhead 
software that comes with The (free) ISE WebPack should allow you to do this.

As I can't figure how to cut'n'paste an unmangled link from Google, just 
search for: http://www.google.com/search?q=planahead%20user%20guide

Have a look at the pin planning section.  Just been through the exercise 
myself - FPGA, RAM, parallel DAC, SPI EEPROM, SPI control, clock. All 
I'm interested in at the moment is being able to get the PCB design 
done. Only needed to specify the inputs and outputs using a Verilog 
skeleton (I believe you can even do it with a CSV file,) so once I'd got 
the hang of the software, it was pretty straighforward.

So I can send the PCB file off for fabrication & worry about writing the 
HDL later.

My design is actually a crude 8-bit sound chip for an art project. Gotta 
love that old 8-bit sound ;-)

Cheers

M

-- 
Matthew Smith

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