21 Nov
2006
21 Nov
'06
3:41 p.m.
From: "Ray Arachelian" <ray at arachelian.com>
Chuck Guzis wrote:
I have some Perl that I wrote which will transform a netlist of drawings
based on the common DEC Mxxx modules into VHDL (generating comments for
the stuff left out). Basically it has canned VHDL for various modules
that it instantiates based on the connections to the module. I used it
to do some VHDL for a TC08. (Unfortunately I can't find a device with
enough pins to handle the result :-).)
Of course, first you have to create the machine readable netlist for
the vintage gear, write VHDL for the various modules, etc. etc.
The original suggestion I made was for the 6100 or 6120 cpu-on-a-chip.
I'm not aware of any schematic for that. As someone suggested, you'd
have to work from the data sheet.
Vince
There apparently used to be a fellow who
implemented pin-compatible
FPGA replacements for the Z80 and 6502 using Xilinx 4013's, but I
can't find any details of his work. One of the modern chip
suppliers, Innovasic, offers drop-in FPGA replacements for old MPUs
and other circuits.
Would certainly be fun to figure out how to do this. Are there any
resources or samples out there that would point at how this is done? Do
you start with a schematic of the CPU or the device and convert that to
verilog by hand, or is there some automated way?