21 Apr
2002
21 Apr
'02
6:14 a.m.
Richard Erlacher wrote:
A $2000 computer, unless it's a notebook, is a
pretty fancy system. I saw an
ad on the TV yesterday from a local dealer for a complete Pentium box at just
under a GHz with a large (40GB) HDD, plenty of RAM, USB, modem, ethernet, and
17" monitor for < $600.
I forgot to state CANADIAN :) and that was a ball park figure.
Altera and Xilinx have published parallel port JTAG
programming interfaces for
their devices.
I have not been able to find Altera's. Xilinx's schematic is in the
documentation as a apendex to the programing manual.
If you attach the EPROM/EEPROM that contains the
configuration file for an
FPGA to the appropriate pins on the FPGA, it programs itself each time the
power is applied. FPGA's are generally RAM based and "forget" what they
are
when they're powered down. Programming the PROM that configures them is quite
straightforward with nearly any PROM programmer, and the mfg's don't make
requirements for programming them a secret.
With altera ( the fpga I have ) serial proms are the only easy way to
program the chip.I still need a uP to program the FPGA from standard
memory.
Programming most of the logic in 'C' is pretty
well accepted practice since
EPROMS are as big and inexpensive as they are today. Critically timed code
has to be written in assembler, and people often forget that. Many designers
compensate for code that is inefficient, slow, and large, by using a
controller chip that has WAY (20x) more code space and performance than
needed. The coders will use it all.
I guess waiting for 4k focal to load on a TTY gives me a bias against
bigger systems.
--
Ben Franchuk - Dawn * 12/24 bit cpu *
www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk/index.html