22 Nov
2006
22 Nov
'06
6:18 a.m.
Vincent Slyngstad 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 :-).)
Any chance you could use
two devices? I suppose you'd have to find a
way to split the gates between them and then still interconnect them but
have enough pins left over for actually interfacing with the original
hardware.
Of course, first you have to create the machine readable netlist for
the vintage gear, write VHDL for the various modules, etc. etc.
Is there an open source VHDL compiler (or whatever the tool is) to turn
the results of the VHDL into something that can be burned into the
FPGA? I'm curious about the process since I've never built anything
along these lines.
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.
Which would mean that you actually have an emulator of those CPU's
instead of a nearly identical part. That's not necessarily bad, except
that there may be subtle bugs that may creep in due to misunderstandings
or undocumented opcodes, etc.