On Mar 11, 2010, at 2:33 PM, Philip Pemberton wrote:
And this is my current frustration! Verilog.
FPGAs. Etc.
Verilog isn't that hard to learn, it's all the other stuff that goes along with
it (metastability, clock synchronisation, clock domains, finite-state machine
implementation, ...)
It's a good point. If you want to make reliable designs you need to learn and
understand all those things very well.
But if you need hands on first, I might recommend finding an old copy of
"multisim". You can sometimes find
them on ebay. It's a really fun mixed mode simulator which will allow you to play
with logic and see the
results. It's completely graphical and has a lot of good examples. I often use it to
breadboard analog
designs before I solder - saves me a lot of time.
If you want to do real synchronous design, which most of these fpga or even cpld designs
should be,
you need to learn some fundamentals. As painful as it might be, I'd try and find one
of the entry level
EE logic design courses, either on the web or via a book. Do the exercises and learn the
concepts - they will
help you later. And, if you manage to find multisim, you can have a lot more fun doing
your homework :-)
If you get a copy of "gtkwave" and "cver", you can spend a lot of time
having fun making state machines
and simple cpu's. But you really need to learn proper state machine design if you
want your designs
to work in real hardware... I've done full up co-simulation with cver, gtkwave and
simh (plus some
glue software).
check out "Verilog Digital Computer Design: Algorithms Into Hardware". It has a
lot of examples you could
type in and get to work quickly. "Verilog quickstart" is also good, but it
assumes you already know digital
design.
In the end, verilog is just the tool. You'll need to understand good digital design
viscerally but once you do you
can use any HDL - they're all the same in the end.
-brad
Brad Parker
Heeltoe Consulting
781-483-3101
http://www.heeltoe.com