Allison: 2910c version of z80 - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

6 May 2001

From: Richard Erlacher &lt;edick(a)idcomm.com&gt;

...
 3000A and 3100 series.  My old XACT tools unfortunately
don't support it either,
...
 however, as the tools I bought only went through the 2K
series.  I've been
...
 unable to find the dongle for that, however, though I
don't miss it. 

The copy of XACT and earlier tools I can use for the 2064s runs fine on
dos
wothout a dongle.

...
 The OS under which the XILINX tools seem to run best,
at least according to
...
 their tech support folks, is Win98, though they claim
it runs just as well under
...
 NT4.  I see essentially no difference, myself.  There
are new tools for LINUX,

I've run Synario under W95 and WinNT4 without problems.

...
 by the way, though I don't know how well they work
or are supported at XILINX.
...
 They are VERY generous with support, however, once
you've bought into their
...
 tools, even though I only bought the cheapest set.

Yes, they are good but not so cheap.

...
 I'd not be afraid to give the SPARTAN series a try
for building an experimental
...
 version of a '70's-'80's generation
CPU.  They are relatively (choke)
inexpensive and available in versions with sufficient on-board RAM that you
...
 might not need the higher pin counts required to
interface external memory.
...
 Unfortunately, the high-pin-count parts are hard to
prototype. 

The real problem is making/buying a protobaord for the high pin count,
that and time to actually do it.  I know there are plenty of parts out
ther that
can and many different tools.

Allison