Which Dec Emulation is the MOST useful and Versatile?

[ben]

On 10/27/2017 9:27 AM, Jay Jaeger via cctech wrote:

> With respect to your #5, I have some direct experience with that, and am
> working on a tricky project to implement the IBM 1410 in a FPGA at the
> gate level, based on the SMS Automated Logic Diagrams (ALD's).   What I
> have found so far is that a rule or two can be used to deal with the
> speed and design technology differences.  I don't think that the issues
> pointed out make it "hard", really.  The hard part, to me, is
> deciphering the original design from drawings or other incomplete
> engineering information.  ;)  The rules I have developed so far:
> 
> a.  If the original implementation uses cross-connected gates (or
>      transistors), the FPGA model can follow those with a synchronous D
>      flip flop.  It usually works because the clock times are often 10
>      or more times faster or more than the original machine clock.  I
>      have successfully used this technique to implement an original
>      design that was not all that great (see "b." below for details) that
>      actually had some race conditions in the original design.
> 
>      The information on this project can be found at:
> 
>      https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2v4WRwISEQRcFpNM0o2VDJiWFk
> 
> b.  I did not come across delays in the one project I completed
>      this way (a re-implementation of a design done for a class in
>      college in 1973), but my next project will, and my plan is to use a
>      counter (or, I suppose, a small number of cascaded D flip flops
>      acting as a bucket brigade) in cases where that delay is needed for
>      the implementation to work properly.  (In cases where the delay
>      exists only to match propagation times along different wire/cable
>      lengths in the original implementation, one might be able to turn
>      the delay into a wire).
> 
> JRJ

With some FPGA venders you could get a TTL library components,
so you could input older designs. You may have to dig around for them
because that is not a NEW selling feature any more. Also logic
cells don't have asynchronous  set and clear anymore.

Ben.