VHDL / IBM SMS Data gathering and HDL Synthesis Update

[Tom Uban]

Very cool!

I know of MicroBlaze, but always thought it wasn't free?

--tom

On 6/14/20 4:25 PM, Jay Jaeger via cctalk wrote:
> Don't know if anybody much cares, but:
>
> The HDL synthesis aspect of the SMS data gathering / HDL synthesis
> application is coming along.  I can now handle:
>
> - Oscillators (using a counter divider)
>
> - Delay lines (using a shift register, so limited to a reasonable number
>  of FPGA clock clock cycles, so, say 200 ns is not unreasonable (20 bit
> shift register at 100 MHz).
>
> - Recognition and consolidation of individual signals into a "bus" when
> generating groups corresponding to a group of individual ALD sheets.
> (The individual ALD sheets use the individual signal names as they
> appear on the sheet).  A simple database table associates a given
> individual signal with a bus, and identifies the bit in the bus that
> corresponds to the individual signal.
>
> So, I have not generated the IBM 1410 main oscillator, its main logic
> clock and its I Ring - used to control instruction decode.  I have
> synthesized the logic clock into an FPGA and run it (with a slowed down
> 1410 oscillator so I could see what was going on.)
>
> Also, a word about VHDL - and the Xilinx Vivado.  While GHDL is useful,
> I have found that Vivado is not slow at editing and *simulation*.  Silly
> me - I got in the habit of synthesizing stuff before I tested it under
> simulation - partly because I didn't know any better at first.  Vivado's
> waveform viewer has some advantages (and disadvantages) compared to what
> is available for GHDL.
>
> I have also started exploring a piece of "intellectual property" I can
> use - MicroBlaze - to allow my generated system to talk to my PC, via
> TCP, for things like lights and switches.  (Kind of like how the Amdahl
> machines used to use first DG Novas, and later little UNIX systems for
> their consoles, giving them access to the internals of the machine.)
>
> I knew MicroBlaze existed, but now I have actually played with it a bit
> -- still learning.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroBlaze
>
>
>