Well there is already a open core for ARM, also there has been mention of PDP 8, 11, MIPs etc which people have been interested in. I really don't think it is that hard to use FPGAs though I am still learning. Sat down and read a couple of books and there are a lot of tutorials on the web Any ways you used one and did not really exploit it - LAVA is a FPGA and there are a lot more capabilities than you use in that project. Any way I am going to move forward with my ideas - more for a super I/O chip not a processor. I think once you get beyond a 16 bit processor on the S100 bus, you are trying to put an Indy car engine in a Volkswagen which is not very practical.
On Tuesday, August 26, 2014 5:58:54 PM UTC-5, monahanz wrote: > > Hi Dave, A while back I took a look at programming FPGA’s, got the G.R > Smith FPGA’s 101 book. Scared the daylights out of me! I conclude the > only way I could ever get up to speed programming those things would be to > attend some serious programming course(s). That in itself is not a show > stopper, but even if I thoroughly mastered the art, there is no way I could > hammer one into shape to emulate an ARM or Atom CPU. To my mind why try > and do this when a piece of dedicated silicon is already available so that > one can get Linux etc. up and going quickly on the S100 bus. Going back to > the hammer and nail analogy, I see FPGA’s as the software flip side of the > hardware types with silicon. > > Thinking more about what would be really nice for us perhaps would be > something equivalent to the old Propeller CPU (but with 32 bit registers, > GHz speeds and 2-4GB RAM). It has most I/O pins available, a simple > (downloadable) built in video & keyboard capability. As I understand it, > their next 32 bit CPU design failed last year in fabrication so there is > little chance of anything close to the above soon. Bare chip ARM, atoms > CPU’s are not available to us and are BGA and so unusable anyway. This > leaves us with SOC’s & COM’s (system on a chip, computers on a module… > etc.). To my mind the closer we could get to an straight ARM/Atom etc. > with just DRAM, video I/O and as many GPIO pins the better. > > Andrew, the Beagle Bone has some possibilities, I don’t like the only > 512MG RAM limitation. Also by today’s standards speed is slow (~600MHz). > It’s going to be kind of kludge to fit it onto an S100 board. The > connector pins are on the wrong side for that. Perhaps one could do two > real short ribbon cable connectors to 0.1’ pins on the board. Alternatively > de-soldering them and put them on the bottom (probably risky) could work. > Upside-down will not work. > > John > > > > > > *From:* [email protected] <javascript:> [mailto: > [email protected] <javascript:>] *On Behalf Of *yoda > *Sent:* Tuesday, August 26, 2014 11:30 AM > *To:* [email protected] <javascript:> > *Subject:* [N8VEM-S100:5045] Re: ARM CPU on the S100Bus-II > > > > John > > > > Why not look at something like this: > http://numato.com/saturn-spartan-6-fpga-development-board-with-ddr-sdram > > > > It opens up a lot of possibilities - you can make you custom CPU to do > what you want, it has memory and you can attach about anything you want > with "some programming" I have a couple of these and you can get them > without the pins soldered so you can reverse the connectors. I am looking > at build a graphics display with it for the S100 and maybe some other > devices on the same board (a super I/O board). It might be even possible > to split the 32MB of memory into 16 MB of S100 bus and 16MB for graphics so > you could get all I/O and memory on a single board. The other way you > could use is there are all kinds of cores available on opencores.org so > you could have a generic CPU board. Download a z80 core and it is a z80 > board, download a 6809 core and it is a 6809 processor - many different > cores to choose from. And forget all that S100 glue and multiprocessor > stuff - develop a s100 interface in the chip and be done with it. You > would still need transceivers and open collector drivers to drive the bus > but everything else is designed in the FPGA and you just reprogram it if > you make a mistake - no ripping up boards - just re-route in the chip. > > > > Any ways this is the direction I am looking at - just have to find some > time to start working on it. > > > > Dave > > > > On Monday, August 25, 2014 8:11:46 PM UTC-5, monahanz wrote: > > Hope it's OK with everybody but I started a new tread on this topic of > getting an ARM CPU on the S100 bus because the earlier one was getting long > and deep. > > My suggestion of using a EmbeddedARM.com TS-4900 raised serious questions > about the practicality of fabricating an S100 support board with two SMD > 100 pin connectors and getting the aligned right with hand soldering to the > overhead CPU mini-board. > > > > I want back to the drawing boards and discovered outfits that supply > the ARM CPU's using SODIMM connectors. Common on laptops etc. This > outfit "Toradex" seems to have a few that look suitable. See for example > > > http://developer.toradex.com/product-selector/colibri-t30#What_do_I_need_to_order > > > > They supply a base board to get one started. I would use that to build up > an S100 board. The "Colibri T30" is a Cortex-A9 based CPU and should > provide decent Linus and graphics. If I understand the terminology > correctly the board has 110 GPIO lines some of which one would use to drive > the S100 bus signals to talk to S100 I/O boards etc. > > > > > > Could those of you familiar with such things take a glance at the above > URL to see if I missing something major before I dig further. > > Thanks > > John > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "N8VEM-S100" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected] <javascript:>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "N8VEM-S100" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
