The PCI controller's JTAG pins come out to a header, right? I've always been nervous about situations that offer the possibility of an irrecoverable goof-up. JTAG is a simple protocol. An external tool board could be plugged into the header through a cabe, and carry an OTP binary copy of the load image as it appears when passing through the JTAG port, plus a simple sequential state machine to write the image into the controller chip. If the EPROM on the tool board is socketed, different snapshots could be plugged in and loaded up for testing, with no worries about creating a doorstop if a test candidate is fatally buggy. Then we'd just have to figure out how to load a image into the EPROM in the field. RS-232 port on the tool board, maybe? We'd still need logic for that, but there are microprocessors that can take their firmware load through the RS-232 port, so it would always be possible to bootstrap from bare hardware, as long as you have a working PC with an RS-232 port.
-------------- Original message ---------------------- From: "Andy Fong" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > On 12/15/06, tsuraan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > This might be the way to go with things - VMWare player is available free > > > of charge for many platforms (it even works well with Gentoo linux, which > > > can't be said for Xilinx tools). Since OpenSolaris is available on a > > > rather > > > free license, it should be possible to make a VMWare image of a Solaris > > > installation with Xilinx tools already installed, and maybe even the OGA > > > (right?) source code checked out and loaded in the Xilinx tools. That > > > could > > > be distributed on the OGP page for any interested devs. I'll have a look > > > at > > > trying to make such a thing when I get off work tonight. > > > > Ok, so that's just not going to work. In addition to the fact that > > the free xilinx tools (webpack) are not redistributable, they don't > > even exist for Solaris. Xilinx Foundation is the only thing they > > offer for Solaris, and that's not terribly cheap. Xilinx Webpack is > > only available for RHEL, which is not readily available. CentOS and > > other RHEL clones exist, but they do not seem to use the exact same > > kernels, since I was never able to get the (binary-only) Webpack > > kernel driver to load. The kernel driver is required to do any actual > > programming of any hardware, so without that you just have synthesis > > tools. I never could figure out how to program an FPGA from linux... > > > > So, it would probably be possible to put together a gentoo VMWare > > player image with all the OGP recommended software on it and > > distribute that, but it looks like programming the card will require > > Windows. Is that correct? > > Once the PCI controller (which is on the Lattice fpga) is there. We > can programming the main fpga prom anywhere we want. The Xilinx tools > uses a JTAG cable to problem it. > We might be able to reprogram the lattice prom too but if anything > goes wrong, then you need a JTAG cable and proper software to > reprogram it. > > Andy > _______________________________________________ > Open-graphics mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics > List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com) _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
