Squeezing FPGA memory @ Big Mess o’Wires: I’m developing an Apple II disk controller that’s based on the UDC disk controller design. The original UDC card had 8K of ROM and 2K of RAM, so it needs 10K of combined memory. The FPGA device I’m using for prototyping, a Lattice MachXO2-1200, has 8K of embedded […]
Category Archives: FPGA
Reverse-engineering the first FPGA chip, the XC2064
Ken has written an article on reverse engineering the first FPGA chip, the XC2064: The FPGA was invented by Ross Freeman1 who co-founded Xilinx2 in 1984 and introduced the first FPGA, the XC2064. 3 This FPGA is much simpler than modern FPGAs—it contains just 64 logic blocks, compared to thousands or millions in modern FPGAs—but […]
Lattice iCE40 Ultra Plus FPGA: Gnarly Grey Upduino – Tutorial 1: The basics
A how-to getting an LED flashing using VHDL from Harris’ Electronics: The cheap price however comes with a few niggles, namely getting it up and running in the first place with the limited documentation. Gnarly Grey do a great job of explaining programming a starting program but don’t say much about further development. With that […]
An open source frequency meter and clock generator
Boris Landoni writes about an open source project frequency meter and clock generator: On the hardware of the controller board LED Matrix, by taking advantage of the reconfigurability of the onboard FPGA, we can build a bivalent tool that is extremely useful to have on our work bench. Via Open Electronics.
Implementing FizzBuzz on an FPGA
Ken Shirriff writes: I recently started FPGA programming and figured it would be fun to use an FPGA to implement the FizzBuzz algorithm. An FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) is an interesting chip that you can program to implement arbitrary digital logic. This lets you build a complex digital circuit without wiring up individual gates and […]
Yellowstone JTAG debugging
A follow-up to the FPGA-based disk controller for Apple II post, Steve writes: After a month of inactivity, I finally returned to my unfinished Yellowstone disk controller project to investigate the JTAG programming problems. Yellowstone is an FPGA-based disk controller card for the Apple II family, that aims to emulate a Liron disk controller or other models […]
FPGA-based disk controller for Apple II
Steve Chamberlin over at Big Mess o’Wires has been working on an FPGA-based disk controller for Apple II, which he call Yellowstone: Apple II disk controller cards are weird, there are a crazy number of different types, and many are rare and expensive. Can an FPGA-based solution save the day for retro collectors? You bet! Nearly […]
BML USB 3.0 FPGA interface over PMOD
An open-source-hardware USB 3.0 to FPGA PMOD interface design from Black Mesa Labs: Black Mesa Labs is presenting an open-source-hardware USB 3.0 to FPGA PMOD interface design. First off, please lower your expectations. USB 3.0 physical layer is capable of 5 Gbps, or 640 MBytes/Sec. This project can’t provide that to your FPGA over 2 […]
BML HDMI video for FPGAs over PMOD
Here are two open-source-hardware HDMI video boards for adding digital video to FPGA platforms with standard PMOD connectors from Black Mesa Labs: The BML 3bit HDMI over single-PMOD uses 7 of 8 available LVCMOS 3.3 pins on a single PMOD to provide 3bit color ( R,G,B 100% On or Off ). Example Verilog design drives 800×600 […]
Old, not obsolete. Working with the Xilinx Virtex-E FPGA in a huge BGA package
Andy Brown not only did a nice write up about his experience with the Xilinx XCV600e FPGA and creating a development board for it, but he also did a great video walkthrough: The general aim of this project will be to create a generic development board for the FPGA. This isn’t as simple as it […]
Ambient TV lighting, a low-power solution for creating ambient light based on a TV signal
Here’s an ambient TV lighting project by Shiva Rajagopal from Cornell University, built as a final project: Here’s a project I recently made for the ECE 5760 FPGA class at Cornell University. I have created a real-time system that can use an NTSC video signal to simulate the lighting effects of a TV in a […]
Nanocounter is an accurate frequency counter using an FPGA, STM32 and a bluetooth android app
Andy Brown has designed and built a frequency counter using an FPGA, STM32F072 and an Android GUI – the Nanocounter: After studying the above counting methods I decided on the following goals for my frequency counter, which I’m going to call Nanocounter. Very accurate measurement over a range of 1 to 50MHz. This would cover the range […]
How do I FPGA?
TC-Engineering writes: I’ve been thinking about building stuff with FPGA’s for a while, and usually get turned away because FPGA’s are considerably harder to implement than microcontrollers since they have no on-chip memory. It is necessary to re-program the gates every time they power up, which requires an external flash memory chip. There aren’t great […]
Designing a CPU in VHDL
A detailed guide on designing a CPU in VHDL by Domipheus: This is part of a series of posts detailing the steps and learning undertaken to design and implement a CPU in VHDL. Previous parts are available here, and I’d recommend they are read before continuing. Part 10 was supposed to be a very big part, […]
Implementing a multi-peripheral controller using a tiny mixed-signal FPGA
Max Maxfield over at the Embedded.com writes: As you may recall from previous columns, I tend to think of Silego’s GPAK chips as being super-small mixed-signal FPGAs that you can literally design and program in just a few minutes, and that cost only a few cents each. Well, the folks at Silego were so excited by […]
Announcing the STREAM board
The Myriad crew has announced the new Stream board released through the MyriadRF initiative for doing SDR with the LMS6002D/LMS7002M from Lime Microsystems. It’s a fully Open Source board with Kicad design files and a fully Open Source OpenRISC SoC for the FPGA: We are thrilled to announce that the STREAM board is the latest project […]
TAPR/DCC video: System on a Chip – Programming FPGAs for Mixed Signal Systems
Here is the first of a four-part video series recently posted from the 2014 TAPR/DCC conference in Austin, TX. This is from the DCC’s Sunday Seminar, “a four-hour deep dive” into a single subject, in this case FPGA programming for mixed signal systems. “The presenter is amateur radio operator Chris Testa KD2BMH who is designing […]
An FPGA sprite graphics accelerator with a 180MHz STM32F429 controller and 640 x 360 LCD
Here’s a cool open source FPGA graphics accelerator board by Andy Brown. Check out the full write-up here: In this project I’m going to attempt to design and build a sprite-based graphics accelerator that will function as a co-processor to an MCU. Using cheap off-the-shelf components I’m hoping to achieve a level of gaming performance that […]
FPGA : RC Servo and Stepper motor control in Verilog
Trandi blogged about his RC servo and stepper motor project. He writes: For those interested in reproducing this example: The board is called “EP2C5 Mini Board” and has a EP2C5T144C8 Cyclone II FPGA on it I used a standard, 9grams micro RC Servo I used a 28BYJ-48 stepper motor and it’s driver (you can purchase these […]
PyroEDU Online Course: An Introduction to FPGA and CPLD
PyroElectro just started an online course, An Introduction To FPGA And CPLD, through uReddit.com: Here’s a short overview of the course: This course is meant to create a pathway into learning about FPGA and CPLD electronics, for people who are scared of the code, tools and general trickery that usually comes with it. A hands-on approach […]