Some time ago I managed to get (under NDA) the programming info from Xilinx so now I can program one of their coolrunners via JTAG with my toolchain (the CPLD on this design is reprogrammable over the net, i.e. the board CPU does its JTAG access etc.).
I am now getting to what should be the easy part - writing the CPLD source to produce some (very simple) logic in a jedec file, after which I am fine.
I got the current xilinx software, started it under windows and got really scared. Last time I used a not-in-house written logic compiler tool it was the PHDL thing for the Philips coolrunner (before I had my tool working). It was blindingly obvious how to use it and I don't remember having to discover much if anything about it, I just used it. Did not waste an hour.
I already wasted a few hours with the new xilinx tool.
It looks like because I want to hit a nail - and I do know how to use a hammer quite well - I have to hire a farm of robots so one will drive another to the shop where they will pick a truck of hammers and bring them back for another robot to choose the right hammer, then they'l put together a table onto which the operation will be performed and eventrually the talk robot will be telling me how to proceed with which hammer so I can hit my nail while holding my arms to protect me from injuring myself. Just terrific.
Can someone please suggest something simpler? Which is my fastest way? I am not interested in learning all about their tools, I just want my logic into a jedec file (normally a 10 minutes' task here for what this is with my old coolrunner tools, but now I want to use a xcr3128xl part). There is some ABEL thing, is it usable in a way similar to more sane CPLD tools? (I gather it gets translated into vhdl to be processed but I guess I can live with that for now). Or their schematic entry, can it be usable? I wasted an hour until I
**began to** figure out how to assign pins to things (far from having mastered that yet - not bad for a guy who has written his own toolchains for such stuff while having to do some reverse enginnering on the way, eh...).Thanks,
Dimiter
------------------------------------------------------ Dimiter Popoff Transgalactic Instruments
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