Old FPGA question

Hi !

I have tried to enter the FPGA league for many years and I'm about to receive (at least ! the order was paid 6 months ago) my first prototype board with an Actel ProASIC. At last, I'll be able to go from the VHDL simulator to the VHDL synthesizer.

And today, in my favorite broker's "trash bin", i find a pair of unused Xilinx parts that may also serve me, but past experiences with unmounted FPGA chips make me cautious : I have already found XC3000 parts, some in PGA packages... Even an IKOS emulator

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with hundreds of FPGAs, but that are not supported anymore :-(

The reference of today's find : Virtex XCV400 HQ240AFP0241

So it's a 240-pin PQFP package that i can rather easily solder :-) but the marking implies a 2002 fab date, and i don't know if it's still possible to find SW that supports this part ... Would it be worth it to create a small dev PCB ? (and if the synth SW can run on Linux, that's a plus)

A google search will give results but not tell me if it is useful, and if there is some hope to configure it to something fun. Because besides the 2 FPGA, i have also found a bunch of SDRAM chips and 2MB FLASH chips :-) (plus a whole lot of things i already have)

yg, puzzled and clueless ....

Reply to
whygee
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That is definitely a very large (for it's time) and useful part. And it looks like even webpack now supports it, and webpack is now available for Linux. So sure, I would say go for it.

Reply to
Duane Clark

By the way, Xilinx is pretty good about making available old versions of their software to use on older parts. And while some of the older software is not available in Linux versions, most of it ran quite well under Wine.

Reply to
Duane Clark

Ugh. Those flash based FPGAs are not fun at all compared to SRAM based ones. Hope you get everything right in the simulator (and can simulate it all) because the programming cycle takes drastically longer.

If you want to get something done by way of gaining experience, get a modern inexpensive dev board with a spartan or cyclone part.

Reply to
cs_posting

well, a long time ago, I had a lot of fun with ... antifuse parts :-) there were Actel A1020 dev tools at my engineers' school and I was fond of this architecture, not to mention the Mentor Graphics GUI ! (on oooooold HP Apollo workstations, oh God..... now, THAT was slow even by that day's standards.)

I'm targetting "embedded applications", so the startup time and the parts count also matter. Going for Actel is also because I'm fed up of having to choose between the 2 other leaders.

because

sure, that's part of the deal :-) but even a slow devkit would be infinitely faster than ... nothing :-)

well, maybe this couple of Virtex chips is another opportunity for this.

Furthermore, I aim at maximal VHDL source code compatibility with the major architectures, so a second "target" is not a bad thing. Now, let's hope that my broker will dump not too old Altera parts.

YG

Reply to
whygee

Let's see in my oldienosaur collection :

4x Xilinx XC4010-5 PG191C (191-pin ceramic PGA) 2x XC3195A-4 PP175C (175-pin plastic grid array) A year ago, i was not able to find any support for them :-/

Now for the "big players" :

23x Altera Flex10K marked EPF10K130VBC600-2 / ABA340007 that's 2000-dated parts in terrifying 600-pin fine pitch BGA. I got them 1 year ago and have been unsuccessful with them.

The Xilinx parts in the IKOS Pegasus emulator are all BGA, and they are ok as they are soldered, but i have no idea of the PCB interconnexion .... so despite finding some basic documentation about them, they are desperately useless too :-( (see

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) In fact the only way to use it would be to find all the SW and schematics of the original manufacturer, which AFAIK has been bought (swallowed, assimilated and crushed) a loooong time ago by Mentor... what should I do ? (I have no use for the 1000A 3,3V power supply as is)

Just for the information : one of my applications for FPGA is to implement

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and I also want to develop some crude digital camera processing similar to the CMUcam. So unlike with F-CPU, I don't need extreme speed and densities, just something that works and can interface with 5V or 3,3V parts borrowed from other electronic stuffs (SRAM, SDRAM, microcontrollers, ISA buses, ...)

Regards, yg

Reply to
whygee

It would be here:

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However, I would not bother spending time on either of those parts ;)

Yea, I took a look at those pictures. Interesting, but probably more trouble than it is worth to do anything with it.

The XCV (Virtex) parts should be just fine for those kinds of purposes.

Reply to
Duane Clark

Hey, at the time, I thought those HP workstations were pretty good. I after getting used to it, I thought the Mentor Graphics mouse "strokes" were kind of handy. And I definitely liked the plain text project mapping files (I forget what they were called), something I wish all engineering tools had.

Reply to
Duane Clark

It was in 1996-1997, at

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The workstations were obviously "end of life" but needed by the SW for the course. In the administration, when it works, it's not changed :-) The teacher was very passionated (he's now retired), and I loved to spend time in the CAD room with the huge CRTs... It was definitely more exciting than the math courses of the rest of the day ! But when the poor HP workstations started to swap (there was no local disk), things got ugly... particularly because of the slow token-ring network :-/

I've not seen project mapping files, or I don't remember. I was more interested by the cool X-based GUI and the minimisation of my project's circuit :-) My personal experience with low-level computing at that time allowed me to shrink the system to a level almost suitable for the target chip :-) (all the precedent students were 10x too large, using unefficient methods)

Since then, my focus has shifted. I have to get things myself, and secure them so they can be accessed to whoever wants in the future. In the FPGA world, where things go faster than ever, it's not easy so I stayed away until now :-(

Oh, and thanks again for the comments in the other posts.

YG, happy

Reply to
whygee

The XCV400 is on the supported list of devices for ISE Webpack

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so you should not have any costs for tools. I would however wonder why this device was in the trash bin as undoubtedly some longer life products still use them.

John Adair Enterpo> Hi !

Reply to
John Adair

OK, thanks :-)

I have also downloaded some docs from xilinx.com and it seems that it fits my needs. Now I have to make a PCB...

Don't ask me that, I'm just looking in the trash bin :-)

Today I found there 50 or 60 reels of 1208 resistors. That's a treasure for my future designs :-))) Probably these resistors come from the same company as the FPGA, that probably closed. Often, the chairmen simply pay a recycling company to "dump the company's things" by fear of the environmental laws, and the recyclers are not electronicians or specialists. All they can spot are easy "valuable" things, because they don't look like chairs, desks, lamps...

One of the guys who works in a recycling company (where i scan the trash) used to repair CRTs (self-taught) but is clueless about many things. And his coworkers who "move" things are .. well, just "movers". They're paid to put things in a huge van, no matter if something is broken or valuable, because the CRT specialist will handle that and sell the "cool stuffs" on eBay. The rest is roughly sorted and goes to several recycling specialists (CRT, chemicals, PCB so gold is extracted...)

So in the end, they have a large supply of LCD, and even more CRTs, but most of them are in such a state that it's impossible to know if it works. No suitable cables, or power supplies, or accessories... But i won't complain : that where I got my Alphas, some SUNs, countless PCs and accessories...

YG, who has to sort all those resistor reels...

Reply to
whygee

Yann you'll have to tell me where this is ;-)

Nicolas

Reply to
Nicolas Matringe

ok :-) my old f-cpu email address still works ;-P Hint : it's in Paris.

btw, i checked my treasure : there are 57 reels of resistors and about 30 of ceramic capacitors. I'm riiich \o/ :-) But i'll have to build a reel holder, with all the wood that i have also found there :-)

then i'll have to etch a pair of PCB for the XCV400.

yg

Reply to
whygee

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