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Plea for help - 29PL141

hi PLD gurus - especially those with grey hair :-)

For a fun project, and also on behalf of someone who asked me about it, I was hoping to mimic the functionality of the AMD 29PL141 programmable state machine (vintage ~1988) in an FPGA of some kind. But my old copy of the '141 data sheet has gone missing, probably lost in one of my rare and often disastrous domestic-rubbish purges.

Does anyone have a copy, somewhere in their archives, that they could let me see by some means or other? There doesn't seem to be a copy of it anywhere on the web, which is not surprising because it wasn't very long-lived and it was POPped (*) long before the days of web-published data sheets.

(POP: Planned Obsolescence Program, euphemism for dropping a part from your product line and consequently dropping a few customers in the fertilizer)

Thanks in advance

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Jonathan Bromley, Consultant

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Reply to
Jonathan Bromley
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Jonathan -

If for some reason Philip Freidin doesn't see your post, send him an e-mail. He was the father of the 29PL141.

Bob Perlman Cambrian Design Works

Reply to
Bob Perlman

OK, I give in. Is there some kind of ex-AMD conspiracy going on here? I already know that Peter Alfke was with AMD for a while; Bob, unless I'm much mistaken, I attended your presentation on proposals for the 29050 CPU at an AMD FAE meeting; now you tell me about Philip Freidin... Will all those who are *not* AMD alumni please stand up? :-)

-- Jonathan Bromley, Consultant

DOULOS - Developing Design Know-how VHDL * Verilog * SystemC * Perl * Tcl/Tk * Verification * Project Services

Doulos Ltd. Church Hatch, 22 Market Place, Ringwood, Hampshire, BH24 1AW, UK Tel: +44 (0)1425 471223 mail: snipped-for-privacy@doulos.com Fax: +44 (0)1425 471573 Web:

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The contents of this message may contain personal views which are not the views of Doulos Ltd., unless specifically stated.

Reply to
Jonathan Bromley

I believe it was Jerry Sanders who said in the early 70's that in the future, everyone would work at AMD for 15 minutes. It took me 6-1/2 years, but I finally fulfilled the 15-minute work requirement.

By the way, there's an excellent AMD alumni Web site here:

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Bob Perlman Cambrian Design Works

Reply to
Bob Perlman

Reply to
Peter Alfke

Check, I got the grey hair (so does Bob and Peter)

No need, here I am

Yes, there is a conspiracy. Live with it.

As it turns out, I was the step father of the 29PL141, which I inherited from Arthur Khu (also now at Xilinx), when AMD had one of its quarterly company wide reorganizations. The 29PL141 was born in the PAL group, and I believe Arthur and Om Agrawal were the real parents. I was the product planning manager for microcoded products (29xx (bit slice) and 293xx (word slice)) and the powers that be felt that it belonged with the other microcoded products. There were several other family members: 29PL142,

29CPL151, 29CPL142, 29CPL153, 29PL144, 29CPL154, 29BCPL164. I was father or co-father of these.

I have a spare copy of the Am29PL100 handbook that contains detailed info on the architecture, and applications examples. It has pretty much everything ever published about the products, except the data sheet. I'll gladly send it to you if you pay the postage.

Separately, I have emailed you a copy of the assembler and simulator, and the text files that go with them. Maybe that is sufficient for your project.

Philip

Philip Freidin Fliptronics

Reply to
Philip Freidin

Interesting timing.

Due to another thread, I pulled out an old board to check the date code on a XC3020. It says 8833

That board has a 29C116 - a nice chip for I/O controllers that need some smarts to follow control blocks and such.

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Reply to
Hal Murray

Thanks to everyone for the entertaining and helpful responses. Much appreciated.

-- Jonathan Bromley, Consultant

DOULOS - Developing Design Know-how VHDL * Verilog * SystemC * Perl * Tcl/Tk * Verification * Project Services

Doulos Ltd. Church Hatch, 22 Market Place, Ringwood, Hampshire, BH24 1AW, UK Tel: +44 (0)1425 471223 mail: snipped-for-privacy@doulos.com Fax: +44 (0)1425 471573 Web:

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The contents of this message may contain personal views which are not the views of Doulos Ltd., unless specifically stated.

Reply to
Jonathan Bromley

For further evidence of this insidious conspiracy, consider this recent ebay listing:

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" PGA Tutorial and Design Tools! " This is from 1988, during the time that AMD was in " the PGA/LCA business along with Xilinx

Brian

Reply to
Brian Davis

Wish I had seen that! I desperately need the development software (XACT) for 2064 and 2018 parts in order to do some maintenance on a client design. The client aparently lost the development tools years ago. They'd like to convince customers to buy new hardware, but the customers have a maintenance contract so my client would have to pay for the new hardware.

Reply to
Eric Smith

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