Zitat Gideon at Facebook 11:15 Uhr
QuoteDisplay MoreStatus update on the 1541 Ultimate-II+ hardware validation:
- I spent quite some time on porting the software to the Nios softcore processor, just because it will help me in debugging the firmware, as Altera provides a nice Eclipse based IDE. I can just make changes, compile and run without the hassle of using the SD card to transfer firmware code to be tested. And, I can step through the code as well. Yey, finally!
- The porting of the software turned out to be not that easy as I thought. I almost pulled my hairs out when I ran into Software <-> FPGA communication issues, as the processor used on the Xilinx FPGA is big endian, and the Nios-II from Altera is little endian. ARGH!
- Functionally it seems that the hand soldered first prototype is quite good. I have been able to enable the USB PHY, the two-port USB hub, as well as the Ethernet port. I can see the network packets coming in. I have not tested the transmit path yet. I can also talk to the new RTC chip, and it seems to be counting seconds. The registers of the audio codec are accessible as well, but I have not spent time yet in setting the registers such that I can actually hear something.
- I am currently using the Altera DDR2 controller to access the external memory. However, the performance is so dramatic, that I will be forced to write my own DDR2 controller. Otherwise I will never meet the timing requirements to serve all 6510 bus requests for cartridge emulation. Unless, I will find a way to get the controller to do it in the way I want.
- In short: There is still work to be done, but so far so good!
Also es wird kräftig weiter entwickelt, da sind wir sehr gespannt.
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