Patrick,
Good stuff, see what you get back!
I'm getting together replies to the purchasing questions you asked.
Group:
Patrick is in Boston, and attached to MIT.
Please get some replies to him.
Toby Churchill
20 Panton Street
CAMBRIDGE, CB2 1HP
www.tobychurchill.info
On 11 April 2011 17:49, Patrick Doyle <
wpdster@gmail.com> wrote:
> Can anybody point me at a "Getting Started with BaloonBoard" resource?
>
> As background, I would like to use a BalloonBoard as a testbench to
> control a custom ASIC. I have a pile o' Verilog code that I use
> currently in simulation for testing the ASIC. I would like to drop
> that code into an FPGA and control it with an external processor. I
> would also like to talk to that external processor from some desktop
> (or laptop) PC.
>
> If I were to design this test board my self, I would put an FPGA next
> to an embedded processor (such as a PXA270, or an OMAP). Gee, that
> sounds a lot like a BalloonBoard. :-)
>
> I've poked around the wiki a bit and have learned a few things.
>
> 1) It seems that I can plug into J14, apply power & ground, and talk
> serially to the board.
> -- as an aside, http://www.balloonboard.org/balloonwiki/Software
> states that I need to apply power via "the main molex connector
> J10,..." I believe that should be "J14" (at least according to the
> schematics).
>
> -- as another aside, is the BOM for the BalloonBoard online anywhere?
> It would be much simpler for me to look up J14 on the BOM and find the
> mating connector at Digikey than it would be to try to guess what
> "PH200_4WAY_RT" means.
>
> -- as yet another aside, for any security folks who happen to be
> monitoring this email, "BOM" refers to "Bill of Materials", and not
> homophones that might come to mind when pronouncing it out loud. I'm
> not even going to touch "Pinko connector" here.
>
> 2) It would be nicer if I could plug a USB cable into the board, plug
> the other end into a PC and speak TCP/IP to the board from a random
> Windows based PC. Does the USB OTG or USB client work well enough to
> do this? Does Windows support this (via USB "gadget" or some other
> other mechanism).
>
> 3) It just dawned on me yesterday that the FPGA on the board might be
> required for correct operation of the board and that I may not be able
> to program it with my own arbitrarily custom code. Can I put
> arbitrarily custom code in the FPGA?
>
> 4) I read in 1.0-stable/vhdl/README:
>
> You are strongly urged to read "L3 Hardware" before altering these files
>
> where would I find the "L3 Hardware" document?
>
> -- BTW, http://www.balloonboard.org/balloonwiki/BalloonFPGA says that
> the FPGA code can be found at:
>
> $ svn checkout svn://www.balloonboard.org/balloon/trunk/vhdl/balloonboard-vhdl
>
> Some spelunking suggests that it might really live at:
>
> $ svn checkout svn://
> www.balloonboard.org/balloon/balloon/tags/1.0-stable/vhdl
>
> I'm happy to sign up for a wiki account and make these changes as I
> find them. Is there some sort of review process that will ensure that
> I don't change them incorrectly and thus direct people in the wrong
> direction?
>
> 5) Assuming I can place my own code in the FPGA, can anybody point me
> at an example of using the FPGA to do something simple, say blink an
> LED or something, by running code in userland on the processor,
> communicating with the FPGA via a device driver (perhaps even
> something as simple as opening /dev/mem and writing to registers via a
> memory mapped interface)? What if I wanted something a little more
> complex than that with interrupt generated events?
>
> Thanks for any tips and pointers folks can give me. I am asking all
> of this in the spirit of "If I don't ask, I won't find out" and not in
> the spirit of "can you do this for me". If I designed the board
> myself, I'd have to do all of this myself. If other folks have done
> this already and it's just a matter of finding the right pages in the
> wiki showing what they've done, I'm glad to stand upon the shoulders
> of giants and learn from them/you.
>
> Thanks.
>
> --wpd
>
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