I've been trying to mess with programmable logic chips and such...
have no problem defining the logic (havng been a programmer for ~30 yrs), and designing circuits is pretty easy.
But I'm having a real problem getting the logic to the chip! I can't seem to find the right software to go between the design-level and the physical programmer/burner.
There are a half-dozen pretty good design packages made by the chip manufacturers; but they will only go to the physical level on their own chipsets... most of which have hundreds of pins, and I'm trying to stay very compact - I don't really need more than a 20- or 24-pin chip (actually there are only 2 input and 5 output bits needed).
I have a 'universal programmer', a TOP2005 that I picked up cheap; and have designed using TI's version of the old PAL16R8 (TI #TIBPAL16R8) as the object chip. Have gotten a design that works - have tested it with simulation modules; and was able to get output in both VHDL and ABEL formats. But still need to translate one of those to a format the programmer wants (.bin, .hex, .jed) (or to .pld, for WinCupl, from which I can get a .jed file).
I have spent literally dozens of hours trying to get software to match up; I could have generated a binary file manually by now!
Anybody out there who can help me settle this?
suggestions for another way to go?
This is going to be a pretty cool thing once I get it done, and I intend to share it all with LPF folks when there's something to show.
DanQ
have no problem defining the logic (havng been a programmer for ~30 yrs), and designing circuits is pretty easy.
But I'm having a real problem getting the logic to the chip! I can't seem to find the right software to go between the design-level and the physical programmer/burner.
There are a half-dozen pretty good design packages made by the chip manufacturers; but they will only go to the physical level on their own chipsets... most of which have hundreds of pins, and I'm trying to stay very compact - I don't really need more than a 20- or 24-pin chip (actually there are only 2 input and 5 output bits needed).
I have a 'universal programmer', a TOP2005 that I picked up cheap; and have designed using TI's version of the old PAL16R8 (TI #TIBPAL16R8) as the object chip. Have gotten a design that works - have tested it with simulation modules; and was able to get output in both VHDL and ABEL formats. But still need to translate one of those to a format the programmer wants (.bin, .hex, .jed) (or to .pld, for WinCupl, from which I can get a .jed file).
I have spent literally dozens of hours trying to get software to match up; I could have generated a binary file manually by now!
Anybody out there who can help me settle this?
suggestions for another way to go?
This is going to be a pretty cool thing once I get it done, and I intend to share it all with LPF folks when there's something to show.
DanQ