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• I2C Front Panel Control

  land-boards.com • 07/07/2021 at 20:22 • 0 comments

  There are several other IOP16 demos that use the Land Boards Front Panel I2C card. The Hackaday page for the Front Panel is here.

  The code controls the four MCP23016 parts. These are 16-bit I2C parallel I/O expanders. The advantage using the Land Boards Front panel card is it only uses 2 FPGA I/O pins to read 32 pushbuttons and write 32 LEDs. The IOP16 runs the Front Panel I2C interface. The GitHub for the Front Panel example is here.

  There are three examples so far.

  • FrontPanel01 - Controls the second port of a Dual Port SRAM simulating control of a VHDL Retro Computer
  • FrontPanel01B - Controls the second port of a Dual Port SRAM simulating control of a VHDL Retro Computer
  • FrontPanel01_Test_LoopBack - Loopback toggle of pushbutton to LEDs.

  There's also an example for Multicomp which controls an M6800 CPU running MIKBUG. This is a fully functional Front Panel example.

• Blinkenlight Demo

  land-boards.com • 07/07/2021 at 20:03 • 0 comments

  New Timer Unit

  Added a timer unit to the IOP16. The timer unit allows a time value to be written to the Timer and the timer can be polled from the IOP16 to determine when the time has elapsed.

  The timer unit can count in uSecs (0-255), mSecs (0-255) or Seconds (0-255). Writing the appropriate time value to the timer unit starts the timer running. The timer status register indicates when the count is in progress (d0 = 1). This facilitates simple polling.

  Here's the IOP16 code to blink an LED off and every second:

  000    START    0x7800    IOW    #0x00    IO_00   WRITE TO LED    
  001             0x2001    LRI    Reg0     0X01    TIME 1 SEC    
  002             0x7006    IOW    Reg0     IO_06   STORE TO START TIMER    
  003    WAITDUN  0x6104    IOR    Reg1     IO_04   READ TIMER    
  004             0x8101    ARI    Reg1     0X01    CHECK BUSY    
  005             0xDFFE    BNZ    WAITDUN                    
  006             0x7900    IOW    #0x01    IO_00   WRITE TO LED    
  007             0x2001    LRI    Reg0     0X01    TIME 1 SEC    
  008             0x7006    IOW    Reg0     IO_06   STORE TO START TIMER    
  009    WAITD2   0x6104    IOR    Reg1     IO_04   READ TIMER    
  00a             0x8101    ARI    Reg1     0X01    CHECK BUSY    
  00b             0xDFFE    BNZ    WAITD2                    
  00c             0xE000    JMP    START                    
  

• New GitHub repo

  land-boards.com • 07/06/2021 at 01:09 • 0 comments

  Moved the CPU to its own GitHub repo. 

  Example code folder.

  Higher level examples.

• Speeding Up the CPU

  land-boards.com • 07/03/2021 at 21:17 • 0 comments

  The IOP16 runs at 8 of 50 MHz clocks per instruction. That is 6.25 MIPS which really is way more than fast enough for this use. The states are Grey Coded as follows:

  Most of the cycles do nothing. There is no good reason this can't run twice as fast. The Grey Codes are:

  Made the change and it worked. It now runs at 12.5 MIPS. Way overkill, but why not.
  

• Simple Application Example

  land-boards.com • 06/22/2021 at 21:42 • 0 comments

  Simple code example where the IOP16B reads the pushbutton and writes to the LED on the FPGA card. 

  Sources

  • Application VHDL code is here.
  • IOP16B VHDL code is here.
  • Assembly code is here.
  • Some other VHDL pieces are in subdirectories from here.

  Memory Map

  Single peripheral address (0x00), data bit (D0).

  Top Level Entity

  entity TestIOP16B is
    port (
      -- Clock and reset
      i_clk      : in std_logic := '1';   -- Clock (50 MHz)
      i_n_reset  : in std_logic := '1';
      -- The key and LED on the FPGA card
      i_key1      : in std_logic := '1';  -- KEY1 on the FPGA card
      o_UsrLed    : out std_logic := '1'  -- USR LED on the FPGA card
    );
  end TestIOP16B;
  

  CPU Instance

  IOP16: ENTITY work.IOP16
  -- Need to pass down instruction RAM and stack sizes
    generic map     ( 
      INST_SRAM_SIZE_PASS  => 512,  -- Small code size since program is "simple"
      STACK_DEPTH_PASS     => 4     -- Single level subroutine (not nested)
    )
    PORT map (
      i_clk             => i_clk,
      i_resetN          => w_resetClean_n,
      -- Peripheral bus signals
      i_periphDataIn    => w_periphIn,
      o_periphWr        => w_periphWr,
      o_periphRd        => w_periphRd,
      o_periphDataOut   => w_periphOut,
      o_periphAdr       => w_periphAdr
    );
  

  Code

  List file is:

  000    SELF    0x6000    IOR    0x00    IO_00    read pushbutton
  001            0x7000    IOW    0x00    IO_00    write LED
  002            0xE000    JMP    SELF                    
  

   IOP_ROM

  The ROM file name has to be IOP_ROM and it gets stored in the current project folder. That allows for the IOP16B to be used in other projects. The Assembler creates a MIF file which gas to be loaded:

  IOP_ROM

  The IOP_ROM instance has two parameters: INST_SRAM_SIZE_PASS and STACK_DEPTH_PASS.

  -- Set stack size in STACK_DEPTH generic
  IOP16: ENTITY work.IOP16
  -- Need to pass down instruction RAM and stack sizes
    generic map {
      INST_SRAM_SIZE_PASS => 512,  -- Small code size since program is "simple"
      STACK_DEPTH_PASS    => 1     -- Single level subroutine (not nested)
  )
  

   INST_SRAM_SIZE_PASS has to match the size of the IOP_ROM.

  STACK_DEPTH_PASS can be 0, 1, or > 1 (typically 4 for 16) deep stack,

  Application Example Logic

  -- Peripheral bus read mux
  
  w_periphIn <= "0000000"&i_key1 when (w_periphAdr=x"00") else
                x"00";
  
  -- Strobes/Selects
  w_wrLED <= '1' when ((w_periphAdr=x"00") and (w_periphWr = '1')) else '0';
  
  latchLED: PROCESS (i_clk)
  BEGIN
    IF rising_edge(i_clk) THEN
      if w_wrLED = '1' then
        o_UsrLed <= w_periphOut(0);
      END IF;
    END IF;
  END PROCESS;

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