[Oberon] FPGA Oberon some news and a reply to F.P.

[Chris Burrows]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jan Verhoeven [mailto:jan at verhoeven272.nl]
> Sent: Sunday, 2 March 2014 10:21 PM
> To: greim at schleibinger.com; ETH Oberon and related systems
> Subject: Re: [Oberon] FPGA Oberon some news and a reply to F.P.
> 
> greim wrote:
> > Some news from my FPGA Oberon board:
> 
> Which board did you use?
> 

I'm not Marcus, but I'm also running RISC Oberon. I'm using a Spartan-3
board with 1000k gates. I bought mine direct from Digilent:

http://digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,400,799&Prod=S3BOARD

along with their JTAG-USB programming cable:

http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=JTAG-USB

> 
> I read that the PO board needs 200K Spartan chips. Would the cheaper board
be
> sufficient as well?
> 

The cheaper board IS the one with 200K gates isn't it? I understand that
ProjectOberon also works on the board with 200k gates.

I doubt that you can use the Spartan-3E board that was first on your list as
it doesn't appear to have a VGA port.

If you are going to buy a Spartan-3 board you might need to be quick as
Digilent state on the webpage above that they aren't going to produce any
more of these boards.

Paul Reed has listed all the requirements in the "Instructions" file on the
ProjectOberon website:

http://www.projectoberon.com

I've designed and ordered a single 40-pin 2" x 1" daughterboard to mount the
PS/2 mouse socket, RF module and a Micro-SDHC breakout board. I have been
notified that the first batch of PCBs has been manufactured and am hoping
they will arrive here in the next week or so. If they work OK I'll make the
design available for others to use.

>
> Can I program the boards with Linux?
> 

I am using Windows 7 but it appears you can use Linux.

I have used both the iMPACT tool of the Xilinx "ISE suite" and Digilent's
"Adept 2" software to program the board. I found Adept to be simpler and it
is all that you need if all you want to do is program the board using the
files in the S3RISCInstall.zip file on the Project Oberon website. You only
need the full Xilinx ISE if you want to modify or recompile the VHDL
sources.

Adept can be downloaded from:

http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=ADEPT2


Regards,
Chris

Chris Burrows
CFB Software
Astrobe v5.0: Oberon for ARM Cortex-M3
http://www.astrobe.com