Archive for category FPGA/CPLD
Opencore: Quad 12bit DAC (LTC2624) in VHDL
Hello my readers, if I have any 
Summer is going on, my studies in FPGAs should also have an increase, but I had only a couple of days for vacation. Work work work! 
However I will keep my post short. This time I have implemented LTC2624 Quad 12bit DAC, which is placed on my Spartan-3E devkit, in VHDL. The module could be a bit tidier, but I think it is very easy to understand, plus I added some comments in the source. Read the rest of this entry »
Every fail is a lesson
Hello dear readers! Another one post with fail after success So I’ve managed to make SPI working on FPGA, but my first try using shift_left() did not work, so the solution is to use an array with counting array number, like array(i) and count incoming bytes after FF (not 0xFF, its FLIP-FLOP).
Ok back to my post. I’ve got 800×480 LED backlight LCD panel, which has 40 pins (yes, exact the same number as on my FX2 breakout board). However, I can’t remember LCD manufacturer. So they gave me some connectors and I had to solder it on breakout board. This is how I made it:
The wires I used was from very old HDD IDE 40 wires cable. Read the rest of this entry »
Altera BeMicro – expect nothing for small money
Hello again! Since I had to start forever loop on my ToDo task “Update blog”, here I am again! Ok, this entry will be about my new devboard, which I got from Arrow and its called Altera BeMicro. Here is how it looks like:
Looks really small heh? It has FTDI USB to 2xSerial chip, Cyclone III EP3C16F256 FPGA, ISSI SRAM, 8 LEDs, edge connector with 80 pins and an empty space for EPCS4 memory. Read the rest of this entry »
A little update
Hello my readers, long time – no talk . Work, studies and my lazyness lead to making this blog almost dead. Additionally, I have bought a new domain (www.scrts.net) and was thinking to revive this blog on the other server, but many blog fallowers asked me to update my blog as is. So thats it, I have made a major comeback!
Firstly, my bad, but my FPGA designs were slowed, but I am still trying to learn design in small steps, so here You can see my additional boards. 
I have bought a breakout board for FX2 connector, which was a waste of money since the FX2 connector has 100 pins, remove JTAG pins, additional clock, many pins are connected together with LEDS on the board or other devices, also its better not to connect Your LVTTL pins to differential IO pins, finally we have about 20 useful pins… Anyway, as seen in the photo I have made two additional boards by myself. The one on the left is a board with Atmel ATmega8L, which runs from 3.3V, connected to the FPGA for I2C and SPI tests. Read the rest of this entry »
4-to-16 and 16-to-4 in one
Recent project had many problems due to long part searching and many dead ends. The main problem was 4-to-16 multiplexer and demultiplexer (actually I needed 4-to-9, because there are 9 devices), since 74HC154 is available, but SY100S364 is hard to get here and it does not support 3V3 levels, so I have decided to use Xilinx XC9572XL CPLD device in VQ44 package to make mux/demux device.
Read the rest of this entry »
New development board from eBay!
Hello,
finally after many emails to distributors of Xilinx production, I have found that it is the best way to buy development board is to use eBay. I got this Spartan-3E development board by winning auction with the last offer – 127USD. Waiting for arrival, next update will be when it comes.
