Peter Winkler wrote:
> Thanks for all your input.
>
> I think it makes most sense for me to have a closer look
> at PicoBlaze.
>
> Is there a good place for PicoBlaze designs apart from the
> Xilinx PicoBlaze home ? I mean some kind of community like
> avrfreaks or the piclist ? A place to ask stupid newbie
> questions, you know ;)
>
> P.

Hi Peter,
if you want to use Picoblaze, then why you don't try the free C
compiler for Picoblaze?
you can download for free on www.poderico.co.uk

Next week please check on my website for the next release of the
compiler.

Best regards,
Francesco

Peter Winkler wrote:
> Thanks for all your input.
> 
> I think it makes most sense for me to have a closer look
> at PicoBlaze.
> 
> Is there a good place for PicoBlaze designs apart from the
> Xilinx PicoBlaze home ? I mean some kind of community like
> avrfreaks or the piclist ? A place to ask stupid newbie
> questions, you know ;)

You should also look at the extended variant :

http://bleyer.org/pacoblaze/

plus rhere are good links on this page.

-jg

Thanks for all your input.

I think it makes most sense for me to have a closer look
at PicoBlaze.

Is there a good place for PicoBlaze designs apart from the
Xilinx PicoBlaze home ? I mean some kind of community like
avrfreaks or the piclist ? A place to ask stupid newbie
questions, you know ;)

P.

"Peter Winkler" <idontwant@totell.com> skrev i meddelandet
news:1ndi32lhgriblsukneeh81cifdf8gnqac2@4ax.com...
> Thanks for your suggestions ! I think I will have a look at these two:
>
>>* Pico(Paco)Blaze
>>* AVR
>
> I very much like AVR controllers, so maybe it is a good idea to
> look at this core. And there is also WinAVR. I hope I can get
> it to run on my XC3S200.
>
> Don't you think it is somewhat strange, that there are so few
> options for a soft prozessor for hobby stuff ? Is it so much work
> to design a soft core ? Not sure, but looking at the AVR core
> from opencores, it seems development was stopped in 2003
> and only a limited number of I/O lines are available. However,
> I am very glad that it exists at all ... ;)
>
> P


You may want to check Atmels Patent portfolio.
Have heard claims that it is impossible to replicate the core without 
violating some patents.
Don't know if anyone would bother about hobbyist use of the OpenCore 
version.
You can still download the core which is a positive sign, but I really do 
not know.

-- 
Best Regards,
Ulf Samuelsson
This is intended to be my personal opinion which may,
or may not be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB
.

Peter Winkler wrote:
> Hi !
> 
> I would like to use a free microcontroller core on my
> Spartan 3 FPGA. 
> 
> There are quite some free cores available, but I would like to know
> what everybody is using. It would be great if the free core would be
> supported by gcc or some other free C-Compiler.

There's PIC and Z80 clones on opencores.org.
The sdcc compiler could be used for them.

Philipp

On 8 Apr 2006 16:10:26 -0700, "Isaac Bosompem" <x86asm@gmail.com>
wrote:

>Maybe an OpenRISC?
>
>They have a GCC port for the chip on freecores.org, though the simplest
>config on my XC3S200 would use up ~75% of it!
>
>-Isaac

That may be a little bit too large for me :)

"Peter Winkler" <idontwant@totell.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag 
news:1ndi32lhgriblsukneeh81cifdf8gnqac2@4ax.com...
> Thanks for your suggestions ! I think I will have a look at these two:
>
>>* Pico(Paco)Blaze
>>* AVR
>
> I very much like AVR controllers, so maybe it is a good idea to
> look at this core. And there is also WinAVR. I hope I can get
> it to run on my XC3S200.
>
> Don't you think it is somewhat strange, that there are so few
> options for a soft prozessor for hobby stuff ? Is it so much work
> to design a soft core ? Not sure, but looking at the AVR core
> from opencores, it seems development was stopped in 2003
> and only a limited number of I/O lines are available. However,
> I am very glad that it exists at all ... ;)
>
> P.

it does exist and does work
I have done some work with it
1) I think i had made verilog version of it
2) tried to use better io peripheral bus system that would be configurable
3) one time had it integrated into Xilinx EDK !
4) I have a special toplevel that works as Atmel appnote AVR910 compatible 
programmer

in the opencores version there is base address of one port wrong
and yes the development is pretty much stopped

an no its not hard to write a processor ip-core not at all
but having full infra-structure, peripheral bus and compiler support, and 
debuf support
is what makes it more complex task

Antti

<burn.sir@gmail.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag 
news:1144579508.239684.10820@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
> The gr16/32 CPUs are very old and designed in Verilog, but you might
> still find them useful.
>
> I think Jan Gray ported LCC to the architecture and also had a complete
> SoC example with UART and everything.
>
>
>
> Speaking of aaMB, did they actaully looked if it FITS into an apa150
> when they wrote the docs??
>
you mean "aeMB" ?
the original author did very little testing and the core is not full,
it does do lots of instructions ok, but I think it messes up with delay 
slots and link register
I think it should fit into APA150 but I havent run that synthesis

but just out curiosity i peeked into my trashbox and did run synthesis of 
NIOS-II clone for Lattice XP3:
605 slices - 39% :)
hum maybe I should continue the work on that

Antti

Thanks for your suggestions ! I think I will have a look at these two:

>* Pico(Paco)Blaze
>* AVR

I very much like AVR controllers, so maybe it is a good idea to
look at this core. And there is also WinAVR. I hope I can get
it to run on my XC3S200. 

Don't you think it is somewhat strange, that there are so few
options for a soft prozessor for hobby stuff ? Is it so much work
to design a soft core ? Not sure, but looking at the AVR core
from opencores, it seems development was stopped in 2003
and only a limited number of I/O lines are available. However,
 I am very glad that it exists at all ... ;)

P.