miniuart

hello

i plan on synthesizing miniuart (opencores.org) onto a spartan 3 demo
board. but then i dont know how to test it. how do i configure/run a
terminal console in windows to talk with my board? 

thanks,
Peter

> i plan on synthesizing miniuart (opencores.org) onto a spartan 3 demo
> board. but then i dont know how to test it. how do i configure/run a
> terminal console in windows to talk with my board?
>
Hyperterminal ? 

use hyperterminal
for the configuration of HT, it depends of the configuration of your uart 
(speed,data size, parity,stop bit), you should make some application after 
the uart that take the data from the uart and send it back like this you 
could check the uart.


<zhangweidai@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:1140997658.200030.270040@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> hello
>
> i plan on synthesizing miniuart (opencores.org) onto a spartan 3 demo
> board. but then i dont know how to test it. how do i configure/run a
> terminal console in windows to talk with my board?
>
> thanks,
> Peter
> 

thanks for the reply. I found some programs that will help me
send/receive signals from the pc side. My question now is how do I set
up the FPGA? mainly, how should i assign pins when synthesizing
miniuart. I want to use rs232

If you are connecting to a PC serial port  you need a RS232 transceiver chip 
between the signals and the FPGA as the voltage levels are not directly 
compatible with FPGAs or most other logic chips for that matter. Many 
development boards have driver chips on board or like us have a add-on 
module for this if you are using one of these. If you have a development 
board then the boards with the "fixed" solution will predetermine FPGA pins. 
Our approach you assign the pins of the header that your are actually using.

John Adair
Enterpoint Ltd. - Home of Raggedstone1. The board cheaper than a tank of 
petrol.
http://www.enterpoint.co.uk


<zhangweidai@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:1141020346.303394.315940@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> thanks for the reply. I found some programs that will help me
> send/receive signals from the pc side. My question now is how do I set
> up the FPGA? mainly, how should i assign pins when synthesizing
> miniuart. I want to use rs232
> 

Martin Schoeberl wrote:
>> i plan on synthesizing miniuart (opencores.org) onto a spartan 3 demo
>> board. but then i dont know how to test it. how do i configure/run a
>> terminal console in windows to talk with my board?
>>
> Hyperterminal ? 
> 

No, not Hyperterminal.  Use pretty much anything except Hyperterminal - 
from wide experience (personal and heresay - this crops up in 
comp.arch.embedded regularly), Hyperterminal is often very unreliable as 
well as being overly complicated for a direct RS-232 connection.

You are far better downloading Tera Term Pro (first hit on google).  It 
is much better suited for connecting embedded boards to a PC.

If you want something a bit more powerful, with easy control of the 
control lines, display in hex, and that sort of thing, at a cost of a 
more complex interface, go for RealTerm.

Both programs are free and open source.

John Adair wrote:

> If you are connecting to a PC serial port  you need a RS232 transceiver chip
> between the signals and the FPGA as the voltage levels are not directly
> compatible with FPGAs or most other logic chips for that matter. Many
> development boards have driver chips on board or like us have a add-on
> module for this if you are using one of these. If you have a development
> board then the boards with the "fixed" solution will predetermine FPGA pins.
> Our approach you assign the pins of the header that your are actually using.

Yes.  And once you have that wired up, you should configure the FPGA
without the uart, but just sending the signal from the receive data pin
(from the transceiver) out the send data pin (through the transceiver
to the computer).

In your terminal program, this should mean anything you type is
returned to you either once (vs not at all when the cable is
disconnected) or twice (vs only once with the cable disconnected).  The
difference depends on if your terminal program is running in full or
half duplex mode, or if it's hyperterminal if you have the echo local
characters box checked in the window that results from the ascii setup
button of the properties dialog.

Once you've verified the electrical part that way, you can try working
on using the uart core itself.

thanks for the reply. i actually just figured out that the board is
using a max3232 to talk with rs232. my problem now is with miniuart.
precision says its "Current design is not a gate level design." does
that mean its not synthesizable?
and it also appears that i only have a txd and txd. like 2 pins... is
that enough?

pz

You can get away with just TX and RX. The only problem is you get data 
overflow in your UART and data gets lost.

What tool are you using synthesis? The message does sould like you might 
have behavioural VHDL that most synthesisers won't handle.

John Adair
Enterpoint Ltd. - Home of Broaddown2. The Ultimate Spartan3 Development 
Board.
http://www.enterpoint.co.uk


<zhangweidai@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:1141062448.029170.266440@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> thanks for the reply. i actually just figured out that the board is
> using a max3232 to talk with rs232. my problem now is with miniuart.
> precision says its "Current design is not a gate level design." does
> that mean its not synthesizable?
> and it also appears that i only have a txd and txd. like 2 pins... is
> that enough?
>
> pz
> 

Thank you John. You've provided me with much help so far!
Ive found some great tutorial/start programs to try on my fpga
picoblaze or something.