Re: rank beginner here, need to know where to start to get RS232 comm's working, and ...

On Wed, 21 Jan 2009 09:44:11 -0800 (PST), jleslie48
<jon@jonathanleslie.com> wrote:

>On Jan 21, 10:53 am, "jeffrey.johnson" <j...@fpgadeveloper.com> wrote:
>> You will find beginner tutorials for the XUPV2P board on the FPGA Developer
>> website:
>>
>> http://www.fpgadeveloper.com
>>
>> Specifically for getting RS232 communications working, try the "Base
>> System Builder" tutorial.
>
>Yes, I looked at that example.  It uses the powerPC which I don't
>believe I have access to,
>my project is supposed to use the xc2vp30 only and not another
>chipset, or did I just say something really stupid (ie, I don't have a
>clue what the powerpc is, and is it part of the the xc2vp30?)

There are 2 PowerPCs in the xc2vp30; you can use them or ignore them as
you wish. If you are following an example EDK project (like that one) it
will take the pain out of using them; deviate much from the example and
things can get very confusing very fast.

My first experience with the EDK system; I stepped off the path, simply
to change the input clock from the example I was following, and it took
me nearly a week to get the project to build again and communicate at
the right baud rate!

The block of hardware it produces (PPC, program&data memory, bus, bus
master, bus slave interfaces, interrupt logic, etc, and finally a UART)
will be at least a hundred times more complex than a simple RS232 UART
and a state machine to feed it "hello world". (And probably no more time
to generate; if you strictly follow the path) But it will run C.

Your choice. But once you get used to hardware the PPC will seem
painfully slow.

- Brian

On Jan 21, 7:59 pm, Brian Drummond <brian_drumm...@btconnect.com>
wrote:

> Your choice. But once you get used to hardware the PPC will seem
> painfully slow.
>
> - Brian


That's half the reason I have to abandon my TI6713 DSP platform and
move to a FPGA only environment.