Faster/wider CPU...

[Brane2]

Dave - I'm splitting hairs, but you could have a virtual machine running RHEL/CentOS on your OS X - My former boss did.

I thought to point that out, but since everything i posted was received as a personal attack, I left this out. With virtual machines it might be better idea to go with Windows version...

But then again, at least my VmWare Workstation-7 tends to performs crappy with really demanding applications. It might work well. Or not.

Brane2 - The CoolrunnerII would be better - more obsolence proof than XL9500 - ready in a starter-kit for $59 - all you need is some cheap as a chips voltage conversion buffers.

He was showing totall averson towards non 74.., so I tried with 9500XL, since these could be almost drop-in replacement for TTL. On a second thought I'd go for XC9500, but Xilinx doesn't mention them much nowadays, although Farnell still carries them.

But then if yu drop that requirement, MachXO2 seem as a better choice. It has CPLD price and basic structure, but many FPGA features. You get internal 18Kb RAM blocks ( ideal for caches!), I2C, SPI, counters/timers, even DDR-II interface. User accessible FLASH even. ( enough for "BIOS" of some kind) And quite a few macrocells.

Ordinary CPLDs get pricey after 144 macrocells. MachXO2 is affordable even at 640 or more...

[Brane2]

- Most of the EDA software expects a Linux version of 2.4/2.6 - I know Linus changed the version number to 3.* but most of EDA software still wants 2.4/2.6 - Latest version of RHEL/CentOS is only 2.6.32.

Thanks, but this doesn't seem to be culprit here. It seems to be compiled against quite old 32-bit libraries and a peek into executables reveals that they:

- demand loader under name that doesn't exist on my system
- expect 32-bit libraries and aforementioned loader under /lib ( on Gentoo /lib is symlink to /lib64 and 2-bit stuff is under /lib32)

- executables are linked against a bunch of libraries that don't get installed to their standard places. I checked RPATH fields, but they were either empty or contained very obscure develoment path on developers machine.

I corrected missing libraries problem by setting RPATH within elf and then fixed loader name.

- executable checks validity of the license againsta a server. If you have just one machine and a simple free licence all this doesn't make much sense, so other are offering node-locked license.
Actoel does it too, but just for Windows version. For linux version, you have to start lmgrd with right license and preset port and then use that setting for main axecutable also.

It seems that this is one of remaining obstacles. I managed to start server and now it seems to be working, but main program still doesn't start. Will have to look into that further. It might be that I have to set LM_LICENSE_FILE or somesuch variable, but problem is that Lattice's Diamond uses exact this variable for its purposes.

[twellys]

XC9500 is end-of-lifeing in October this year, Brane2.

Ordinary CPLDs get pricey after 144 macrocells. MachXO2 is affordable even at 640 or more...

That's why engineers switch to FPGAs instead.

As for issues with installation of EDA software, could we go off-line for this please, unless the EDA software in question runs on a QL?

Thanks,

T

[Dave]

Well, I think I took this little exploration as far as I could by myself. I can't get video to work properly and the fix requires some learning that I don't have the time for right now.

I'll set everything aside and poke at it again in the fall.

Now, I should get on with assembling these backplanes and battery holders! I'm SUCH a procrastinator.

Dave

[Brane2]

We still don't know what is the probnlem and how far you have got.

Could you describe your setup and explain the problem and maybe snap a photo or two ?