[Coco] DriveWire on the DE1

[Becker, Gary]

For the last few days I have been doing everything on the DE1. I will update everything for the Xilinx Spartan 3 platform in a few days. Since I have my Sound, Joystick port, and second serial port analog board on the Xilinx platform, I do a lot with it. But when we get all the features of the DE1, sound / SD card, it will be hard to beat. But I intend on supporting all features that the hardware supports on both platforms.

I will post the latest builds for the DE1 on the Yahoo group in a day or so. And will post the builds for the Xilinx boards when I get it working.

Gary

-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Hirsch [mailto:snhirsch at gmail.com] 
Sent: Saturday, June 12, 2010 2:52 PM
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [Coco] DriveWire on the DE1

On Sat, 12 Jun 2010, Steven Hirsch wrote:

> On Sat, 12 Jun 2010, Boisy G. Pitre wrote:
>
>> Running the CoCo 3 at 25MHz on the DE1 with DriveWire is an amazing 
>> experience.  Thanks Gary for your hard work.  I know this will only get 
>> better with time.
>
> And another question:  Does Altera offer a time-unlimited "personal" version 
> of the their development software?  I'm a bit loathe to invest in something 
> for which I need to keep re-registering 30-day trials or grabbing a cracked 
> version from an .ru website somewhere :-).
>
> The Xilinx ISE environment is limited in terms of synthesis complexity and 
> has no built-in timeout.  Not clear if Altera does anything similar.

Nevermind... Answered my own question.  For the edification of others, 
their Quartus II software package (no Linux support - boo) is available 
for free download and is not time-limited.  It simply lacks some features 
of the pay-through-the-nose commercial version ($3500/yr - ouch).

Question for Gary Becker, if he's listening:  Is the 1M gate Xilinx 
Spartan 3 equally well supported by the CoCo project?  Do you anticipate 
that it will continue to be?

I ask because I'm passingly familiar with the ISE environment and would 
prefer to develop under Linux.  Boards appear to be the same price.

Steve


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