LinuxCNC-RIO - RealtimeIO for LinuxCNC based on FPGA (ICE40 / ECP5)

If it wasn't so expensive to get the Mesa boards to Oz I would already have a 7i90 running the rio firmware.
I've been looking into doing a minor redesign of one of my boards to make the SPI connector more compatible with the WZ5500 blue boards with the yellow connector.
As these boards are compatible with the aforementioned Mesa models a external buffer board or generic BoB is a must. But on the plus side each and every pin can be used as an input or out put.

Just for a bit of reference the board that has the SPI interface connector on it has the following:
4 pins dedicated for leds
17 pin connector for use with a generic bob, 4 of the ground pins can jumpered to supply 5 volts.
3 pins on a header
And the 12 pins that are used for the EPP interface are available for I\O with the rio firmware.
32 pins not including the 4 dedicated to the LEDS.
The second board has
2x17 pin connectors for use with a generic bob, 4 of the ground pins can jumpered to supply 5 volts.
And 6 I/O pins on a header for I\O.
For a total of 40 pins.

So 72 pins available without having to use shift registers or anything like that.
All I\O pins are 5v tolerant except the 4 Leds & the SPI interface.
Of course the leds don't need to be installed, those pins could be used for a 3.3v interface to an external device.

Spartans Warriors, Gowin C7 high-speed freshies, all up to the first-in-world high performance ESP P4 silicon on my benchtop!!! So much cool shit happening at this end I don't even know where to begin lool Let's start by finding a neutral hangout and relocate the share drive shall we. Really hope to catch you awesome guys on discord... 

no. 82 & 159 outta 200




 

meister wrote:

there is one, ok, i will try
discord.com/invite/SbskPKPJc6
 

Well bad news, tried to login with my old u/p and discord locked me up under the infamous pretext of "we've detected something unusual" so to fetch my mobile number & data for verification. a.k.a internet hacky-services I do not subscribe too anymore. And so deleted the account rather. Farewell discrooks, for another life maybe (not really!). 

I'd invite you on a domestic venue I share open-source on with little over 120k cnc mind-like however nothing english there And so I guess we'll stick to platform-propriatary linuxcnc.org for updates!!

@cornholio

I'm havin a hell of a bumpy start getting that ancient 2013 'ISE WebPACK' working under linux. Haven't tried windows yet. Is there anything like a lil more updated so to have those Spartan-6 working again?... or that's legacy rated already?

Mind sharing your eda/toolchain set-up? that'd be good info

edit: never mind/ignore. I had it. Took an hour to set-up the licensing, ./xsetup doing nothing, to having it installed but randomly crashing after 3 clicks, to realizing that I can't even access my usb ports anymore right now. Won't put up with this crap thank you very much. FORMAT HDD - Bye Spartans - back in the abandoned legacy gizmo box. 

Ok, at last. I got ISE running/synth on a Win10 workstation. Never managed to have it working on linux. Tried real hardware (screwed up my installation pretty badly) and neither worked in a VM. Sort of working okay'ish in Win10 although I have no idea how I'll be able to manage a RIO environment (msys64 most likely).

Let's go ghetto! I'll order the aforementioned shilled kit tomorrow and hopefully be spartanized on the verilog side by beginning of the week.

Feeling like going two decades back in time but hey, if that's what works and recommended, so be it!!

I’ve installed ISE 14.7 on both Debian Bookworm & Mint 21, trick to get the installer going is to install libncurses5 and after the install to get a licence setup you need to rename your Ethernet port to eth0. To get a licence you need to register with Xilinx now AMD.

Just to reinforce how messed up this is, the MESA shipping costs for one board to Australia, what an absolute joke: 

RIP you cool, clean, compact, integrated Mecanix board.

In other news, has anyone seen these Analog Crosspoint Switch Array ICs, thinking out loud if they could be useful...AD75019 is pricey but two MT8816 gets you to 16x16 for a lot less money, I ordered four PDIP MT8816 because I couldn't help myself?

Thinking out loud some more (it's what I'm best at, not so great at doing lol) is some kind of generic "slot" based expansion system the way to go, an FPGA backplane board with something like DIMM or MiniPCI slots for IO...jumper wires and ribbon cables be gone!

Thought you couldn't read datasheets ?

DIMM or PCIe slots, great way to bump the price up.

Just select the cheapest option. Mesa have been known to upgrade to a better service at no cost I 'm not sure if thats normal service or becasuse I am a Good Looking Bloke