Newbie to FPGA programming


deanflyer

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Hi,

 

Just received my Papilio Duo and LogiStart Shield. I went for the Duo as its not much more than the Pro. I'm not interested in Arduino, but rather VHDL design. I'm a complete beginner to electronics although I have quite a bit of experience of low level CPU programming. 

 

Looking to play around with basic boolean logic, output to the LogicStart shield to gain some experience with circuit design, then long term I want to start designing my own simple CPU.

 

I'm confused as to where DesignLab comes in, it seems to be skewed towards Arduino development using ZPUino with the advantage that you can draw your own circuits?

 

If I want to work on just the FPGA on the Duo is it best to stick with WebPack ISE, or does DesignLab have any advantages? Does WebPack ISE have a circuit viewer/editor?

 

Thanks,

 

Dean

 

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Hello Dean,

 

DesignLab integrates with Xilinx WebPack ISE and makes it more convenient to make circuits. You can use DesignLab without writing any Arduino code and just make stand alone circuits, such as the boolean logic that you want.

 

DesignLab will hide some of the complexity of the Xilinx ISE tools from you and get you started faster.

 

Jack.

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Thanks for the quick response.

I managed to get ISE up and running with a little switch/LED circuit (once I changed the DLLs to stop ISE crashing in Win 8.1)

Am I right in assuming that ISE still does all the synthesis etc. behind the scenes if you use DesignLab?

Another question, is there an integrated loader for downloading .bit files to the Duo from ISE or is the Papilio Loader the preferred option?

Thanks,

Dean

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Hello Dean,

 

Yes, ISE still does all of the schematic editor and synthesis for DesignLab.

 

In DesignLab there is a loader built in, its an integrated version of Papilio Loader basically.

 

For loading bit files directly from ISE, please give Impact a try, the Papilio DUO should show up as a supported board type in the Xilinx tools... It's not officially supported but it should work.

 

Jack.

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