s1axter posted on Tue. January 30th 2007 at 12:36 PM PST
FPGA stands for Field Programmable Gate Array and is a type of programmable logic device. In lay terms an FPGA is a chip that has thousands of gates on it that are configurable into almost any logic equation.
Take this example from the TRAFFIC project here on geeksinside.
(Sorry for the crappy quality)
This set of gates can be written as OUT <= A OR B OR C in VHDL and downloaded to the FPGA which makes the physical connections of three inputs to OR gates on the chip. FPGAs are a great way to replace those discrete logic chips taking up space on your board. Here are some cool FPGA, GAL, CPLD (All programmable logic devices) links.
Xilinx - The worlds largest developer and producer of ‘fab-less’ FPGAs. They also provide a number of tools to write VHDL. http://www.xilinx.com
s1axter posted on Tue. August 22nd 2006 at 04:26 PM PST
Hack247.co.uk has some awesome video clips circa 1984 reguarding older hardware. (I'm not going to embed the videos, it slows the page down, click the youtube.com links)
In the first one, the reporter talks to a guy who made knock-off Apple II motherboards. They aren't direct copies, but copies with added modifications.
s1axter posted on Wed. August 16th 2006 at 12:18 PM PST
Yeah, I know, I haven't posted anything in like a week. I was really good at the one-two a day, two weeks ago but I just dropped the ball after that.
The short explanation is I moved to Iowa from New Jersey, yeah, let me tell you how fun that was packing up all your stuff and driving 20hrs half way across the country. Seeing as I was ending my job, and on the road I think a little slack is due. Other than that I don't have net at my place yet, so updating this is going to be a little difficult, but I will try.
For now the only thing I have to offer is this little plugin on the right side of the page. This is a meebo.com widget from http://meebo.com . Meebo.com is a company that uses AJAX (think gmail) to provide web based implementations of chat programs (Yahoo, gTalk, AIM, MSN, etc..). This widget interfaces with meebo and provides a way for me to chat with users on the site. I think it's kinda cool. The one change I would make, is to make it more like a chatroom where all the users viewing the page can see the messages, right now it is just one-on-one you and me.
If I am not logged into meebo and you send me a message it will be stored and I will get it next time I login. Give it a whirl and let me know what you think, send me an IM ;-)
s1axter posted on Tue. January 30th 2007 at 12:36 PM PST
Geeksinside.com now has an RSS feed for all main stories on the front page. To subscribe to the feed, click the icon on the left in the Quick Links, or point your favorite news reader here (temp) http://gi.phoenixarisen.com/news.xml
Pass this feed on to your friends and remind them we are all geeks inside :-D
s1axter posted on Wed. August 9th 2006 at 08:00 AM PST
Keeping you up-to-date with the latest design contests on the net, and following the 8051 post from Monday:
Ramtron International is running a design contest for their "VRS51L3074 FRAM Enhanced Microcontroller". This microcontroller is 8051-based and has a portion of its address space use Ramtron's FRAM non-volatile random access memory. Using this FRAM rather than a conventional EPROM or FLASH memory to store data saves a lot of time and code for developers, enabling them to do more with less, ultimately saving dollars on a design.
What this means is that without power the data stored in FRAM is not lost like on conventional RAM. If this technology were to be scaled up to PC system levels you could unplug your PC while it was still running, move it, plug it back in and it would turn on doing the same thing it was before you moved it.
The VRS51L3074 runs at 40MHz @ 3.3V, has 64KB flash memory, 8KB FRAM memory, 4k SRAM, and 56 I/O lines. Unfortunately, the package is QFP-64 not DIP but the development board ( VersaKit ) is sold for only $49, so it’s not too bad.
The FRAM is rated for a trillion read/writes, has a 10 year data retention, is non-volatile, is 5V, 15mA draw with an access time of 120ns. This isn’t too bad, from what I have seen, access times are around 100ns.
So break out those notebooks, logic probes, o-scopes, analyzers, chip programmers and other tools you use and sign up for the $2,500 cash prize.
s1axter posted on Wed. August 9th 2006 at 06:39 AM PST
Some might remember the All Your Base crazy a number of years ago. For those who do AYBIBTU!!! And for those who don't...do a google search...
Speaking of google, after posting that last set of links for the cool google stuff I was playing around with google in "Hacker"/L337 sp34k language and noticed the link to the personal page as All Your Base in l337. Some programmers have too much time...
Major FPGA link dump
S1axter's Tech Log of Crazy Stuff
FPGA stands for Field Programmable Gate Array and is a type of programmable logic device. In lay terms an FPGA is a chip that has thousands of gates on it that are configurable into almost any logic equation.
Yeah, I know, I haven't posted anything in like a week. I was really good at the one-two a day, two weeks ago but I just dropped the ball after that.
Keeping you up-to-date with the latest design contests on the net, and following the 8051 post from Monday:
