[hpsdr] Training wheels for MaxII?

[Lyle Johnson]

> I was shocked to find the MaxII 240/100 was only about $6 in single 
> quantities. Since Quartus is free that makes it fairly irresistable to start 
> learning. You old pros already knew that...

Keep in mind the MAXII 240 is about as small an FPGA as you can get, in 
terms of the amount of internal logic. It can still do quite a lot, tough.

It is being used in Janus primarily as a switch to route various signals 
between the backplane and the ADcs and DACs.

> Is there a recommended starting point for a DIP logic guy like myself? 
> Perhaps a self paced online tutorial?

Work through the example(s) in the Quartus tutorial (help section).

Look at the examples into material at <www.fpga4fun.com>

Look under support...tutorials at <www.xess.com>

Experiment :-)

If you are comfortable with schematics, you can design by simply drawing 
the schematic you want.

I have found that I can usually create what I need in VHDL, but that 
sometimes the logic, though it seems OK using the simulator, doesn't 
work properly in practice.  In those cases, I revert to schematics and 
usually get it working OK.

VHDL or Verilog is sort of like using C; schematics is more like using 
Assembly Language for these devices.

Also, be aware that you can express things in various ways and some will 
compile efficiently, others will not.  You need to play with the tools 
and see how many resources are used to implement a function, versus how 
many resources would be used if you were doing it by hand, then dig in 
and try to understand the difference.

Enjoy the journey!

73,

Lyle KK7P


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