[hpsdr] Ping!

[Philip Covington]

On 3/17/06, Christopher T. Day <CTDay at lbl.gov> wrote:
> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
> Speaking of Lionheart…
> Do we understand how we're going to boot a newborn Lionheart [Richard the,
> early post-Normal king, era of the precursors of the Fitzwilliams, et al.,
> sort of Irishy] that has no firmware in it at all? Or where we get firmware
> and loaders to do it? So far, we all seem to be depending on the design and
> code that comes with the Xylo/Saxo, but wouldn't we have to license that or
> something and be certain that our hardware layout was compatible with it? Or
> do we roll our own?
> Looking through the specs for the FX2, I2C EEPROMs, Cyclones [I presume that
> Cyclone II is similar, but will check] and Altera's EPCS chips and design
> notes, I'm getting an idea of how it could be done, but I wonder if it's all
> figured out somewhere I haven't stumbled on yet. Pointers appreciated.
>             Chris – AE6VK
> P.S. – Maybe that's too hard to think about after a few Guinesses; then
> again maybe that's the best possible time.

As Bob has said most of the work is already done with the USRP stuff. 
I have firmware and a driver that I put together for my XIlinx based
FPGA board - it uses the 128 pin FX2.  The Cyclone or Cyclone II would
basically just be a drop in replacement as far as the code goes.  I
used SDCC for the compiler.  The FPGA-USB board is probably one of the
easiest parts of this project because there is so much already out
there to go on.  Also, we don't even really need own own driver -
there is libUSB/IibUSB-Win32 and as long as you aren't doing anything
out of the ordinary it works fine.  So then it is just down to writing
the firmware for the FX2 which is basically already done.

73 de Phil N8VB

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