How to set a cold on fire - the progress of our custom Coldfire board
Jens Klietz
2004-06-21
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This document is meant to inform you about the progress with the development
of our custom Coldfire board. It describes the work of our main hardware
developer Jens Klietz. We will update it on a regular basis.
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12/23/2003 ... Started the work on a first small boot-monitor.
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Some small testroutines works fine - now it's time to write a small
boot-monitor as the next step to the os-boot sequence.
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12/28/2003 ... Serial interface tests done successful.
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The coldfire board is connected via serial interface with a second computer.
Using a terminal-program the interaction with the some testprograms
works fine.
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01/24/2004 ... The implementation of a first pci-arbiter version done.
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01/31/2004 ... Reorganized and improved the host-pci bridge-logic.
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The core logic has got an improved structure, I think the code is now
easier to read.
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01/08/2004 ... An additional step towards a better core-logic design.
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Started the tests of a bdd-package to improve the quality of our VHDL-model.
I think this could be a very important point, because it's nearly impossible
to write an error-free hardware-design. I hope it will be useful to
verify some properties of our core-logic additional to the simulation with
different testbenches.
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02/08/2004 ... Configuration space simulation.
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Added a few new test-vectors for simulation of the pci configuration
space-access.
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02/08/2004 ... Started the development of a new board version.
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The tests until now were relatively well. So we decided to do the next step.
The new board will have a microATX-formfactor. Our design will grow up by
integrating a secondary fgpa(Xilinx-Spartan3) as reconfigurable coprocessor,
some reset- and glue-logic, a boot-flash memory and two sdram-connectors.
The fpga will be used with the fg456-package instead of the PQ208-circuit.
I hope this work can be done in a few weeks. :) ||
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03/07/2004 ... Started the development of a ps2-interface+interrupt-logic.
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04/05/2004 ... Discussion about the new board-version.
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The drawing for the new Coldfire-Board(ACP02) is now available. We discussed
different versions for our graphic solution. The display controller from
Silicon Motion seems to be a real good circuit.
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Experimentation prototype ACP01
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New board design ACP02
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04/08/2004 ... Finished a SRECORD-converter.
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This small tool closes the gap between hard- and testsoftware-development in our
design-chain. Now it should be possible to accelerate the tests of new
brigde-components inside the glue-logic.
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05/26/2004 ... How we can implement the USB-interface?
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I had a conversation with another hardware developer about possibilities to
realize the USB-interface. There are two device controller circuits we could
buy, but a min. quant. of about 10000! Another solution is to use an ARM-based
processor with USB2.0-interface, but then we have a difficult to program
multiprocessor system. We are open for every good suggestion.
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06/14/2004 ... Discussion about the display controller SM731.
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The SM731 is not recommended for future use, so the only alternative now is the
SM722.
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06/20/2004 ... The work on the development board goes on.
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Added the PCI- and SDRAM-connectors to the actual PCB. Expanded the bootloader
for further tests with the acp01-evb.
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