[Fpga-synth] Inexpensive development environment

[Eric Brombaugh]

Mason wrote:
> Indeed, Eric, your message was enough to cause me to look again at
> getting iMPACT to work with my -3AN starter kit under Linux (I gave up
> for a while, assuming I was missing something that would be fixed in a
> later service pack). The cable was not being programmed properly, and
> it turns out this is because when using libusb the udev rule that
> transfers the firmware to the board needs an app called fxload, which
> is mentioned casually in one of the answer records hidden in the
> basement in a locked file cabinet as something that you should,
> naturally, have installed.
> So now I'm running ISE on my Aspire One, and able to blink my LEDs again.

Good point. In the past I've always done my downloading from a WinXP 
machine because getting the cable drivers working on Linux was such a 
nuisance. I did go through the same process you describe when installing 
ISE 10.1.03 on my desktop machine though (figuring out the UDEV rules, 
finding & enabling fxload, etc) when I installed it a few months ago, so 
I should try to get that going on the little machine too.

Too bad that there aren't linux drivers for the Digilent USB/JTAG cable 
I've got. As far as I know, that only works with Digilent's 
closed-source WinXX-only software.

> Do you have any tips for making ISE take up less of the precious
> screen real estate of a netbook? I'm already running a tiling window
> manager so that it's fullscreen, but it feels like there should be a
> way to shrink font and widget sizes and strip out things that I don't
> need.

ISE does look a bit compressed on the smaller screen. My solution to 
that has been to figure out a make-based synthesis flow that works 
entirely from the command line. Not as pretty, but I've found that not 
running the GUI project manager frees up a lot of system RAM, allowing 
me to work on larger designs. Your idea sounds potentially useful too, 
if only the UI settings were better documented.

Eric