MicroZed experiences?

[rhb]

Can anyone comment on their experiences with the MicroZed?  I'm pretty fed up with Digilent's support for the Zybo.  So I am looking for an alternative Zynq board that has good engineering support.  I've been reading the microzed.org documentation and forum.  So far it all looks thoroughly professional.

I have no prior FPGA experience so accurate documentation and demos that work as advertised are key.  I have almost no Windows experience, but even I know that Windows won't allow multiple "."s in filenames.  I had to rename the Adept USB driver installer files I downloaded from Digilent's website to get them to run.  I've since switched to running Vivado on Debian.  The microzed.org forum looks Windows centric, but that might just be a sampling artifact.

I plan to run Vivado in a VBox  VM if at all possible, at least until a synthesis won't complete overnight.

[newbrain]

I have almost no Windows experience, but even I know that Windows won't allow multiple "."s in filenames.

OT, admittedly but...

[rhb]

When I tried to run the installer initially Win 7 Pro it said it couldn't find the file.  But when I renamed it fubar.exe it ran just fine.   So I have over generalized.   I think it's  so that if you attempt to open README.txt.exe it doesn't run.  I only thought to try to rename the file because I remembered that that was being used in phishing attacks at one time because Windows would not show the last ".exe".

Thanks for the book suggestions.  I shall order both.  I assume they cover the same content in the two languages so that will let me judge which I prefer.  I just watched a good tutorial on AXI scatter gather DMA on YouTube, but I can read much faster than people can talk.

I am looking for an advanced book on FPGA design such as would be used for a second semester course on FPGAs.  Books have become rather pricey, but  I value my time and there is no substitute for good editing and proofreading.  I have a large personal library and I use it a lot.  As a boss of mine liked to say, books were the first offline memory.

[Mr. Scram]

When I tried to run the installer initially Win 7 Pro it said it couldn't find the file.  But when I renamed it fubar.exe it ran just fine.   So I have over generalized.   I think it's  so that if you attempt to open README.txt.exe it doesn't run.  I only thought to try to rename the file because I remembered that that was being used in phishing attacks at one time because Windows would not show the last ".exe".

Thanks for the book suggestions.  I shall order both.  I assume they cover the same content in the two languages so that will let me judge which I prefer.  I just watched a good tutorial on AXI scatter gather DMA on YouTube, but I can read much faster than people can talk.

I am looking for an advanced book on FPGA design such as would be used for a second semester course on FPGAs.  Books have become rather pricey, but  I value my time and there is no substitute for good editing and proofreading.  I have a large personal library and I use it a lot.  As a boss of mine liked to say, books were the first offline memory.

Readme.txt.exe should run if it's a valid executable. Windows hides the effective extension by default, but that's easily turned off. Some enterprise environments may block files with dodgy multiple extensions.

[asmi]

If you want to learn the basics of FPGAs, it's best to get yourself a Nandland's Go board. It's cheap ($65 I think) and very basic, but it's accompanied by very good tutorial videos which explain all basic blocks of FPGA (LUT, FF, BRAM, etc.), how they work and how to use them. As an added value, all tutorials are provided in both Verilog and VHDL so you can pick the language you prefer. I recommend you to watch these tutorials even if you don't want to buy the board as they are very good general introduction.

Once you're familiar with basics, download AXI-Stream specification (google for "AMBA AXI4-Stream Protocol Specification") and study it thoroughly. Try implementing a very simple AXIS master and slave just to get a "feel" for how it works. You can use your Zybo board to verify these in HW. For your project I think you can get away with AXI-Stream master endpoint (connect it to DMA engine), which is very easy to implement.

[rhb]

I'll take a look at the Nandland Go board.  I'm not all that enthused about watching videos because it's a lot slower than reading.  But I watched a pretty good one on scatter gather DMA this morning.

In looking at the names of some other installers I see that they do include multiple "."s.  So I'm perplexed as to what caused Win 7 to say it couldn't find a file I selected from Explorer, but could if I changed the name.  It's a basic Win 7 Pro install instance so far as I know.  It came on the system.  However, it  was an "off-lease" system I bought on eBay that came with the drives installed in trays so they could be taken out and locked up for the night.  So it may well have some "features" not typical of a normal install.

[asmi]

I'll take a look at the Nandland Go board.  I'm not all that enthused about watching videos because it's a lot slower than reading.  But I watched a pretty good one on scatter gather DMA this morning.

Yes it's slower, but videos allow you to multi-task by watching them while you making a dinner for example