Sampled AT40K10-2DQU Now What?

[jonwilhelmjr]

Forgive me for doing things out of order here, but i wanted to try laying out a FPGA board. In high school I was taught digital logic with an FPGA and I wanted to revisit them.

So I sampled these chips and started looking through Microchips documents but I am struggling to find a programming guide, developer software, "what do i use for a programmer?" ->Segger j-link https://www.adafruit.com/product/1369?

Yes im aware there is the opensource FPGA boards, The goal of my sample was to learn the layout and from scratch process (I'm a gluten for punishment). What books, articles, online websites could you recommend to point me in the direction of learning the wonderful world of FPGA.

Thank you for your help and support, all learning can start with a question!
-Jon

[dcarr]

You might have more fun with a ICE40 series part.  They're available in TQFP and QFN for <$5.

Then grab the icestorm toolchain and/or the free official Icecube software.  Verilator and iverilog are free and will get you going.
There are lots of good verilog tutorials out there (Asic World, ZipCPU).  I also like the book "Digital Design and Computer Architecture" by Harris as a good starting point.

Hope that helps.

[jonwilhelmjr]

Thank you it does help a lot. Lattice has seemed very closed sourced to me for some time. I have not tried them yet. I have worked with altium and xilinx before but never on the layout level. so this will be an adventure. I'll make sure I update everyone with any progress I make.

[Bassman59]

Forgive me for doing things out of order here, but i wanted to try laying out a FPGA board. In high school I was taught digital logic with an FPGA and I wanted to revisit them.

So I sampled these chips and started looking through Microchips documents but I am struggling to find a programming guide, developer software, "what do i use for a programmer?" ->Segger j-link https://www.adafruit.com/product/1369?

Yes im aware there is the opensource FPGA boards, The goal of my sample was to learn the layout and from scratch process (I'm a gluten for punishment). What books, articles, online websites could you recommend to point me in the direction of learning the wonderful world of FPGA.

Thank you for your help and support, all learning can start with a question!
-Jon

Those chips are on beyond obsolete. I don't think the development tools (HDL synthesizer, schematic translator, place and route) are even available any more, or if they'll run on a modern operating system. I think they use a configuration EPROM like the ancient AT1700-series, but how to program those!

If the goal is to make your own little evaluation/plaything board, the Lattice MachXO2 parts are very easy to use and design boards around. They're as "closed source" as Brand I and Brand X and brand M. They have built-in configuration memory so that makes life easier. And the chips are pretty cheap. I have no complaints about the Lattice Diamond tools -- they're simpler to navigate than Xilinx Vivado.

[amyk]

Those are from Atmel, not Microchip, you'll have to dig into the archive for the tools:

http://web.archive.org/web/20061019191411/http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/tools_card.asp?tool_id=2747
http://web.archive.org/web/20061019191411/http://www.atmel.com/dyn/resources/prod_documents/ids76install.exe

Did you choose the AT40K because someone has figured out the bitstream format?
https://dfusion.com.au/wiki/tiki-print.php?page=AT40K%20Bitstream%20Format

[Beta_vulgaris]

IDS 7.2 Tested with Windows 2000, generating full bitstream.
From archive.org https://archive.org/details/atmel-integrated-development-system-v-7.2
Change lc_checkout function to ALWAYS RETURN ZERO in LMGR326B.DLL to utilize LeonardoSpectrum and ModelSim included.