Archive for September, 2010
UrJTAG, JTAG cable and Ruby
Some random news:
- Support for FPGA programming (and thus the Milkymist One) was merged into UrJTAG today.
- Yanjun Luo’s JTAG cable was made to work (JTAG and UART). There are minor issues with the height of connectors and the EEPROM which will need to be addressed.
- Ruby was successfully ported to RTEMS and Milkymist. Patch coming soon, this was relatively straightforward and most of the porting issues stemmed, as often, from the Autocrap build system.
ACONIT, the museum of computer archaeology
Posted by lekernel in Uncategorized on September 27, 2010
Located in Grenoble, ACONIT is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the history of computers. They have an impressive collection, ranging from mechanical calculators to relatively modern semiconductor-based computers (Apple II, ZX Spectrum, …) through vacuum tube based machines. A couple of pictures from the most exotic items are below (and more are on the ACONIT website), but the “museum” is well worth being visited so be sure to check it out if you are around.
SEA OME P2 analogue computer, an historical monument
Behind the analogue computer
Close-up of some big vacuum tubes
More vacuum tubes
Memory vacuum tubes of a Bull Gamma 3 (digital) computer
Wires used to program the Bull Gamma 3
The Goupil, an early 80s computer used in French schools
MM1 RC2 boards are on their way…
Following the errors found on the first batch of 6 prototypes, we are now designing the schematics and PCB layout of the next run.
We are planning a batch of 35 boards. Some of them will be sold in late December in Berlin (during the 27C3) at a price of approximately $350 plus taxes, including power supply adapter and JTAG cable and without case. This is a limited series of prototypes for FPGA/embedded software nerds and early developers, and not for end users! A lot of work still remains on the software before the Milkymist One can be used by everyone.
To follow the progress, a status page is available on the Qi Hardware wiki, and you can also subscribe to the developers’ mailing list.
Milkymist JTAG PCBs are back
This project by Yanjun Luo uses the FT2232H chip to provide a fast JTAG (up to 30Mbps) and a UART in a single adapter tailored for the Milkymist One. The main purpose of this project is to lower the barriers to entry to FPGA development on Milkymist One, as the Xilinx JTAG cables are quite expensive.
JTAG PCB in place
Close-up
Bare PCBs
The components are to be soldered in the next days.
The project page is here including schematics released in an open source license.