<tpb>
Title: GitHub - litex-hub/linux-on-litex-vexriscv: Linux on LiteX-VexRiscv (at github.com)
<mfny>
Finde: I know, but it seems like from that my options are all to expensive ? I need ether flash or SD boot and also ethernet ?
<mfny>
the only boards on that list that seem to do that are all over £200 exept for the Arty A7
<mfny>
but the A7 flash may be to small ?
<sajattack[m]>
the linux image is only 12-ish MB
<sajattack[m]>
maybe 13
<mfny>
also the Future Electronics Avalanche is not available to me for some reason from the FE site ?
<mfny>
says wrong region ?
<mfny>
actuly the Future Electronics Avalanche is no longer there at all ?
<mfny>
are there any other options not on that list maybe ?
<mfny>
that will work with minimal tweaking ?
<john_k[m]>
There are a ton of boards, you’re going to have the best luck with a board from the list. Anything else, there is going to be some work required.
<john_k[m]>
Unless you have experience with Vivado, I’d highly recommend going with an ECP5 based board. Adding an SD card to a board is probably the easiest thing to do, all things considered
<_florent_>
mfny: for Linux-on-LiteX-Vexriscv and boards that are not too expensive (~100$), i would recommend the Versa ECP5, ULX3S, OrangeCrab or Arty A7. If SDCard is missing, it's easy to use a PMOD or IOs to add that.
<tpb>
Title: For a limited time, get the Lattice ECP5™ Versa Development Board for $99.00 (at www.semiconductorstore.com)
<mfny>
thats from 2016
<sajattack[m]>
I figured it out
<sajattack[m]>
thanks
<_florent_>
If you are ok using Vivado (for now), the Arty A7 is a good option: easy to get, 130$, DDR3/Ethernet/PMODs/SPIFlash. That's the board i probably using the most. It's possible to boot Linux from the SPI Flash and you can easily add a SDCard PMOD. The open source ECP5 boards are also really nice, but you'll probably have to wait a bit.
<sajattack[m]>
now I have another question, how do I tell when a CSRField is being accessed?
<tpb>
Title: core: use new CSRStatus.we signal to speed-up Storage upload (>10x sp… · enjoy-digital/litescope@7a9fa9d · GitHub (at github.com)
<sajattack[m]>
oh weird
<sajattack[m]>
ok
<_florent_>
sajattack[m]: i'm trying to spend some time creating a proper wiki, i'll make sure we document this
<sajattack[m]>
yeah take your time
<sajattack[m]>
I know it's hard to do docs when a project is still in it's infancy
<sajattack[m]>
and constantly evolving
<mfny>
_florent_ so the A7 is pretty much "fully supported" right now ? with LiteX .. no major caveats ?
<_florent_>
mfny: yes, the A7 is fully supported and tested regularly (that's the one i used the most for regression testing). It's also the board that is used by Symbiflow/PrjXRay to validate things on hardware, so you can find examples to use the open source tools with it.
<mfny>
_florent_ so realy its between the ECP5 Versa, Arty A7 and the Nexys A7 for full support then ?
<mfny>
or so it seems
<mfny>
the Nexys A7 is the Nexys 4 DDR with a new name
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<_florent_>
mfny: the others boards as also fully supported but are generally more expensive, i only listed the ones with a good capabilities/cost ratio
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<sajattack[m]>
_florent_: yeah I checked with git bisect and the commit it reported was the reclock one
<mfny>
_florent_: is that PMOD supported as is by the litex bsp for the A7 ?
<_florent_>
The versa is also already well supported by the open-source toolchains and has 2 x 1Gbps ethernet ports (vs 100Mbps on NexysA7/ArtyA7), for the Digilent board you will need to use Vivado for now
<mfny>
I may be able to go for something like the versa .. maybe
<mfny>
btw the reason I am here is because I bought a Pynq Z2 board and the support/docs have been not great for anything other then the official Pynq SD image
<mfny>
i.e if you are not using Pynq via the official SD image you are on your own
<mfny>
the BSP does not even work with a standard Petalinux built.. nor does it work for Vitis Linux Apps ether
<mfny>
so I am returning the Z2
<_florent_>
ok i see, you can also run LiteX on Zynq, but you have to share peripherals between PS and PL and the memory is generally directly connected to the PS, so that make things more complicated for Linux-on-LiteX-Vexriscv since we would need to access the DDR3 through the AXI interface of the PS.
<sajattack[m]>
_florent_: any tips on setting up wishbone-tool?
<_florent_>
sajattack[m]: to use it over UART/Ethernet?
<sajattack[m]>
just hangs and I don't even get bios
<sajattack[m]>
I'm trying to do some reads of my ps2 CSRs for testing
<_florent_>
the easiest way would be to specific serial pins for that in your platform
<_florent_>
do you have an USB/UART dongle you can use for that?
<sajattack[m]>
yeah
<sajattack[m]>
I'm using the same pins as the bios
<_florent_>
ah ok you are using the uart in crossover mode
<mfny>
_florent_: this IRC has already been far more helpful then the Offical Pynq forums have been re my Z2 issues
<sajattack[m]>
I copied from esden
<mfny>
i mean in terms of answering my questions about Litex
<mfny>
relative to the Pynq forums answering about the Z2
<mfny>
when I am looking at Dev boards and anything related to them i look at the community support and documentation
<mfny>
very important
<_florent_>
mfny: ok, glad we've been able to help you. If you are new to FPGA, you should probably start using raw FPGAs (is without processing systems like Zynq), it's easier to start with and understand things.
<mfny>
i am ether gonna buy a diffent better supported Zynq board, or get something that can run Litex
<tpb>
Title: Use Host Bridge To Control · enjoy-digital/litex Wiki · GitHub (at github.com)
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<somlo>
mfny: Think of the Zynq chip as either an FPGA with special hard-IP (asic) CPUs you can connect to the other configurable blocks on the fpga die, or as a hard-IP, asic, CPU with some FPGA fabric "coprocessor" :) On the plus side, you have an FPGA witha hardware-acelerated (pair of) cpus that can do cool things for you; on the downside, if you want to do soft-IP ("pure FPGA" things, like LiteX) you're limited to accessing the RAM on your dev board
<somlo>
through the asic CPU. Like _florent_ said, if learning about FPGAs and digital design is your main goal, stay away from the Zynq; if, OTOH, you have a specific application in mind, and the Zynq's hard-wired arm cpu cores are specifically helpful for that, that's a whole different reason to stick with Zynq :)
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<keesj>
lo
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<tnt>
Is there a way for the litex SPI to set QE=1 on boot ?
<_florent_>
tnt: not yet :) i'm generally setting it with OpenOCD, but that could indeed be useful
<_florent_>
tnt: you can then set it in your OpenOCD script with jtagspi set_qe 0 1
<tnt>
_florent_: I modified iceprog to set it.
<_florent_>
ah ok
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<tnt>
Am I mis-understanding how to use the uart : I would expect this to be an echo :
<tnt>
if (!uart_rxempty_read())
<tnt>
uart_rxtx_write(uart_rxtx_read());
<tnt>
But instead as soon as I send ca char to the SoC, it crashes / stops executing.
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<mfny25>
_florent_: does the arty a7 indeed have enough flash and logic to fully use LiteX ? 16mb flash seems tight and I am reading that for more complex stuff the 35t is a bit tight also ?
<tnt>
huh, if I don't use the generated accessor bu access it as a byte (instead of uint32_t) manually with volatile uint8_t * ... it works better.
<_florent_>
mfny25: it depends what you want to do with the board, but i found the size of the FPGA quite adapted on the Arty A7 regarding the peripherals the board has. I never went out of logic with it, and with Symbiflow, you'll be able to use it as a 50T :)