04-02-2022, 04:40 PM
Thanks for the update Ewan,
Someone's working FPGA microbee was created using Protel DXP2004 back in 2004 and had Protel's founder Nick Martin (also a microbee author & enthusiast) interest and attention.
The FPGA microbee worked great with IDE hard disks and Compactflash cards.
In addition to FPGA development, Protel also provided a real time debuggable Z80 equivalent soft core with assembler and C compiler.
The accompanying Nanoboard hardware was excellent only to be let down by perpetually unresolved software bugs.
Even the mere change of a letter in a signal name was enough to cause a design that worked into a failed mess.
The FPGA and software development portions of Altium Designer were dropped some years ago in favour for a sole focus on PCB design and with that change development was moved from Australia to China.
Someone's working FPGA microbee was created using Protel DXP2004 back in 2004 and had Protel's founder Nick Martin (also a microbee author & enthusiast) interest and attention.
The FPGA microbee worked great with IDE hard disks and Compactflash cards.
In addition to FPGA development, Protel also provided a real time debuggable Z80 equivalent soft core with assembler and C compiler.
The accompanying Nanoboard hardware was excellent only to be let down by perpetually unresolved software bugs.
Even the mere change of a letter in a signal name was enough to cause a design that worked into a failed mess.
The FPGA and software development portions of Altium Designer were dropped some years ago in favour for a sole focus on PCB design and with that change development was moved from Australia to China.