CUPL - reliablity and "semi-professional" use

[Davide]

Hi men this is my first post in the wide usenet

At high school profs gave me basics of the old-useless CUPL language which
defines hardware structure of gal and pld.
Incuriosired i took it up by myself and in a few days i learned all the easy
language and made some simulations of my virtual devices.

Now (not much later) i've started to actually build some simple circuits
like
pwm to control fans speed and i would like to begin implementig my
CUPL knowledge to give a brief watch on what i can and if pass to a more
complex hdl BUT..

The CUPL compilers i've tried (wincupl from atmel and the original from the
cornell university) seem to be too much bugged and unstable even to be
completely unusable: a stupid error on the code often causes crashes, over
many others "random" ones that when happen you need to delete all the
project files and rebuild them and, almost often, correct code is impossible
to
be compiled. SO..

Because i don't intend to throw my little knowledge in the WC, and i can't
go forward to best languages like vhdl and verlilog, i ask HELP! i want to
speak CUPL but HOW?

thank you

 

[Rich Webb]

Hi men this is my first post in the wide usenet

At high school profs gave me basics of the old-useless CUPL language which
defines hardware structure of gal and pld.
Incuriosired i took it up by myself and in a few days i learned all the easy
language and made some simulations of my virtual devices.

Now (not much later) i've started to actually build some simple circuits
like
pwm to control fans speed and i would like to begin implementig my
CUPL knowledge to give a brief watch on what i can and if pass to a more
complex hdl BUT..

The CUPL compilers i've tried (wincupl from atmel and the original from the
cornell university) seem to be too much bugged and unstable even to be
completely unusable: a stupid error on the code often causes crashes, over
many others "random" ones that when happen you need to delete all the
project files and rebuild them and, almost often, correct code is impossible
to
be compiled. SO..

Because i don't intend to throw my little knowledge in the WC, and i can't
go forward to best languages like vhdl and verlilog, i ask HELP! i want to
speak CUPL but HOW?

Sometimes a good ol' 22V10 is the best-fit solution and when I've needed
to go that route, I've used Atmel's WinCUPL without any particularly
memorable difficulties. Are you experiencing any specific problem?

 

[Davide]

Only mysteriouses "Fatal CUPL errors encountered ... program
aborted" when i compile...
Pheraps is my code bad?
For example, a stupid 4bit adder with carry like this does
crash wincupl:

Name adder;
Partno 00;
Date 06/08/08;
Revision 00;
Designer davide;
Company none;
Assembly none;
Location board;
Device g22v10;

pin [1..4] = [a0..3]; /* a addend */
pin [5..8] = [b0..3]; /* b addend */
pin [14..18] = [o0..4]; /* output with carry */

function adder (a, b, carryin, carryout) {
append carryout = a & b;
append carryout = a & carryin;
append carryout = b & carryin;
adder = (a $ b) $ carryin;
}

o0 = adder(a0, b0, 'b'0, cout0);
$repeat i = [1..3]
o{i} = adder(a{i}, b{i}, cout{i - 1}, cout{i});
$repend


working directories are long less than 32 chars as it's needed...
boh? i think the code is correct..

 

[Rich Webb]

Only mysteriouses "Fatal CUPL errors encountered ... program
aborted" when i compile...
Pheraps is my code bad?
For example, a stupid 4bit adder with carry like this does
crash wincupl:

Perhaps you have a bad installation or some damaged files? I ran both
device dependent and independent compiles of your code and both
completed without crashes. The device dependent compile complained about
excessive product terms for o3 and o2 but neither crashed. This is with
ver 5.30.4.

 

[MooseFET]

Hi men this is my first post in the wide usenet

At high school profs gave me basics of the old-useless CUPL language which

[...]

I prefer ICTPLACE try googling on it and see if you can find a copy
out on the internet. Chances are there still is one. It is a DOS
program that did 22V10s using a clever bit of ASCII art to show how
you have the macrocell configured. It is a plain DOS program with a
bit of a point and click user interface.

Unfortunately, the company ICT is now long gone. They made a few
really great parts and gave away a really good development tool.
Later they made a Winplace, but it wasn't as good. They had a problem
porting the fairly nice editor into Windows land. The Windows version
didn't search.

 

[Davide]

Thank you.
I discovered "my mistake" in that code..
for wincupl i had to leave blank lines bitween the $repeat
instructions and another one at the end of file.
Mmmm wonderfull flexibility.

Thank you MooseFET for ictplace.
Dos or windows doesn't matter, the important thing
is that an IDE must to be powerfull.
I'm going to download it.

Really thank you
Davide