FPGA Central

Hello,

I want to design FPGA-based PC oscilloscope controlled by a user of
the PC. I am not sure how to provide communication between PC based
application (a main program on PC; this will be written either in C or
Visual Basic) and FPGA-board. A port for communication will be RS232
and I want to get my scope working under Windows XP. What you think,
is writing a driver necessary for such system? (Unfortunately, I have
no experience with writing drivers.)

On Feb 12, 9:27*am, Vagant <vladimir.v.koroste...@rambler.ru> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I want to design FPGA-based PC oscilloscope controlled by a user of
> the PC. I am not sure how to provide communication between PC based
> application (a main program on PC; this will be written either in C or
> Visual Basic) and FPGA-board. A port for communication will be RS232
> and I want to get my scope working under Windows XP. What you think,
> is writing a driver necessary for such system? (Unfortunately, I have
> no experience with writing drivers.)

This is the problem with modern-day systems; it's software and
hardware, both.

If you want to give a bad customer interface, then sure - use the
serial port and you can probably call up simple communication routines
on the PC for the software devolopment you still need to do.

To do it right, you really should consider USB (or even ethernet) and
go through the hassle of developing a real driver. The speed and
integration are so much better.

- John_H

On 12 ÆÅ×, 20:30, John_H <newsgr...@johnhandwork.com> wrote:
> On Feb 12, 9:27šam, Vagant <vladimir.v.koroste...@rambler.ru> wrote:
>
> > Hello,
>
> > I want to design FPGA-based PC oscilloscope controlled by a user of
> > the PC. I am not sure how to provide communication between PC based
> > application (a main program on PC; this will be written either in C or
> > Visual Basic) and FPGA-board. A port for communication will be RS232
> > and I want to get my scope working under Windows XP. What you think,
> > is writing a driver necessary for such system? (Unfortunately, I have
> > no experience with writing drivers.)
>
> This is the problem with modern-day systems; it's software and
> hardware, both.
>
> If you want to give a bad customer interface, then sure - use the
> serial port and you can probably call up simple communication routines
> on the PC for the software devolopment you still need to do.
>
> To do it right, you really should consider USB (or even ethernet) and
> go through the hassle of developing a real driver. šThe speed and
> integration are so much better.
>
> - John_H

I would like to use USB for communication but a USB interface of my
board (Spartan3E-1600E Microblaze Development Kit) can be used only to
download design, not for communication. So I might think about using
Ethernet for my project, but I don't know even where to start with
this. Would you recommend any source of information about using
Ethernet with FPGA for a beginner?

On Feb 12, 9:27*pm, Vagant <vladimir.v.koroste...@rambler.ru> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I want to design FPGA-based PC oscilloscope controlled by a user of
> the PC. I am not sure how to provide communication between PC based
> application (a main program on PC; this will be written either in C or
> Visual Basic) and FPGA-board. A port for communication will be RS232
> and I want to get my scope working under Windows XP. What you think,
> is writing a driver necessary for such system? (Unfortunately, I have
> no experience with writing drivers.)

In your case the driver is going to be a piece of C/VB code which will
poll the RS232 port, and arrange the bits in bytes/words.
I believe you would need it as to have a PC-oscilloscope work you need
to read lot of data from FPGA and send commands
which is not going to be easy using hyperterminal in XP.

On 2008-02-12, Vagant <[email protected]> wrote:
> Visual Basic) and FPGA-board. A port for communication will be RS232
> and I want to get my scope working under Windows XP. What you think,
> is writing a driver necessary for such system? (Unfortunately, I have
> no experience with writing drivers.)

What you are calling a driver already exists in the system. Something
is provided by the operating system to talk to the UART in your PC. You
get an interface that can exchange bytes. You have to develop your own
protocol on top of that.

If you had a USB chip on the FPGA board, you'd use a driver provided by
the FPGA vendor. The interface might still look exactly the same (if you
use it as a USB UART) or you might use some custom interaction based on
an API provided by the USB chip maker (eg FTDI).

--
Ben Jackson AD7GD
<[email protected]>
http://www.ben.com/

I haven't done it on your specific model of FPGA, but for the Virtex-II Pro
and above you can repurpose the USB programming JTAG port for data communications.
Look into the BSCAN primitive. To make a GUI, all you have to do is do
a simple TCL/TK script.


---Matthew Hicks


> On 12 ???, 20:30, John_H <newsgr...@johnhandwork.com> wrote:
>
>> On Feb 12, 9:27 am, Vagant <vladimir.v.koroste...@rambler.ru> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I want to design FPGA-based PC oscilloscope controlled by a user of
>>> the PC. I am not sure how to provide communication between PC based
>>> application (a main program on PC; this will be written either in C
>>> or Visual Basic) and FPGA-board. A port for communication will be
>>> RS232 and I want to get my scope working under Windows XP. What you
>>> think, is writing a driver necessary for such system?
>>> (Unfortunately, I have no experience with writing drivers.)
>>>
>> This is the problem with modern-day systems; it's software and
>> hardware, both.
>>
>> If you want to give a bad customer interface, then sure - use the
>> serial port and you can probably call up simple communication
>> routines on the PC for the software devolopment you still need to do.
>>
>> To do it right, you really should consider USB (or even ethernet) and
>> go through the hassle of developing a real driver. The speed and
>> integration are so much better.
>>
>> - John_H
>>
> I would like to use USB for communication but a USB interface of my
> board (Spartan3E-1600E Microblaze Development Kit) can be used only to
> download design, not for communication. So I might think about using
> Ethernet for my project, but I don't know even where to start with
> this. Would you recommend any source of information about using
> Ethernet with FPGA for a beginner?
>