Newbie question about VHDL & Xilinx CoolrunnerII kit...

[Mike Deblis]

Hi,

Be gentle, please! I've started reading "The Student's Guide to VHDL" and
have puchased a CoolRunner II Development Kit from Xilinx (very nice and
reasonably priced) - the kit gave me all the s/w I think I'll need for a
while, though the manual is rubbish, hence the book. Book seems very good -
accessible and easy to use - about half way through now - I program
professionally anyway, and have an EE background, so its not too tough
(quite fun actually...).

Now, I know very little about this subject, but I like making clocks... Is a
digital alarm clock (7 seg LEDs or other display technology) a reasonable
project to start out with? Normally I'd have done this with a PIC or AVR,
but it occurred to me that using a CPLD would be... well... different....

But is it sensible? I would appreciate any comments on this approach,
preferably helpful ;-)

BTW. This is *not* a student project - my student days were about 25 years
ago, hence my having "fun" learning different stuff...

Many thanks

Mike

 

[Jon Elson]

Mike Deblis wrote:

Hi,

Be gentle, please! I've started reading "The Student's Guide to VHDL" and
have puchased a CoolRunner II Development Kit from Xilinx (very nice and
reasonably priced) - the kit gave me all the s/w I think I'll need for a
while, though the manual is rubbish, hence the book. Book seems very good -
accessible and easy to use - about half way through now - I program
professionally anyway, and have an EE background, so its not too tough
(quite fun actually...).

Now, I know very little about this subject, but I like making clocks... Is a
digital alarm clock (7 seg LEDs or other display technology) a reasonable
project to start out with? Normally I'd have done this with a PIC or AVR,
but it occurred to me that using a CPLD would be... well... different....

But is it sensible? I would appreciate any comments on this approach,
preferably helpful ;-)
Yup, a CPLD should be able to handle this real easily. Even a 6-digit

clock should only need about 40 FFs and a few dozens of gates.

Jon