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Re: SRAM Based FPGA Devices
Magma has developed an NT driver which configures boards like yours during the NT boot phase - it does not require the BIOS to see your board, our driver does it's own enumeration. It does require the customer to install a driver.
We use it for our own products but might do a custom for you. If you are interested in it give me a call.
Regards,
Ed Romascan
(858) 530-2511
At 11:35 AM 2/25/00 -0500, you wrote:
>
>>>>>> "Dominick" == Dominick Cafarelli <dominick_cafarelli@flashcom.net> writes:
> Dominick> loading, the soft loadable FPGA (which contains a PCI core)
> Dominick> will now have its PCI configuration registers appear on the PCI
> Dominick> bus.
>
> Understood.
>
> Dominick> I am wondering if any one has implemented such a device. We
> Dominick> need to support this type of adapter in Windows NT 4.0. This
> Dominick> adapter is a Network card and thus an NDIS Miniport driver will
> Dominick> be developed. Will the NDIS driver in Windows NT 4.0 be able
> Dominick> to recognize this softloadable FPGA after it has been loaded?
>
> Nope. The hangup is that you can't get the "BIOS" to allocate you a
>physical address. I think that this is a major limitation of PC BIOSs, and
>I don't know how they will ever support Hot Insertion. Maybe there are
>extensions, but I haven't seen them yet.
> I posted about this a month ago.
>
> Dominick> I am a bit concerned because the BIOS will not see that FPGA
> Dominick> because it is essentially invisiable during BIOS loading.
> Dominick> Given that the BIOS has the responsibility of allocating the
> Dominick> actual base addresses of all the PCI devices, when this FPGA
> Dominick> device appears, it will not be programmed with the appropriate
> Dominick> base address.
>
> Dominick> Can someone help!
>
> Put a serial EEPROM on your board, and connect it to your programming
>pins. Have a minimal load in the EEPROM that loads the soft PCI core. You can
>reprogram the device later if you need to. For development purposes, you can
>just make sure that a soft reset doesn't erase the FPGA and do a reboot after
>reprogramming. That isn't acceptable for end-users though.
>
> We have the same problem with a Lucent OR3TP12 device. It has a hard PCI
>core and FPGA logic which is loadable via PCI configuration space, but the
>BARs are not set up until the FPGA is loaded.
>
> :!mcr!: | Solidum Systems Corporation, http://www.solidum.com
> Michael Richardson |For a better connected world,where data flows faster<tm>
> Personal: http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/People/Michael_Richardson/Bio.html
> mailto:mcr@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca mailto:mcr@solidum.com
>
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Ed Romascan email: ed@magma.com
MAGMA Tel: (858) 530-2511
9918 Via Pasar Fax: (858) 530-2733
San Diego, CA 92126 Web:http://www.magma.com
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