PythonLinks
commented
1 year ago Here is what the ReadMe for Mecrisp-ice could look like. https://forth.pythonlinks.info/j1-and-mecrisp You are welcome to use what you want from it. Just delete the part about the Hana CPU.
Anyhow my fear is now gone. I have figured out what is what. This is what i need to do.
If you are just getting started with Mecrisp, the first thing to do is to get the tools working. Create a blinking light demo. Once the tools are working for you, get the verilator working, and then proceed to getting Mecrisp working.
And in particular your recommendation of the Icebreaker uses the largest ICE40 chip, the one used by the UPduino, and there is an out of data upduino port of the Mecrisp code, so between the two of them I should be good.
And of course it would be great if you moved off of source forge and onto one of the git repositories, so then I could have just edited the code, and issued a pull request.
Anyhow the bottom line is that the Mecrisp world looks way way more mature than the first impressions suggested.
Oh, and not only does the J1 read one instruction every clock cycle, it also reads or writes to memory every clock cycle. Using the single port memory will probably take more LUTs than the J1 itself uses!
So downloaded the version from source forge, and am reading through it. Here are some comments.
First of all there is a lot more gorgeous stuff in here than I at first realized.
The readme includes details about the individual boards, that would be best in each board's directory.
One board's license file clearly said FreeBSD hardware, GPL Software. That should be moved to the top level. Otherwise it is easy to think the whole thing is Freebsd licensed.
So one needs a terminal to talk to the boards or to the simulated cpu. Not quite clear what is being used. In due course I will figure it out, but it would be helpful if it were upfront.
I quite like how each board gets a separate directory. It would be good to briefly mention all of the boards that this runs on, at the top level read me.
Rumor has it that this is going into some major applications. Citing that in the read me would give you much credibility. The badge one also gives a lot of crediblity.
It would be good to pull the definitions of the forth words out of the readme, and put them in a separate file.
In the read me, it would be great to list all of the boards you do run on. I had not realized how many it is.
Not quite clear what software I need to download to run the simulator and the synthesizer. Maybe it was listed somewhere. Simulator is probably just Verilator and C++, synthesizer is more complex. Particularly since there was the old software that Yosys worked with, and the new version that runs with more chips.
I will say one more thing. Somehow I find the process of firing up these tools quite scary. And having said that, I now understand why. I am not sure if I can do this on Mac OS X, or if I have to use Linux.
I am also worried, that when I fire up the synthesiser, it just will not work. I think maybe firing up a blinking light with these tools is what I need to do first. You may want to suggest something like that also.
And of course i am waiting for my board to arrive, watching as it inches its way across the world. So no great rush here.
The warning about the limited memory on Ice40, was most helpful, that should be highlighted, got quite missed when I first read the read me. All the more reason to pull things out of the read me.
And maybe the KNOWN-ISSUES should also go in the read me.
I hope that helps. Overall, my impression from reading the files was that this is way way more evolved than the impression I got from first reading the README.