An FPGA-based LGP-30 Replica

(e-basteln.de)

49 points | by ofrzeta 9 days ago ago

8 comments

  • dailykoder 9 days ago

    Cute project!

    > Xilinx tech support page and a forum post explaining how to get the Xilinx ISE to run under Windows 8 or Windows 10. Unfortunately Xilinx no longer maintains this development suite, but has also considered it unnecessary to support their Spartan 6 platform in the successor software suite, Vivado…

    Wasn't the Spartan 6 also supported by the open source toolchains? I just did a couple seconds of search and I could only find the yosys support, but no nextpnr. Sad. Xilinx/AMD should open that up

    • fer 9 days ago

      I haven't done it, but 7-series is theoretically supported by SymbiFlow tools[0], even though the bitstream generation still requires Xilinx's bitgen.

      [0]https://github.com/symbiflow

  • ozymandiax 9 days ago

    My favourite computer... timing instruction placement on the drum. Juergen is actually planning to make a batch of kits later this year!

    • bewo001 8 days ago

      My late father was a maintenance technician for those things. He hated it when programmers did smart instruction placement to optimize drum timing. When the drum speed was a little off, they called him to calibrate it so their programs would run fast again.

  • zombot 9 days ago

    That's impressive. It looks like the original LGP-30 computer should have made IBM jealous.

    > Oscilloscope monitors internal activity.

    Now that is downright romantic. What other computer offers entertainment like this?

    • jecel 8 days ago

      For a serial computer, an oscilloscope will easily do what a set of blinking lights will do for a parallel computer. By trading time for space it gives you a free serial to parallel conversion.

  • throwaway81523 7 days ago

    Why FPGA instead of a software emulation that would be way more accessible?

  • bitwize 9 days ago

    But does Mel's blackjack program run on it? And does it cheat when you toggle the right switch?