Alternative to WinCUPL?

Topics relating to PALs, CPLDs, FPGAs, and other PLDs used for the support or creation of 65-family processors, both hardware and HDL.
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ojanhk
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Alternative to WinCUPL?

Post by ojanhk »

Hi,
I lost an evening again trying to get some decoding logic on an ATF16V8B and I was wondering if there was any alternative to WinCUPL ?
I’ve searched a bit here and on the web, and apart from GALasm I don’t see any other software to program these GALs.
WinCUPL could be a nice solution, but I’m really tired of the crashes, corruption of simulation files, weird errors, etc...
I know it’s free and I shouldn’t complain, but I’m OK to pay for a reliable software but I don’t find any :(
maded2
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Re: Alternative to WinCUPL?

Post by maded2 »

GALasm works really well.
DerTrueForce
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Re: Alternative to WinCUPL?

Post by DerTrueForce »

Back when I used it, I found that it was the GUI itself that was causing all the problems, not anything underlying, and that the GUI is only a pretty wrapper on top of the command-line utilities.
I ended up working out how to use the command-line utilities, and threw the GUI in the bin.
Unfortunately, it's been so long since I did that stuff that I don't remember what was involved anymore.
dourish
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Re: Alternative to WinCUPL?

Post by dourish »

I've successfully used an open source program called "palwiz" by Bruce Tomlin (who I believe posts in the Atari Age forums). I have the source myself and can send it, although I'm not finding an online source right now. I ran it on MacOS but it's just a simple C program and so it should compile for pretty much anything.

Here are the details from the README on supported chip types:

The supported chip types are:

16V8S - 16V8 in "simple" mode
16V8C - 16V8 in "complex" mode
16V8R - 16V8 in "registered" mode
20V8S - 20V8 in "simple" mode
20V8C - 20V8 in "complex" mode
20V8R - 20V8 in "registered" mode
22V10 - 22V10 (the 22V10 has no architecture fuses)

(I was using it with Atmel 16V8Bs.)

--p.
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BigEd
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Re: Alternative to WinCUPL?

Post by BigEd »

That sounds very handy! We should ensure the source is not lost, and preferably is shared.
ojanhk
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Re: Alternative to WinCUPL?

Post by ojanhk »

dourish wrote:
I've successfully used an open source program called "palwiz" by Bruce Tomlin (who I believe posts in the Atari Age forums). I have the source myself and can send it, although I'm not finding an online source right now. I ran it on MacOS but it's just a simple C program and so it should compile for pretty much anything.

.

Thanks, that’s really interesting indeed. Moreover if I can run it on the Mac, associated with minipro software for programming the GAL I won’t have to start a Windows VM each time I want to program a GAL.
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BigEd
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Re: Alternative to WinCUPL?

Post by BigEd »

(I see the tool's source can be found on Bruce's site at http://xi6.com/files/palwiz-1.3a2.zip with earlier versions nearby.)
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enso
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Re: Alternative to WinCUPL?

Post by enso »

Thanks!

I was just searching the web for a linux compiler...

Here is a promising solution: https://github.com/daveho/GALasm.

I haven't tried it yet but it looks doable. Oh, I should have looked at the first post... :oops:
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. ...Jan van de Snepscheut
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drogon
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Re: Alternative to WinCUPL?

Post by drogon »

enso wrote:
Thanks!

I was just searching the web for a linux compiler...

Here is a promising solution: https://github.com/daveho/GALasm.

I haven't tried it yet but it looks doable. Oh, I should have looked at the first post... :oops:
I think GALasm was mentioned here earlier... I've been using it for as long as I've been using GALs on my 65x systems. It seems to work just fine but just one thing I wish was more documentation of its operator priority and support for ()'s in expressions. In one system I'm currently using an otherwise unused pin to help with an expression that I think ought to be do-able without the pin sacrifice. It's also possible (probable!) that if I actually spent more than half an hour with it I could work it out, however ...

-Gordon
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Gordon Henderson.
See my Ruby 6502 and 65816 SBC projects here: https://projects.drogon.net/ruby/
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