ZPUino Alpha 1 is out. And its website too.

I'm proud to announce the first ZPUino release (Alpha 1). This release is aimed at developers and not yet for general use. There is still a lot of documentation missing, as well as build instructions for all the components.

Also a new website is up for ZPUino at http://www.alvie.com/zpuino, where all information for this release can be found. You will find there also contact information to report bugs, post fixes and request features.

So, I wish you all a happy new year!

Álvaro

Preparing Alpha1

Currently preparing release Alpha 1 of ZPUino, hopefully before end of year.

This first alpha will only support Linux, because I still have to port the programmer to windows platform. MacOS users should have no trouble building programmer from scratch.

Alvie

ADC from Gadget Factory

I finally had some time to solder the SPI ADC from Gadget Factory and give it a try on ZPUino and Papilio One.

Works :)

Values seem very consistent, so I'll try to adapt my oscope to this new ADC.

Álvaro

Papilio One

Things are coming out smooth :) After some bug-fixing on software side, and some new improvements, ZPUino runs on Papilio One FPGA (S3E-250), and is able to program sketches and even program itself. And programming is quite faster than "traditional" JTAG-based programmer (think 300+ seconds versus 20 seconds to program FPGA bitstream). The Arduino "ASCII" example runs perfectly now. I'll try to get all other examples working soon. Serial buffer was increased to 2Kb, and programming now uses 1Mbps instead of 115200. Some new routines were added to bootloader to allow fast programming of SST flash devices.

Another feature is soft reset using the serial line. So you can reset ZPUino even when it is in a very bad state, just by sending a "serial break", of a special serial code using 300 baud rate. Very useful for programming (no need to hand-reset), and when you use some serial terminal (just send a break and it will happily reset).

Álvaro