Xilinx Zynq 7010 fpga crypto windfall boards

so far there has been no reason for an update,
but i also don't use the IDE but only the console tools

Just a comment from enduser perspective.

( I already struggle hard to get my small wiring project organized. "cable management" )
Diving into "building Linux from source", and fighting drivers etc. seems to be completely unreal.
Most (or only some?) people already having a hard time with the hal configuration and getting basic UI functions to work.

How many thousand hours do I have to spend extra in sofware research and learning new things, in order to save 60 coins on a control card?

Considering the cost of mechanical components (e.g. for metal working machines), the FPGA card is the least financial problem.

I feel that leaves a very small target group beeing interested in a "race to the bottom" with FPGA card pricing. This target group is also looking into 3d printer firmware and hardware. (cheap, and for some things usable)

The thing is you don't have to spend hours learning new things, you can use the Mesa cards. No one has a gun at your head. I like learning new things....it keeps the Black Dog at bay.

Some of us like to tinker, build hardware and such. Like I said in my first post, it's not always the cheapest route if you're the guy doing the designing.

I've actually gotten a better understanding of the Mesa hardware by getting involved in the projects I've been pursuing.

on ethernet..
Zynq 7010 has two gigabit ethernet controllers (GEMs) available for PS (ARM cores). that EBAZ board however has a single 100 Mbps PHY and magnetics. its RMII port is wired to the PL, so it can be used either with the GEM (via EMIO) or any soft core MAC/CPU/whatever implemented in PL.

nothing wrong with race to the bottom timo. its like running doom on everything. we are having fun.

I think the real question is, why arent i mining crypto when my machine has downtime? make the mesa fallback to a crypot miner

I use Mesa myself, and my motivation was not to spend hundreds of hours just to save 50 bucks on Mesa.
Mesa is the only turnkey solution here from what I can see that does not require JTAG programmer to start . I wanted to see what options would I have if for some reason Mesa will not be available in some future. I would hate to see it happen, but boy haven't we seen enough world craziness lately.

I admire all the people dedicating their personal time for the common benefit here. 

>>I think the real question is, why arent i mining crypto when my machine has downtime? make the mesa fallback to a crypot miner

how do you know Peter is not doing this secretly while we sleep? 


 

Well, the board has arrived and i think i know now why these are so cheap. I can see the signs of dust, discoloration and rework. Looks like these boards are taken from old equipment and refurbished. I will use it for my fpga learning experiments but would not recommend for any serious use.

I guess this closes the topic.

my board is now here too.

I also managed to get the LEDs to flash,
but the FPGA with Vivado is very complicated for me.

In addition, the bridges you have to set on the board are extremely small (R1485 / 25Mhz clock).

somehow it is also possible to clock via PS (ARM-Core),
but I can't get it to run so easily with the console tools

Flashing via JTAG doesn't really work either, I can only write to RAM.

I'll keep playing around with it, but please don't expect RIO integration.

Otherwise the FPGA is cool with its dual-core ARM running Linux
 

ok, it did challenge me a little.

i can now set up an udp connection via w5500 and control a few plugins.

the whole thing now even works with activated arm-core and its clock generation for the FPGA part.
(all in the dev branch)

TODO:

load bitfile into the flash (not only ram)
compile and run my own C code or boot linux on it
much later..... run a UDP bridge on the ARM core

here is a manual to set password and configure network of the preinstalled linux system (if it works depends on your hardware)
github.com/xjtuecho/EBAZ4205

now i can copy my bitfile via scp and load it via linux-console on the board:

next step is to transfare data between ARM-Core and FPGA-Part