What workflow for black ice II? Ive been on “sabbatical”

[Wells]

Hi,

So I’m a BI2 owner, and am just starting to re-educate myself on the toolchain used to get from verilog to bitstream upload. I use a Mac but perhaps we should ignore that for now, unless that would make a major difference to the answer to the following question: what is recommended for programming a black ice 2 these days? Should I research/acquire new tools such as Symbiflow and NextPNR? I was using atom to write code, and though I can’t remember the specific steps I believe most of them came from the ice storm toolchain, and due to the Mac were a bit convoluted but worked ok.

Should I look into symbiflow?

Thanks, Wells

[Folknology]

Hi Wells couple of immediate thoughts:

• NextPNR can offer efficiency and timing improvements over the Icestorm standard ArachnePNR
• We still just 'cat' or 'cp' to the serial device for uploading so prob no changes there, and more editors have verilog support so take your pick from those.
• Symbiflow offers formal tooling within Verilog (Systemverilog like), definitely worth learning about if you haven't checked them out yet, take a look at @ZipCPU 's excellent tutorials

I am sure others might want add to this thead.
welcome back BTW..

[Wells]

Awesome, thanks. I need to take a look at my original workflow again (if I can figure out where I landed) so I can inform my questions in more detail; for example I may have been using apio for some things... Since I am using a Mac my journey was a bit more convoluted but in the end I was able to get from verilog to board in 5-6 steps and it became somewhat automatic, or at least didn’t involve long periods of staring at the screen

Anyway at least I have some direction, and will dive into Symbiflow and get nextPNR. Thanks, and I’ll post progress if I think it’ll help at all

Wells

[Wells]

Hi all, update and call for opinions,

So I’m wading through getting up and running on OSX and on visiting my old setup I realized I ended up using apio/atom for most of the steps (I think there was something I would step out of that environment to do but haven’t figured that out yet).

Not sure if this will return to bite me but I got Yosys, the ice storm tools and nextpnr installed before atom/apio...

Currently I’m tussling with atom and packages trying to run python 2.7 in spite of having 3.8. Atom has been throwing warnings that python doesn’t recognize sha1, sha256 and similar, and the conflicts are coming from python 2.7. I think I have the solve but am away from my laptop (the agony!)

Once that’s fixed I’ll reinstall apio and continue setting up. Unfortunately the best I’ll be able to offer when I’m done is which tools I will be using, not how I got there as I wouldn’t wish this winding road on anyone

Anyway, my hope is to write verilog in atom then verify, pnr and convert to bitstream there and upload. Any issues with this workflow? It may have been the upload part Atom wouldn’t do but can’t remember...

Chiz,

Wells

[Wells]

In stormy darkness a flash of lightning illuminates a hunched figure crouched over a dimly glowing screen. The sound of a chair hitting the floor and shuffling feet join the humming and crackling of electricity. The next flash, and there is a hand poised by the handle of an enormous and ancient knife blade switch. A squeak and a clink as the dual blades of the switch find their home, and suddenly there is lightning inside the stone walls of the laboratory.

The figure scurries over to a giant stone slab, stops, and staggers back a step. “it’s alive... ITS ALIVE!!!” he screams, and his bubbling keening laughter fills the night and wafts out over the countryside.

There on the stone slab, at the center of a tangle of wires and cables, sits a tiny circuit board. And there on one side of the board, a blood-red LED has begun pulsing, on...off...on...off... it’s beat unnervingly regular and precise.

Unable to contain my terror I turn and run into the windy darkness, the soaking rain unable to wash away the sight of that single tiny red beacon, beating its terrible message over and over to the world: “hello!”

[Wells]

Ok so I’m up and running.

Here’s my workflow:
Atom/apio to write code, verify build and run a makefile (using a terminal package, xterminal I think) that creates a bitstream called “ice40bitstream.h”.

Then it’s Arduino API, where I upload an arduino sketch which is in the same folder as the bitstream file, and has an include with the file.

Details to follow.

Wells