cjl@ecsvax.UUCP (05/07/84)
I too am very interested in PALs now that they are coming out in CMOS. I have found to my dismay that there are few low end programmers available for PALs and no programming services. Many ads proclaim inexpensive programmers for sale, but all investigated turned out to be coming "in a few weeks" or nonsense like that. Does anyone know of a <$1000 PAL programmer that is available NOW for immediate delivery? Do any of you have a programming service? It seems that some enterprising individual with a programmer running off PALASM could enter data and burn a chip in ~15 min, charge $10-20, and make good money. How about it, entrepreneurs? 24 hr turnaround? -Charles Lord cjl@ecsvax PO Box 6, Cary, NC 27511
yamauchi@fortune.UUCP (05/10/84)
#R:ecsvax:-244900:fortune:28000035:000:1003
fortune!yamauchi May 9 12:46:00 1984
Have you tried your local distributor yet? Many of the distributors
here burn PALs as an added charge and can do it rather quickly.
Don't know about any programmers for under $1k but DATA I/O will burn
just about anything around. There is a catch of course, and its a big
one too!! In order to burn different types of devices you need a
different "programming pack", each of which has the necessary
programming algorthms for what you need to burn. One pack can burn
several different devices which saves you from having to buy several
hundred and they aren't cheap. As far as "tools" for generating the
properly formatted data to download to the programmer, PALASM is pretty
archaic and if you look around you can probably find more powerful and
"user friendly" tools to use. We use PALASM here at FORTUNE Systems,
but we are looking for alternatives. I've seen ads for various tools
in trade mags, but can't remember any names.
Alan Yamauchi
FORTUNE Systems sct@lanl-a.UUCP (05/10/84)
PALASM is a bit archaic but at least it's cheap (version 1.6 was given to us free from MMI). MMI is coming out with version 2.0 soon but they are charging about $200. for it. This is still cheap compared to the new software packages coming out. The two I know of are CUPL and ABLE. Both claim to do a lot (e.g. they both allow transfer from a state diagram to a programmed device) but are about $700 for IBM PC based software and $2400 for VAX based software. I wish I knew why the VAX software is so much more expensive.
phil@amd70.UUCP (Phil Ngai) (05/11/84)
Although their products do not meet the desired price goal of < $1000,
they seem to be the most inexpensive way of getting PAL burning capability
I know of. Structured Design makes an SD20/24 which goes for $1800. Their
phone number is 408 988 0725. I know their stuff works, we use it in our lab.
Re the merits of providing a PAL burning service, there are companies in
this area that do that. I'd rather have my own programmer, of course. And
most distributors don't mind burning PALs that you buy from them, if you
have volume requirements.
--
Phil Ngai (408) 749-5286 {ucbvax,decwrl,ihnp4,allegra,intelca}!amd70!phildave@rocksvax.UUCP (Dave Sewhuk) (05/15/84)
I use the Data I/O model 29 with the Programmable Logic Development System.
I re-wrote PALASM in C to automatically generate test vectors. I also
wrote a simulator with this. The original PALASM that I based this on did not
have a simulator, so I rolled my own. The later PALASM seems to include
a batch oriented simulator, but I like mine better because it is
interactive and you don't have to generate a table of expected outputs.
I suggest whatever programmer you get include a way of performing a
functional test. I have been "burned" a number of times with PALs that
pass the fuse test but don't function correctly. The Data I/O stress
tests the device @ min and max Vcc spec during the functional test. I
haven't seen a bad one in service since I started using these tests.
----
Down with Fortran......
--
Dave
Arpa: Sewhuk.HENR@PARC-MAXC.ARPA
uucp: {allegra, rochester, ritcv, ritvp, amd70, sunybcs}!rocksvax!dave