Arch linux installation

[warddr]

I just installed the software on an arch linux image of raspberry pi, maybe it's interesting to include that as well in the documentation.

Steps I took:

Install git: pacman -S git
install base-devel (to install gcc, make, ...): pacman -S base-devel
install the broadcom library: pacman -S libbcm2835

Other steps in the hardware installation guide (starting with the loader) can be followed, only the make file at the loader doesn't work, so I ran make first, and after that I executed:
gcc -o gz_load lenval.o micro.o ports.o -L/usr/local/lib -lbcm2835 -lrt

(remove the -Wl, that didn't work).

I didn't test the enable SPI, but I don't know if it's necessary (it definitely isn't in the same spot).
Now I'm running the gz_test and it's looking fine.

I will in the coming weeks be doing more testing on using this with arch linux, and I will be writing some cores of my own, if you like this kind of information I can keep you in the loop if if figure out other things I have to install / ...
I just post this now when the installation is fresh in the back of my mind, but I only have my copy of the guzunty pi for 2 hours now, and 1 of them was soldering everything so I didn't have much time for testing yet.

[campbellsan]

Excellent work, and thank you, I have added a reference to this issue in the 'Get your Pi set up' page.

We'll have to see about SPI working. The test core does not require SPI, just a hardware clock on GPIO4, so the fact that it works does not mean you are off and running with SPI. You won't know until you try one of the I/O expansion cores.

I did Google Arch and SPI a bit and found a couple of links that suggest that maybe there is some kernel work needed to enable SPI. For example, this:

http://embedded-development-world.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/adding-gpio-spi-and-i2c-options-to-your.html

Admittedly, this is for a different board, so the work may already have been done for RPi Arch. Do please let us know.

Good work on building your own cores. I look forward to what you come up with. We'd certainly be interested in hosting them here, if you wish to share them with the community. You did find the wiki page 'Set up to develop your own cores', right? It will take you through what you need to do to get the Xilinx development tools set up on your host.

[warddr]

I just did some tests on 16i8o and I can confim that the SPI works out of the box, without any settings that have to be changed.

If I have a core that can be usefull I'll make sure to contribute it, I have worked with vhdl (to program FPGA) a lot in the past, but it's a bit rusty by now.

[campbellsan]

SPI result: awesome. :-)

The biggest differences between FPGA and CPLD are 1. Gate count (much smaller) and 2. SRAM (none). Regardless, i's still a really great device and it will hone your skills by forcing you to be frugal :-).

If there is demand, I might build a Spartan variant of the Guzunty, but due to the package choices, it would lack a lot of the robustness built into this wee board.

Enjoy your Guzunty....