Re: gEDA-user: Free GNU/Linux hardware design tools

["Charles Lepple" <clepple@ghz.cc>]

Christian E. Jørgensen said:
> Hello list,
>
> I'm a software developer looking for a set of free (as in "free speech")
> GNU/Linux tools suitable for hacking the (Altera) FPGAs on the C-ONE
> board:

Haven't tried it myself, but this may help:

http://www.gnu.org/software/electric/specs.html

Does anyone on the list have any experience with Electric?

> What, if anything, do I need other than a VHDL/Verilog HDL description
> of my design and the gEDA tools? How do hardware hackers work?

The only actively-developed, inexpensive HDL-to-FPGA design flow that I
know of uses Icarus Verilog (GPL'd) and Xilinx WebPack ("free" as in Free
Beer).

It does not appear that Quartus II supports the ACEX family. MAX+Plus
might, but then you might be constrained to AHDL. In addition, making
Icarus Verilog talk to Quartus is still a work in progress.

The bottom line is that you're probably not going to find any GPL'd
place-and-route software for modern FPGAs anytime soon. FPGA makers have
very little incentive to just release all of the bitstream details of
their products, and good P+R code doesn't just appear overnight.

As for the board, well, from a hobbyist's perspective, the silkscreen art 
makes up for any flying capacitors ;-)

-- 
Charles Lepple <clepple@ghz.cc>
http://www.ghz.cc/charles/