PicoBlaze

[chapman]

Fourth Release of KCPSM6 (What's New?)

The fourth release of KCPSM6 is now available for download from the PicoBlaze Lounge.

www.xilinx.com/picoblaze and download ‘KCPSM6_Release4_30April12.zip

Here is a summary of what you will find new in the fourth release.

JTAG Loader

JTAG Loader now works with the Digilent programming solution as well as the existing Xilinx Platform Cable USB. This means that PicoBlaze users of boards that have the Digilent solution built on to them such as ATLYS and the KC705 Kintex-7 Evaluation Kit can now enjoy the same rapid PicoBlaze code development cycles as everyone else.

A total of six different versions of JTAG Loader executable are now supplied. These provide 32-bit and 64-bit support for Windows-XP, Windows-7, and new in this release, Linux operating systems.

Assembler

A couple of commonly requested items now supported are the automatic generation of a session log file (‘KCPSM6_session_log.txt’ contains everything that was displayed in the assembler window)  and the ability to specify a path to a PSM file when directory names contain spaces by enclosing the path and filename specification within quotation marks as shown in the example below…. 

          kcpsm6 –c2048 “C:\my project\what a  lot of spaces\may_program.psm”

However, the biggest addition is that of an ‘INCLUDE’ directive. This enables you to segment your PSM code into multiple files and then include one from another. For example, when the assembler encounters the line containing the directive below it opens the ‘uart_interface_routines.psm’ file and copies and inserts all the lines from that file into the assembly process and then continues reading the original file.

           INCLUDE "uart_interface_routines.psm"

Whilst there is no compelling reason to use the INCLUDE directive, it does enable you to keep each PSM file a manageable size and even facilities the concept of a ‘PSM library especially as the directive and assembler also support the specification of absolute and relative paths to any PSM files to be included.

For full details of the assembler usage and example syntax please remember to look in ‘kcpsm6_assembler_readme.txt’ and ‘all_kcpsm6_syntax.psm’.

Hardware

There has been no reasons to make changes to any of the existing hardware. The only addition has been a verilog equivalent of the PicoBlaze-UART reference design called ‘uart6_ml605.v’.

Documentation

Obviously the new features have been added to the documentation. I have made a number of minor corrections and clarifications based mainly on your feedback. A big thank you again to all those that have reported even the smallest of mistakes to me and help to improve the documentation in each release.

I am still a bit concerned at how big the ‘READ_ME_FIRST.txt’ file has become but it is mainly there to raise awareness of any known issues that you may encounter (but hopefully never will). In fact, several of the issues covered are obsolete when using the latest version of the ISE tools but I’ve assumed that not everyone has updated their tools yet.

Have fun!

[gszakacs]

Since I didn't come across a Forth interpreter or compiler for the PicoBlaze, I assume you

meant that you have "sallied forth" with the fourth release :)

-- Gabor

[chapman]

Wen eye woz yung eye cudent evun spel injunear and now eye is won.

Ok, I admit that I make mistakes and that’s why I’m always so grateful to all the PicoBlaze users that let me know when they have spotted a mistake in the documentation. The FOURTH release does include corrections to spellings identified by users and slowly but surely it does get better.

Please go forth and have fun using it.