[Coco] altera DE1 board

[Frank Pittel]

On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 02:38:03AM -0400, Aaron Wolfe wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 2:30 AM, Mark McDougall <msmcdoug at iinet.net.au> wrote:
> > On 19/10/2010 4:06 PM, Frank Pittel wrote:
> >
> >> After a lot of swearing and nashing of teeth I managed to get the
> >> coco3fpga_dw.sof file loaded onto the board. It even displays "CoCo" on
> >> the 7-segment displays. Unfortunately all I get on the monitor is a bunch
> >> of gibberish and it doesn't respond to the keyboard at all. I don't know
> >> what to make of the stuff in the Software_101.zip file though. While
> >> poking around on the forume section of the yahoo group I noticed mention
> >> about installing coco roms/rom images. Is that true and if so where would
> >> I get such things and how would I "install" them?
> >
> > As for your frustration: you need to keep in mind that the DE1 is a
> > general-purpose FPGA development kit, and not a product designed
> > specifically for Coco3FPGA. So there's a bit of ramp-up time required in
> > understanding a bit about what you have in front of you, and how to use it,
> > even before you start playing with Cocos...
> >
> > Check out this thread, you're not the first...
> > <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CoCo3FPGA/message/161>
> >
> > It should at least outline the steps you need, although perhaps not enough
> > to hold your hand through the process.
> >
> > Some background technical information.
> >
> > FPGAs do not (generally) retain their programming after power-down. So most
> > designs incorporate an "FPGA configuration device" that will automatically
> > configure an FPGA on power-up.
> >
> > You can program an (Atera) FPGA "temporarily" via the JTAG interface using a
> > ".SOF" file. This is written directly into the FPGA volatile memory and is
> > lost when powered-off. Good for rapid development.
> >
> > You can also program the configuration device via a ".POF" file. It's pretty
> > much just the SOF file but in a different format (usually when you build an
> > FPGA project, you ask it to produce both a SOF & POF at the same time). Once
> > you've programmed the configuration device, this image will be automatically
> > loaded into the FPGA on each power-up.
> >
> > I can't recall what is programmed into the configuration device on the DE1
> > when shipped, but I tend to keep a copy of the DE1 control firmware that was
> > shipped on the CD.
> >
> > Back to Coco3:
> >
> > There is not enough internal memory in the FPGA on the DE1 to store all the
> > ROM images. So Gary has elected to store the COCO3 BASIC ROM in external
> > flash memory (at address 0) on the DE1. So the first task is to program the
> > flash with this image. You should find adequate instructions to do this in
> > your DE1 documentation.
> >
> 
> It sound like all that's missing is the coco ROM in flash.  Write it
> to address 0 using the DE1 programming tool and you'll probably be
> running.

Any suggestions on where to get a usable coco rom image? I found one image online
for mess but don't trust it.