Sunday, December 27, 2015

Working on FIFO code in SAC Interface Box

1053 CONSOLE PRINTER RESTORATION

I won't put my repaired ribbon color shift tape onto the 1053 until I am ready to put on the outer cover, as I broke the tape earlier while manipulating the console printer mechanism. I had to validate that the console printer was performing acceptably, using the IBM typewriter diagnostic program.
Running it will have to wait until my guests are all gone.

SAC INTERFACE FOR ADDING PERIPHERALS TO THE 1130

I began looking at parts of the fpga logic that use the FIFO to copy data words from mirrored devices. Mirror devices is an invention in the SAC Interface which shadows the operation of a physical IO device adapter inside the 1131 processor, capturing the data stream and control actions done to the device. Its purpose is to deliver a copy of the output of the console printer or 1132 printer in a PC file.

To accommodate timing constraints, I use a 1024 word deep FIFO in the fpga, stuffing in the output words from the mirrored device and popping them out at the request of the mirror driver code running on the PC. When I last tested, I wasn't getting valid data words out to the PC, which implied a failure on either the push or the pop side of the FIFO (or both theoretically).

I worked through my FSMs that drive the FIFO and are in turn driven by the mirror XIO logic and the incoming transactions from the PC. I was particularly focused on the setup, hold and duration of the control signals relative to the clock edges as this is the most likely source of malfunction. The FIFO will produce to status signals - VALID and WRITE-ACK - which I will include in the new FSMs I will write to control the FIFO.

The existing FSMs will now trigger the two FIFO-specific machines. I worked up the code and integration into the existing FPGA logic, but didn't get to any live testing because I still had family over for the holidays.





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