Re: [microblaze-uclinux] A/D converter and D/A converter

[John Williams <jwilliams@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Shamus,

See my answers below, in addition to advice already received from Yashi:

Shamus McCarthy wrote:

> I am working on a senior design project using the Insight/Memec
> Virtex2 system board and the P160 Communications module.  I have
> uClinux up and running fine and would now like to add an A/D
> converter and a D/A converter to the setup.  
> 
> 1) Is it feasible to add these two components?  

Certainly.  Embedded systems must eventually talk to the outside world 
if they are to be useful! :)

> 2) There is an I2C port and a SPI port avaiable...would it be a good
> option to try to use these ports for adding the ADC and DAC?

Sure - another option is a simple parallel interface connected to a 
GPIO.  The choice really depends on what's available, what you want to 
do with it, how many free IO pins you have, and so on.

> 3) How complicated would it be to use uClinux to read/control these
> two components?

Should be pretty straight forward.  You may find that MontaVista have 
already wrapped a linux driver around the Xilinx I2C or SPI cores for 
the PPC / V2Pro linux.  Check the current 2.4 PPC kernel at penguinppc.org

If that's the case then you just add the core to mbvanilla, copy the 
driver in (plus some tweaks no doubt), get it configured and off you go. 
  If it's your first time doing this sort of thing you might expect it 
to take maybe a week or two (mostly learning / fiddling, the actual 
substance of the work will be quite small).

As Yashi said, these serial devices are just mapped into the kernel as 
character devices, interfacing with them is just like opening and 
writing to a file - couldn't be easier.

Rgds,

John
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