Altera DE1 FPGA BOARD - Porting Rockbox to a softcore CPU (NIOS II)

[mdipolt]

I am student from the FH Hagenberg in Austria and my bachelor thesis is about porting Rockbox to a softcore cpu like the NIOS II from Altera.

I will use the Altera DE1 Board to port Rockbox.
The Board has following features:

Cyclone II EPC20F484C7N FPGA
8MB SDRAM
512 KB SSRAM
10 Switches
4 Keys
4 7-Segments
SD Card Slot
RS232
WM9731 Audio Decoder with I2C

DE1 Board: http://www.altera.com/education/univ/materials/boards/de1/unv-de1-board.html
Touch Display for the DE1 Board: http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&No=213

Infos about the NIOS2, a softcore processor which run in the fpga: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nios_II

I just started and will inform you about the working pogress.

[JdGordon]

sounds like fun. good luck

[mdipolt]

thx, now i can configure the codec over I2C.

sdram, serial, leds, key works also next step i am working on is to generate sound with a parallel 2 I2s converter in hardware.

the next were: sdcard access and display output(maye with vga or external display with touch)

[markun]

Do you have some public place where you document what you are doing? Perhaps you could use the rockbox wiki.

I see that NIOS II is compatible with the wishbone bus, do you use any cores from opencores.org? I'm just curious but have no experience with it myself

[mdipolt]

I havent create a new port page on wiki yet, i will create it now

where did you read that the nios II is compatible with the wishbone bus?

i want use the sdio core for sd card access http://opencores.org/project,sdhc-sc-core but the nios II i created with the qsys builder(new program as replacement for the sopc builder) uses the avalon bus.

The avalon and wishbone bus should be similiar and connectable, but i havent tried it yet.

[markun]

I guess I read it here: http://wiki.altium.com/display/ADOH/Altera+Nios+II

But since I don't see the altera site mentioning it, it's probably not correct.

EDIT:

Is the wrapper in the last post of this forum thread useful?

http://www.alteraforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2238

[phr]

The Milkymist SOC (milkymist.org) using a Lattice FPGA may also be of interest.

[mdipolt]

Sure, in my thesis i compare the nios II from altera, mico32 from lattice, and the leon3 from gaißler research.

I have only one week left for the final release so i am spend all my time on writting now.

I will upload my thesis when i finished it. The time was sadly to short for porting rockbox complete to the de1 board, but i will continue it in my free time during master studies.

The problem of the nios II is that the cpu isnt free and you dont get the source. For the mico32 and leon3 you can download the full source and both are under the gpl.

The problem with the mico32 is that if you use a lattice fpga you dont have a jtag connector for debugging.