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Writing good code is hard. Testing it is arguably even harder. And with the advance of modern technologies, the demand for good verification only keeps growing along with it. However, especially the FPGA world appears to commonly use obsolete and inappropriate verification tools and methodologies. But it doesn’t have to be this way! This post outlines, guided by a real-world example, how to use modern verification languages and tools to create high-quality test benches in less time.
-- Now that's my definition of building a computer!
Figure 1. The finished LW-35
Do you still remember the old electronic typewriters from the nineties? Many of the later machines were already pretty much full-fledged computers, just with a word processor as the operating system. One of these typewriters is the Brother LW-35 released in Europe. I still had one of these lying around; Great keyboard, a fun daisy wheel printer, and a 14 line display for distraction free writing. It even had a floppy drive for data exchange. So in summary, a pretty cool device.
But there were a few problems with it. First of all, the floppy drive stopped working reliably. And secondly, on the days the floppy drive decided to work, it was still a floppy drive. Not exactly the most convenient way to store and transfer data these days, although I'm sure some of you will disagree. Also, the typewriter used its own file format, which needed to be converted on the device itself before it could be read in a DOS or UNIX environment. This may be OK if you're writing a longer document, and only write it on that machine. But as someone who constantly changes the machine they type on, it's not practical.
Yet, even with these problems, I just didn't have the heart to throw it out.
So what can we do about it? Upgrade it!
In this post, I will show you how I converted my old LW-35 typewriter into a modern computer while keeping all the good features of the old machine.
Figure 1. Thank you for 2018! 2018 is coming to an end, and so it's time to tend to things that didn't get done over the year.
For me, I've been wanting to talk about many of my old projects for quite a while now, but never got around to it.
So this December (or tbh, many were shot during November), I pulled together and made videos for 25 of my projects. They date from very recent (November 2018) back to my school days (2007), so there's quite some variation to the style and type of project. I hope that you will enjoy (at least some of) them.
