<balrog>
whitequark: with the RE nearly done, what is the next step — nextpnr integration?
<whitequark>
i decided i won't work on CPLD synthesis and pnr
<whitequark>
there should be at least some hill i'm not dying on
<balrog>
That's fair — I'm assuming that it would require a fair amount of work to get symbiflow/nextpnr to work well with CPLDs
<whitequark>
nextpnr isn't suited for CPLDs anyway
<balrog>
ahhhh
<balrog>
hmm... Atmel's WinCUPL comes with a fitter that takes EDIF input
<whitequark>
yes it's used during RE
<whitequark>
it's very bad
<balrog>
:(
<balrog>
(it seems like Xilinx and Altera are both abandoning their CPLD lines, and no one else seems interested in tooling at all)
<whitequark>
yes
<whitequark>
Microchip will make ATFs for as long as anyone buys them
<whitequark>
and there is a surprisingly large market for those
<balrog>
Microcip is the sole remaining manufacturer of PAL/GAL compatible chips and 27-series EPROMs
<balrog>
(well, OTP PROMs, but same idea)
<balrog>
Microchip*
<balrog>
I need to clean my 'h' key
<balrog>
are a lot of the buyers just using them to replace Altera MAX 7000 CPLDs with pof2jed?
<whitequark>
not sure
<whitequark>
but consider Microchip policy
<whitequark>
you can still buy ATF15xxBE chips, they'll just have to make them for you on demand
<whitequark>
for ATF15xxAS, they have a line from 1999 or so that does basically nothing other than these ICs
<balrog>
I guess there isn't enough demand for them to have rochester electronics to stock BEs
<whitequark>
and it gets quite a lot of use, look at Mouser stock for them
<balrog>
how does the Atmel fitter compare to e.g. using old Quartus + POF2JED?
<whitequark>
never used either
<whitequark>
the only thing i used the Atmel fitter for is RE
<balrog>
I see
<whitequark>
<whitequark "for ATF15xxAS, they have a line "> so they don't plan to take them out of production, there's nothing else they can make on that line
<whitequark>
and they have enough customers that it's economically sensible
<whitequark>
(i asked a friend to talk to a Microchip distributor)
<whitequark>
for ATF15xxBE they have 1 (one) customer
<whitequark>
so you can only buy them via microchipdirect
<balrog>
do they sometimes have extra stock so that you can get a few for testing?
<whitequark>
also, apparently microchip is interested in getting *more* customers for ATF15xxAS
<balrog>
the way to do that is to fund an open fitter so that people can use them with verilog
<whitequark>
yes. so if someone makes a modern toolchain you may easily convince microchip to promote it
<balrog>
there is a market in devices that interfacing with 5V bus
<whitequark>
most likely the people who wrote the old fitter are all retired by now
<balrog>
I wish Microchip was more FOSS friendly with their CPUs
<whitequark>
it's been 20 years for the bulk of the code
<balrog>
but I see they went paid-GCC for AVR :(
<balrog>
(Atmel worked with avr-gcc upstream)
<balrog>
their PIC24 and PIC32 compilers are hacky forks of an ancient GCC version
<balrog>
I wonder if it's the same for POF2JED
<balrog>
(regarding the authors being retired)
<whitequark>
quite possibly
<balrog>
though — does the RE here allow taking apart an atf15xx .jed?
<whitequark>
yes
<balrog>
I could POF2JED a file and then disassemble the JED
<whitequark>
i never got around to making a jed2v converter, well, not a complete one