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Introduction

Binaries from the Icestorm tools (yosys, arachne and icetools). They have been compiled statically and packaged for Platformio and Apio

Building a new release

Follow this steps for building a new release of the Icestorm tools:

• Clone the Toolchain-icestorm repo and enter into the directory:

$ git clone https://github.com/FPGAwars/toolchain-icestorm.git
$ cd toolchain-icestorm/

• Add in the ARCH attribute the selected architectures. This is located in the build.sh script:

Platform	Arch
Windows	windows
Linux 64 bits	linux_x86_64
Linux 32 bits	linux_i686
BQ Aquaris 4.5 Ubuntu phone	armv7l
Raspberry pi II	armv7l
BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Tablet	aarch64
Mac OS X	darwin

• Execute the script.

$ ./build.sh clean

After some time, the packages toolchain-icestorm-ARCH-x.tar.gz will be generated in the _packages directory (where ARCH is the target platform and x the version)

Cleaning

Execute the same build script with the target clean for deleting all the packages and intermediate files generated.

$ ./build.sh clean

Installing the Icestorm package

You can install the latest icestorm package using Apio. Follow these steps:

• Install apio:

$ pip install apio

• Install the icestorm tools with:

$ apio install system scons icestorm
Installing system package:
Download tools-usb-ftdi-linux_x86_64-1.tar.bz2
Downloading  [####################################]  100%             
Unpacking  [####################################]  100%
Package 'system' has been successfully installed!
Install tool-scons
Download scons-2.4.1.tar.gz
Downloading  [####################################]  100%             
Unpacking  [####################################]  100%
Package 'scons' has been successfully installed!
Install toolchain-icestorm
Download toolchain-icestorm-x86_64-9.tar.gz
Downloading  [####################################]  100%             
Unpacking  [####################################]  100%
Package 'icestorm' has been successfully installed!

Testing in windows

These instructions are temporal. When the whole icestorm tools are cross-compiled and integrated into Apio, the installation and tests will be done in a different manner

But in the meanwhile, the instructions for testing the different packages are the following:

Testing iceprog

• Download the toolchain-icestorm-windows-7.zip package for windows. It has been cross-compiled from Linux to windows. It is 32-bits version, so that it should work on both 32 and 64 windows versions

• Uncompress the toolchain-icestorm-windows-7.zip file

• Move the bin\iceprog.exe exectuable file to the Desktop

• Move the examples\icestick*.bin bitstreams files to the Desktop

• Plug the icestick board into the computer usb

• Make sure you have installed the correct drivers. Follow these instructions

• Open the cmd command terminal interface

• Drag the iceprog into the terminal and insert an space

• Drag the bitstream t1.bin to the terminal and press Enter. Iceprog should be execute with the t1.bin as an argument. The bitstream should be uploaded into the icestick board:

If all the icestick leds are turn on... Congrats! You have uploaded your first bitstream from Windows!

• Download the other two examples: t2.bin and t3.bin

More tests

[2016-Feb-28]: Cristóbal Bueno tested it on Windows 8.1 64 bits. Thanks!

[2016-March-1]: Carlos Díaz tested it on Windows 10 - 64 bits. Thanks!

[2016-March-05]: Eladio Delgado tested it on Windows 7 - 64 bits on an Icezum Alhambra board. Thanks!

[2016-March-22]: Sebastián Gallardo tested it on Windows 7 - 32 bits. Thanks!

Testing in MAC

These instructions are temporal. When the whole icestorm tools are cross-compiled and integrated into Apio, the installation and tests will be done in a different manner

But in the meanwhile, the instructions for testing the different packages are the following:

Testing iceprog

• Download the toolchain-icestorm-iceprog-darwin-7.tar.gz package with iceprog for MAC

• Uncompress the package and drag the folder toolchain-icestorm to your desktop

• Make sure you have brew installed
• Open the command line interface and Execute the following command for installing the libftdi library:

$ brew install libftdi0

• Unplug the icestick board and unload any ftdi driver:

$ sudo kextunload -b com.FTDI.driver.FTDIUSBSerialDriver
$ sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBFTDI

• Plug the icestick board
• Open the toolchain-icestorm folder from the desktop

• Move into the bin folder and drag the iceprog file to the terminal

• Move into the examples/icestick folder and drag the t1.bin file into the terminal

• Press Enter in the terminal. The bitstream will be upload into the FPGA

• Repeat with the t2.bin and t3.bin examples

Congrats! You've uploaded your first bitstream into the FPGA using opensource tools! :-)

Testing in ubuntu phone

The documentation has been moved to this page

Authors

• Jesús Arroyo
• Juan González (Obijuan)

Credits

• Cristóbal Bueno: Bug reported and Testing on Windows 8 - 64 bits. Thanks!
• Carlos Díaz: Testing on Windows 10. Thanks!
• Sebastian Gallardo: Testing on Windows 32 bits. Thanks!

License

Licensed under a GPL v2 and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Links:

• Installling icestorm on a mac