Debug board with fat FPGA for 500 rubles or what to do with an old antminer – how I make my own platform
Since time immemorial, when browsers for DOS still existed, I took the nickname Astra.
That's why I called the project of turning a miner part from the trash into a usable “debugging”, which I've been messing around with for several months, –Astra_S9_SoC(+FPGA)– or “Astra9 platform” Actually, the board itself has long been designed and stamped by the Bitmain office in an incredibly large print run – about several hundred thousand (or even a million) copies. Hundreds of thousands of these boards are ALREADY in our country, they do not need to be dragged from Ali. The board is designed purely for managing mining on hash boards and does not have any documentation. However, the “heart” of the board is the SoC + FPGA microcircuit of the American corporation Xilinx — ZYNQ 7010 xc7z010-clg400, which allows you to use it as an FPGA devboard and as a single-board computer
I took on the task of developing working documentation for this board. https://dzen.ru/a/ZtTuMNBQ3gFhmskj
In my articles I will consider the main options for using this product. At a minimum, the following issues will be covered:
0. No fuss, got hold of the board, a micro-SD flash drive – and in half an hour everything worked https://dzen.ru/a/ZtumRpI4dV3u1R7v
1. Hello, people or How to blink an LED
2. Launch Ubuntu
3. Connect an HDMI display and display images, videos, and even X's on it
X's
4. GPIO and how to control them
5. I2C, IIC, SMBus and how to connect the 1602 display via a square bus.
And also via parallel bus https://dzen.ru/video/watch/66d51b5b19e72a1d4fd7be9c?share_to=link
6. SPI and how to connect a 12864 display via SPI
7. Signal generator 0-100+ MHz.
8. Sound via I2S or PWM:
It is possible to make a “smart speaker” https://dzen.ru/video/watch/66d4ff9c89907761c8246d9b
It is possible to synthesize cosmic sounds https://dzen.ru/video/watch/66d50cfb9bffdb0602bfaeaa
9. USB
So what to do with the old antminer? Of course, blink the LED! I look at the ads, choose the appropriate option
I am purchasing a programmer
Soldering the programming pins
I solder the oscillator quartz clock generator
I solder 1-2 quartz resonators for FPGA clocking
All the “Blinks” from GitHub didn't work, I had to make it myself
I'm opening Vivada
I'm opening a project
Waiting for it to load
Loaded, starting synthesis
OK
It seems like nothing is happening
Synthesis is ready, turn incubation Implementations
Generate Bitstream
Then open the connection manager
And there it is empty
I connect the programmer, supply power to the board, press the cardan joint
Yeah, it's starting to move.
The board has been identified, I will program it.
Bitstream is poured into the board
Hooray, it started blinking!
Project file https://github.com/astranome/Astra_S9_FPGA/blob/main/Miga.7z
to be continued :
monitor and squares https://dzen.ru/media/id/64961f2d1801f95c29dcc4a4/hdmi-na-astras9fpga-6520c2413078d4542296270b
Ubuntu and Debian https://dzen.ru/a/ZSC3UILJ8CRFd9iu?referrer_clid=1400&
