../fpga-00

FPGA Journey : Installation

TLDR

Read the docs, even more if it’s online, it mean it may be updated.

Origins

Last Christmas i asked for a beagleV-fire and tried to play with it.

The installation process for Libero SoC was a hell and poorly documented but i figured out how to use it an a ubuntu VM.

With this experience i decided to use a Windows VM ..

WRONG !!!! It failed to install some DLL EVERYTIME and i couldn’t figure out how to patch it.

What to do for Fedora

Install libero

So i tried to install it directly on fedora, there is an installation script but don’t work for fedora.

Just run

sudo dnf install -y alsa-lib glibc freetype libgcc libX11 libXau libxcb libXext libXi libXrender libXtst fontconfig libnsl

Then run the installation binaries (i don’t know what but for me it worked better with the CLI version)

DO NOT FORGET TO SET YOUR PROGRAM IN ~/Microchip/ LIKE IT’S SAID IN THE MANUEL

the first time i tried to install it the beagleboard manual wasn’t up to date for linux install but now it look better

The shitty license system

I think it have been built to work inside a company with a server managing the licenses. But fuck it’s so dumb to do a system like this today, it’s hard to setup and may conflict with some of your already existing system. Why not upgrade the license system ? Even IDA made some effort to be easier and faster to use.

BUT I HAVE A GOOD NEWS FOR YOU !!!! (yes i’m writing it just after it worked)

BeagleBoard made this script that if you run it with

. ./setup-microchip-tools.sh

it work !!!

Notes : I don’t know why but it only work if i run it from the CLI

Conclusion

It’s not a Tutorial it’s more a feedback.

I don’t know why the FPGA environment is that dumb (same kind of experience with cycloneV) even if it’s not opensource they should atleast made free version easy to use ?

I almost give up, hopefully beagle board are smarter than me and passionated anough so a newbie like me can start to play with fpga.

Thank you guys, really !

Why ?

Long term i want to be able to do 2 things : Use eFPGA to be able to accelerate some task, Use BeagleBoard for hardware and software reverse engineering (Radio, embedded protocole emulation/analysis, minimal ISA emulation …)

Steps :

/embedded/ /FPGA/ /boring/