Atlas 12x54 Lathe

After several months of reading, waiting, and watching, I finally have my first metal lathe.  I found an Atlas 12×54 Series F (circa 1950) from a nice guy in NE Tennessee.  There’s quite a bit of reading to still be done, as well as parts to be ordered, before I turn anything, but it’s in working condition!  Now to resist the urge to spend the same amount on tooling…

Wondering about the “vengeance”?  Hint:  it comes from a movie.  Me?  In a word, it’s Jesus!

[UPDATE:  from David Hart - "I've posted a new serialpps-20091228.zip which should correct that [install.bat bug]. The (huge) debug build of serialpps-ppsapi-provider.dll is also added, along with a tiny bit of instructions in install.bat regarding PPSAPI_DLLS.”]

1.  Configure hardware.
Connect the PPS signal to the DCD pin on the RS232 connector.

2.  Install Meinberg NTP software.
Keep all defaults.
Create and use a special NTP account. (I always had problems using anything else)
Account name:  ntp (use whatever you want)
Account pass:  ntpntp

3.  Stop NTP.
Run “C:\Program Files\NTP\bin\stopntp.bat”.   There are alot of useful utils in the \bin directory.

4.  Replace ntpd.exe with altered version.
Extract “ntpd.exe” from “ntp-4.2.4p6-DLH-QPC-20090315-bin.zip”
Copy to “C:\Program Files\NTP\bin”, replacing previous ntpd.exe.

5.  Install SerialPPS.
Extract all from “serialpps-20090606.zip“.
Edit “install.bat”
On line 6, remove ‘if “x86″==”%PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE” ‘
Remove line 7 and 8 (you can just put “REM ” in front and they will be ignored, almost like a comment)
Run “install.bat”
Ensure that “serialpps.sys” was copied to “C:\Windows\system32\drivers”
Copy “serialpps-ppsapi-provider\x86\serialpps-ppsapi-provider.dll” to “C:\”
Right-click “My Computer”, go to properties.
Click “Advanced” tab
Click “Environment Variables” button
Under “System variables”, Click “New” button
Name:  PPSAPI_DLLS
Value: C:\serialpps-ppsapi-provider.dll

6.  Configure GPS (for Garmin)
Run “SNSRCFG.exe”
Connect to GPS
Configure
Set baud rate to 4800
Enable “Pulse Per Second”
Press F7
Enable GPRMC, disable others
Send config to GPS

7.  Configure NTP
Edit “C:\Program Files\NTP\etc\ntp.conf”
Remove all entries, add the following
driftfile “C:\Program Files\NTP\etc\ntp.drift”
enable stats
statsdir “C:\Program Files\NTP\etc\”
statistics loopstats
server 127.127.22.1 minpoll 4 #PPS
server 127.127.20.1 iburst prefer minpoll 4 maxpoll 7 #GPS
#fudge 127.127.20.1 time1 0.4 refid GPS #uncomment and change time1 as needed

8.  Ensure GPS is connected to serial port 1

9.  Restart computer

10. Unplug GPS and disable Microsoft Ball-mouse (if listed)
Go to device manager: My Computer->Properties->Hardware->Device Manager
Under “Mice and other pointing devices”, right-click and disable “Microsoft Serial BallPoint”

11. Reconnect GPS Restart computer

12. Start NTP server
Run “C:\Program Files\NTP\bin\startntp.bat”

13. Monitor NTP server
Run “C:\Program Files\NTP\bin\ntpstatus.bat”
Both GPS and PPS should show up.  After the GPS gets a lock, NTP should sync to the servers.
Refer to online documentation for help.
Alternatively, use “NTP Time Server Monitor” from Meinberg

To Uninstall PPS driver, run “uninstall.bat”.

Well, having gone through Altera’s “Introduction to the Altera SOPC Builder Using VHDL Design” to remember how to use the software, I found multiple problems with the tutorial as it is.  I hope that listing the solutions here will help people in the same situation.  Some of these issues are obvious, and some are a bit more subtle.

I am using Quartus II 7.2 and  NiosII 7.2.

1. In Step 1: “In your project, choose the EP2C35F672C6 chip as the target device, because this is the FPGA on the DE2 board”. Well, the DE2-70 uses a different chip.  Choose the EP2C70F896C6.  This can be verified by simply looking at the text printed on the FPGA.
2. In Step 1: “You can choose a different directory or project name, but be aware that the SOPC Builder software does not permit the use of spaces in file names”. This is true and I just wanted to make it obvious that you can’t have a space *anywhere* in the pathname.  For example, you would have problems in SOPC  Builder if your project was in “C:\Program Files\…” since that path contains a space.
3. In Step 6: “In the On-Chip Memory Configuration Wizard window, shown in Figure 8, set the memory width to 32 bits and the total memory size to 4 Kbytes”. As I’ll be getting to shortly, the 4kB is not enough for the NiosII project.  Crank it up to 64kB for plenty of breathing room.
4. In Step 7: The PIO is under Peripherals -> Microcontroller Peripherals -> PIO (Parallel I/O).
5. In Step 9: The JTAG UART is under Interface Protocols -> Serial -> JTAG UART.
6. After Step 11: Write down the base addresses of the PIOs after auto-assigning the addresses.  These will be needed for NiosII, as they are treated as memory-mapped I/O.
7. Before Step 12: There are a couple “To Do”’s in the message window of SOPC Builder about the NiosII CPU that need to be addressed:  the reset and exception vectors.  Double-click the NiosII component you instantiated to open up the properties window you were at before.  Now that you have on-chip memory instantiated, click on the Reset Vector and Exception Vector Memory drop-down boxes and select the name of your memory (e.g. “onchip_mem”).  Leave the offsets the way they are (0×0 and 0×20).  Don’t worry about the “Warning: Switches: PIO inputs are not hardwired in test bench. Undefined values will be read from PIO inputs during simulation.”, this tutorial doesn’t do any test benches.
8. Importing DE2_70_pin_assignments.csv.  This comma-separated file is located on the DE2-70 CD included with the kit, and it can also be found on the internets.  Mmm, google.  The naming convention for this Altera-supplied file changed from DE2 to DE2-70.  Open it and take a look.  There are now lower-case ‘i’s and ‘o’s before many of the hard-wired signals denoting them as input and output.  Remember this!  The HDL code needs to change reflecting this.  Otherwise the .csv needs changing, but I don’t suggest it.  Here’s my resulting code (remember, the port names may be different for your SOPC component):
   • LIBRARY ieee;
     USE ieee.std_logic_1164.all;
     USE ieee.std_logic_arith.all;
     USE ieee.std_logic_unsigned.all;

     ENTITY lights IS
     PORT (
     iSW        : IN    STD_LOGIC_VECTOR(7 DOWNTO 0);
     iKEY    : IN    STD_LOGIC_VECTOR(0 DOWNTO 0);
     iCLK_50 : IN    STD_LOGIC;
     oLEDG    : OUT    STD_LOGIC_VECTOR(7 DOWNTO 0)
     );
     END lights;

     ARCHITECTURE Structure OF lights IS
     COMPONENT nios_system is
     port (
     – 1) global signals:
     signal clk : IN STD_LOGIC;
     signal reset_n : IN STD_LOGIC;

     – the_LEDs
     signal out_port_from_the_LEDs : OUT STD_LOGIC_VECTOR (7 DOWNTO 0);

     – the_Switches
     signal in_port_to_the_Switches : IN STD_LOGIC_VECTOR (7 DOWNTO 0)
     );
     END COMPONENT;

     BEGIN
     NiosII:        nios_system PORT MAP(iCLK_50, iKEY(0), oLEDG, iSW);
     END Structure;

9. Before Section 3.2: If you’ve tried to do a full compilation at this point, you will probably see an unexpected error:
   • Error: Can’t place pins assigned to pin location Pin_AD25 (IOC_X95_Y2_N1)
     Info: Pin iSW[7] is assigned to pin location Pin_AD25 (IOC_X95_Y2_N1)
     Info: Pin ~LVDS195p/nCEO~ is assigned to pin location Pin_AD25 (IOC_X95_Y2_N1)
     Error: Can’t fit design in device
     Error: Quartus II Fitter was unsuccessful. 2 errors, 3 warnings
     Info: Allocated 215 megabytes of memory during processing
     Error: Processing ended: Sun Oct 18 19:11:13 2009
     Error: Elapsed time: 00:00:03
     Error: Quartus II Full Compilation was unsuccessful. 2 errors, 152 warnings
   • Here is the fix:
     • In Quartus-II select menu Assignments>Device…
     • Select button “Device and Pin Options…”
     • Select the tab “Dual-Purpose Pins”
     • Under the list of “Dual-purpose pins:” change the “Value” property of nCEO to “Use as regular I/O”.
     • Click OK
10. After Section 3.2:  If you are using the Web edition or didn’t buy the full license for the Altera IP, you probably got a pop-up window after programming the device stating “OpenCore Plus Status Click Cancel to stop using OpenCore Plus IP.  Time remaining:  unlimited”.  Do not close this window if you intend on using the NiosII IDE to run on the hardware.  Just leave the window up and close when you are done, or have a problem with Quartus or SOPC Builder.
11. I skipped over the Assembly programming section because this tutorial already gave me a headache.  I’m not a masochist.
12. In Section 4.2: When you create a new project, create it in the following way:  File -> New -> Project… and select “Nios II C/C++ Application”.  Also, use the Hello World template.  It sets everything up for you, gives you printf functionality to the console, but takes up a bit more space.
13. lights.c:  Here’s what I have in my file.  Again, it might be a bit different for the base addresses.
    • #include <stdio.h>
      #define Switches (volatile char*) 0×21000
      #define LEDs (char*) 0×21010

      int main()
      {
      printf(”Hello from Nios II!\n”);
      while (1){
      *LEDs = *Switches;
      }
      return 0;
      }

14. After all of that is done, you right-click on your project in NiosII IDE (e.g. hello_world_0) and click “Run As -> Nios II Hardware”.
15. Done!  You can now move the switches (SW7 – 0) and see the LEDG7-0 change.  You can also reset the CPU using KEY0.

I know how frustrating it can be trying to learn something when the tutorial is wrong.  Hope this helps!

Reports

Thanks for the free hosting, Mike.