On a sunny day (Wed, 14 Jun 2006 11:36:59 -0500) it happened "PowerHouse
Communications" wrote in
:
So, if I were to try "viewing" this in a text editor, I should be able to
see it? Let try...

I see where I had a problem... The decompressed file needed to be
decompressed as well. Now the folder shows it's face, with all files
within... I jumped the gun too soon... Got it now.. TAR archive
within a BZIP2 archive...

OK, I will explain a bit... if you look with the text editor at the file
'top.v' you will first see 'module top'
think of a module as an electronic digital circuit.

The top module is like a big diagram that is made up of all these separate
circuits, other modules, like for example 'lcd_text_driver', 'b2bcd0',
'txua0', all separate diagrams.

In this case nothing is analog, so no AD DA conversions.

You will see 'wire' for exactly what it is, wires that connect things,
OBUF IOBUF for digital buffers, and 'reg' for a register, basically one
or more flipflops....

If circuits get very large, diagrams quickly become unreadable
and difficult to modify.
Languages like Verilog make it easy to maintain and design large complicated
digital circuits, and are portable across many platforms (schematic editors
are not).
In an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) many CMOS switches are used
to connect all sorts of logic blocks together.
There exist (free) programs that read the Verilog text files, create
a binary file for some FPGA chip, that you can then program into such a chip,
and the chip will set the switches, your Verilog design will be created
in the chip *without you soldering one single connection*.
The Spartan2 FPGA I used has has the equivalent of some 200,000 logic gates,
so quite a lot can be done.
There are many free projects look for example he
http://www.opencores.org/browse.cgi/by_category

http://www.fpga4fun.com/

There are many of those prototype boards, best get one with VGA connector
and audio stuff, the relevant newsgroup is comp.arch.fpga.
But it is only limited by ones own imagination....

So that was some more ...
Will throttle back a bit now and see what he effect of this is.....