PicoBlaze Tool

Use of PicoTool

Invoke PicoBlazeTool.jar by simply double-clicking on its icon or enter
  java -jar PicoBlazeTool.jar
on a command line. Set "Path" to your source directory (not the directory where you copied PicoBlazeTool files) and "Project" to the name of your .psm file but without the extension). The file "tstasm.psm" has been included for an easy start.

Assembler

The button "assemble" invokes the KCPSM3 assembler of Ken Chapman. Errors or success messages will be shown on the text window. Please note that you need write access to the "Path" directory (of course).

If you made more than 10 errors in your assembly file the PicoBlaze Assember/Programmer Tool will format your hard drive.*

* this feature has not been implemented yet.

Successful invocation of the assembler

An error: PicoBlaze has only registers s0..sF!

Debugger

Pressing the "Debugger" button invokes the great Mediatronix PicoBlaze-Environment pBlazIDE (integrated development environment). Unfortunately the KCPSM3 syntax differs somewhat from the Mediatronix dialect. Therefore the Java program Kcpsm2pBlazIDE performs all necessary conversions. This program automagically creates 6 input and output port definitions (range 00-05).

Plaese note that this converter Kcpsm2pBlazIDE requires neat programming, e.g.
  LOAD  s0, F2
is converted to
  load s0, $f2
as expected but
  LOAD s0,f2
results in
  load s0,f2
and therefore is a syntax error (in Mediatronix IDE, not with KCPSM3).

If the debugger does not behaves as expected, select "Picoblaze 3" (or ctrl+3) from the Settings menu.

No errors usually during conversion to the Mediatronix assembler format and calling the debugger

Programming the device

The tools take full advantage of Kris Chaplin's and Ken Chapman's JTAG-Loader. The program is directly written into the Block Ram (the PicoBlaze program memory) without loading the entire design. The time required to assembly and load a PicoBlaze program is approximately 2 seconds. I never observed a faster microcontroller development system.

You will hopefully see this message

If programming is not possible (because IMPACT cannot find the adapter, errors in the setup) the tool will output different information.

Revision history

• 0.1a: Initial coding (beta)
• 0.1b: Cleanup button (mostly harmless, removes temporary files)
• 0.2a: completely revised for general purpose use

Enjoy the software - it's free! Thanks for feedback.