source and documentation of dragonfly

Hi opencores users,

After googling for an efficient controller, I found the dragonfly on the LEOX.org website.
This project seemed really interesting so I decided to download the files at http://www.leox.org/resources/dvlp.html#RES_DVLP_DGF.
Unfortunately, the source and documentation of this LGPL project are gone.
So, is there a opencores users that have the project files?
This will help me.

Many thanks in advance for your help.

Thoma

Hi, I sure do hope you get a response from someone who has archived the dragonfly controller design, and then you can take a look at the dragonfly VHDL and the assembler software that came with it.

The dragonfly vhdl at 4K gates sounds interesting, but you have to set the wayback machine to 2003, the last time the dragonfly was updated...

The dragonfly sounds like it is a good reference design, but perhaps you should note that it's almost ten years old by now. Furthermore, you need to do assembly language programming to run the dragonfly. That is to say, you need the hardware controller plus the assembly language compiler to run the controller. Don't forget that this implies that you need to qualify the assembler to ensure that the output of the dragonfly assembler is correct for the dragonfly hardware. A bug in the assembler software will show up as a bug in your hardware.

Now, if you are building a new controller or a state machine circa 2012, you will find that the latest tools from Xilinx and Altera and other fpga vendors now have all the features that you need to design simple controller and complex hardware + software systems.

I'm suggesting that maybe you should download the latest free webpac from your favorite fpga vendor and prove to yourself that the designer tools outperform the dragonfly controller.

Some other interesting developments in the last ten years is that you can now use software type languages based on the C-language (such as Handel-C and Catapult-C) to describe FPGA systems. This avoids the complication of programming the dragonfly controller in assembly while building the dragonfly hardware in vhdl (ie two different languages needed.) If you use Handel-C, the entire fpga system is described in one language and it all just simply works correctly.

Good Luck, Richard.