Atanua - real-time logic simulator

[Sol_HSA]

As the final project in my school, I'm building a real-time logic
simulator called Atanua. It's available from:

http://iki.fi/sol/atanua.html

Although it's a pure ideal-component logic simulator (not SPICE), it's
rather functional. The workflow for trying out different
configurations is pretty optimized, and the whole point is to be a
rather 'lightweight' tool for learning logic components.

I'm trying to do daily releases of it, building a part or two a day
while working full time, but as of this writing the simulated parts
include:

Base parts list:

* Logic '0' (ground) and '1' (vcc)
* Logic AND, OR, NAND, NOR, XOR and NOT gates, in both US and
Finnish symbols
* SR-latch (NOR and NAND versions), Synchronized SR-latch, D-
latch, T-latch, JK-latch
* JK-flipflop, D-flipflop, T-flipflop, SR-flipflop
* 2-bit MUX block, 3-bit DX-block
* Synchronized clock generators (0.1Hz, 0.2Hz, 0.5Hz, 1Hz, 2Hz,
5Hz, 10Hz, 20Hz, 50Hz, 100Hz, 200Hz, 500Hz)
* Labels

Chips list:

* 7400 - Quad 2-input NAND Gate
* 7402 - Quad 2-input NOR Gate
* 7404 - Hex Inverter
* 7408 - Quad 2-input AND Gate
* 7410 - Triple 3-input NAND Gate
* 7420 - Dual 4-input NAND Gate
* 7432 - Quad 2-input OR Gate
* 7447 - BCD to 7-segment Decoder/Driver
* 7473 - 7473: Dual J-K Flip-Flop with Clear
* 7474 - 7474: Dual D Positive Edge Triggered Flip-Flop with
Preset and Clear
* 7485 - 4-bit Magnitude Comparator
* 7486 - Quad 2-input XOR Gate
* 7490 - Decade Counter (separate Divide-by-2 and Divide-by-5
sections)
* 74138 - 3 to 8-line Decoder/Demultiplexer
* 74139 - Dual 2 to 4-line Decoder/Demultiplexer
* 74151 - 8-Line to 1-Line Data Selector/Multiplexer
* 74195 - 4-bit Parallel-Access Shift Register
* 74163 - Synchronous 4-bit Binary Counter with Synchronous Clear
* 74164 - 8-bit Parallel-Out Serial Shift Register with
Asynchronous Clear
* 74283 - 4-bit Binary Full Adder
* 74574 - Octal D-Type Edge-Triggered Flip-Flop with Three-State
Outputs

I/O parts list:

* LEDs (red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, white)
* 7-segment displays in same colors, normal and inverted
* Keyboard keys (0,1,2...9, a,b,c...z)

If you take it for a spin, please send me mail about your experiences!
Many of the features I've implemented are result of user feedback.

 

[John Larkin]

As the final project in my school, I'm building a real-time logic
simulator called Atanua. It's available from:

http://iki.fi/sol/atanua.html

Although it's a pure ideal-component logic simulator (not SPICE), it's
rather functional. The workflow for trying out different
configurations is pretty optimized, and the whole point is to be a
rather 'lightweight' tool for learning logic components.

I'm trying to do daily releases of it, building a part or two a day
while working full time, but as of this writing the simulated parts
include:

Base parts list:

* Logic '0' (ground) and '1' (vcc)
* Logic AND, OR, NAND, NOR, XOR and NOT gates, in both US and
Finnish symbols
* SR-latch (NOR and NAND versions), Synchronized SR-latch, D-
latch, T-latch, JK-latch
* JK-flipflop, D-flipflop, T-flipflop, SR-flipflop
* 2-bit MUX block, 3-bit DX-block
* Synchronized clock generators (0.1Hz, 0.2Hz, 0.5Hz, 1Hz, 2Hz,
5Hz, 10Hz, 20Hz, 50Hz, 100Hz, 200Hz, 500Hz)
* Labels

Chips list:

* 7400 - Quad 2-input NAND Gate
* 7402 - Quad 2-input NOR Gate
* 7404 - Hex Inverter
* 7408 - Quad 2-input AND Gate
* 7410 - Triple 3-input NAND Gate
* 7420 - Dual 4-input NAND Gate
* 7432 - Quad 2-input OR Gate
* 7447 - BCD to 7-segment Decoder/Driver
* 7473 - 7473: Dual J-K Flip-Flop with Clear
* 7474 - 7474: Dual D Positive Edge Triggered Flip-Flop with
Preset and Clear
* 7485 - 4-bit Magnitude Comparator
* 7486 - Quad 2-input XOR Gate
* 7490 - Decade Counter (separate Divide-by-2 and Divide-by-5
sections)
* 74138 - 3 to 8-line Decoder/Demultiplexer
* 74139 - Dual 2 to 4-line Decoder/Demultiplexer
* 74151 - 8-Line to 1-Line Data Selector/Multiplexer
* 74195 - 4-bit Parallel-Access Shift Register
* 74163 - Synchronous 4-bit Binary Counter with Synchronous Clear
* 74164 - 8-bit Parallel-Out Serial Shift Register with
Asynchronous Clear
* 74283 - 4-bit Binary Full Adder
* 74574 - Octal D-Type Edge-Triggered Flip-Flop with Three-State
Outputs

I/O parts list:

* LEDs (red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, white)
* 7-segment displays in same colors, normal and inverted
* Keyboard keys (0,1,2...9, a,b,c...z)

If you take it for a spin, please send me mail about your experiences!
Many of the features I've implemented are result of user feedback.

Real-time? That's impressive. How fast a PC do I need to run, say, a
16-bit PWM generator at 30 MHz?

John

 

[Sol_HSA]

As the final project in my school, I'm building a real-time logic
simulator calledAtanua. It's available from:

http://iki.fi/sol/atanua.html

[chop]
Real-time? That's impressive. How fast a PC do I need to run, say, a
16-bit PWM generator at 30 MHz?

John

Heh, I did not state the fact that the simulation clock runs at 1kHz.
If you want 30MHz, get a FPGA.

 

[John Fields]

As the final project in my school, I'm building a real-time logic
simulator calledAtanua. It's available from:

http://iki.fi/sol/atanua.html

[chop]
Real-time? That's impressive. How fast a PC do I need to run, say, a
16-bit PWM generator at 30 MHz?

John

Heh, I did not state the fact that the simulation clock runs at 1kHz.

 

[william]

Silly argument on the realtime aspect. It's limited in frequency, so
what?

It's a beautiful program, I love the graphics. I am stretching my
brain right now, to see if I can come up with any creative designs.

As a musician, of course, I would like to see some musical i/o via
audio, or midi... But I nag everyone about that so feel free to
ignore.


It's great that you got to work on this for school, but I must
encourage you to continue development when the class is over. =)

William

 

[william]

-The use of keyboard keys as switches is brilliant. Very well
implemented.

-I am not sure if the analyzer is supposed to graph the waveforms?

-I am a big fan of the realism with the graphics. It looks like you
used photographs of the chips. Please keep doing that. If possible,
even have more than one photograph of chips. For example, perhaps the
white 7seg display uses a slightly different photo than the yellow
7seg.

Suggestions:

-When I double click on a Chip, it would be nice if a specification/
help sheet came up, or an internet link was given.

-(minor) The font seems to be pre anti-aliased for a specific zoom,
but ideally would be dynamically anti aliased every time you switch
zooms.

-(not very serious): One click shopping. Press one button on the
corner, and have all the parts purchased for you.

-When I open a .atanua file with Atanua.exe (from the "open with.."
prompt) it does not work. It crashes.

-When I edit a .atanua file with a text editor, I noticed that the
syntax of a wire is:
<Wire chip1="2" pad1="0" chip2="15" pad2="1" />

Does chip "2" stand for the second chip that is defined in the
order of the text file? That could be problematic for people editing
the xml file, because they would have to update many of the <wire>'s
every time they insert or remove a chip. If you do continue to use
chip index number's, perhaps that number should be included in the
chip definition. EX:

<Chip ID="2" Name="LED (red)" xpos="411041792" ypos="486539264" />

I'm not sure how much this would solve, but perhaps something along
these lines could be used to improve manual/third-party editing.

 

[Sol_HSA]

Useful, constructive feedback on the usenet?

/me pinches himself.

Yes, I'm still awake.

It's a beautiful program, I love the graphics. I am stretching my
brain right now, to see if I can come up with any creative designs.

Thanks, and if you come up with anything, I'd love to see them.

As a musician, of course, I would like to see some musical i/o via
audio, or midi... But I nag everyone about that so feel free to
ignore.

I'm considering making some kind of audio chip, most probably in a
form of a preprogrammed microcontroller of some sort, which could be
used for audio. I'd rather not make any components that can't be found
in real life, even if it is tempting and would be quite easy.. Some
kind of aural feedback from the program would be nice in any case.

All real-life sound chips that I've found so far are way too
complicated for this kind of use. Something like "select note with
pins 1-4, trigger note with pin 5" would be ideal.

It's great that you got to work on this for school, but I must
encourage you to continue development when the class is over. =)

It's not for a class, this is my final project. Any further
development will depend on the interest - if nobody's using it,
there's really no point.. =)

-I am not sure if the analyzer is supposed to graph the waveforms?

Not sure what you mean?

-I am a big fan of the realism with the graphics. It looks like you
used photographs of the chips. Please keep doing that. If possible,
even have more than one photograph of chips. For example, perhaps the
white 7seg display uses a slightly different photo than the yellow
7seg.

I think the 7seg I photographed was green, but anyway.. that all
depends on how much time I'm going to spend on texture work. And so
far I think it's more important to get functionality in than tune the
graphics.

-When I double click on a Chip, it would be nice if a specification/
help sheet came up, or an internet link was given.

shellexec("http://www.google.com/search?q=74ls74+data+sheet"); ? =)

-(minor) The font seems to be pre anti-aliased for a specific zoom,
but ideally would be dynamically anti aliased every time you switch
zooms.

The fonts are bitmapped, so I'm not going to touch this.

-(not very serious): One click shopping. Press one button on the
corner, and have all the parts purchased for you.

Heh, many electronics CAD programs actually do have a 'shopping list'
generators, so that far it wouldn't be too far-fetched. However, any
actual design will need other parts as well.. and you can collect the
shopping list from the XML fairly easily.

-When I open a .atanuafile withAtanua.exe (from the "open with.."
prompt) it does not work. It crashes.

Heh, that isn't implemented at all, a good catch. I probably have some
placeholder code there which causes the crash.

-When I edit a .atanuafile with a text editor, I noticed that the
syntax of a wire is:
<Wire chip1="2" pad1="0" chip2="15" pad2="1" />

Does chip "2" stand for the second chip that is defined in the
order of the text file? That could be problematic for people editing
the xml file, because they would have to update many of the <wire>'s
every time they insert or remove a chip. If you do continue to use
chip index number's, perhaps that number should be included in the
chip definition. EX:

<Chip ID="2" Name="LED (red)" xpos="411041792" ypos="486539264" />

I'm not sure how much this would solve, but perhaps something along
these lines could be used to improve manual/third-party editing.

The XML format isn't too flexible at the moment, i.e. the parts must
come before the wires. Chip "2" stands for the third chip (since first
chip is #0). Pad/pin numbering is more confusing, as it doesn't follow
the actual pin number in data sheets, but instead whatever order the
pins are defined in code. Most often this is "top row, left to right,
bottom row, left to right" but there's no definite rule on that.

In any case, the XML format is more flexible for possible third
parties than the binary format was.

Thanks,
Jari

 

[David Harmon]

On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:00:10 -0800 in sci.electronics.basics, John

Real-time? That's impressive. How fast a PC do I need to run, say, a
16-bit PWM generator at 30 MHz?

It doesn't matter how fast your PC is. Of course it will be a
simulated 30 Mhz. He didn't say it was an Emulator, just a
Simulator.

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:00:10 -0800 in sci.electronics.basics, John


It doesn't matter how fast your PC is. Of course it will be a
simulated 30 Mhz.

Then it won't be real-time.

John

 

[Sol_HSA]

Ever since my first post about this, lots of new features have been
added, bugs fixed, etc.

Still available from http://atanua.org =)

The website has also been updated to include more information,
screenshots etc. Requests, ideas, and so on still appreciated.

Changelog:
- New chips: 74181 (some signals may be inverted), 74240, 74241,
74244, 74245
- New chip: 2051 (a 20-pin 8051 variant) based on my 8051 simulator
- Inverted (low-active) LEDs added
- New/load/save button order changed
- Wires now use anti-aliased lines with variable thickness depending
on the zoom factor. Probably have to make a config file to control
these kinds of features vs. performance.
- Windows open-with system should now work (as well as giving atanua
filename to open, same thing in practise)
- Wire tooltip for invalid state re-labeled
- Homework validation system added
- Deleting connection pins with only two wires will now join the two
lines (as if they were never split). Pins with more (or less) than two
wires are deleted as before.
- Wires are now "fried" when a chip is deleted - connecting wires are
deleted recursively if connected to non-complicated connection pins.
- Added atanua.xml, user-editable config file with several options.
- Made toolkit 15 pixels wider by default.
- Crash at startup in some configurations fixed.
- Using 7420 caused crash; fixed.
- Major logic change: invalid state is now propagated. That is, if you
feed 'invalid' signal to a chip, it will generate 'invalid' signal
out. The old behavior (i.e. invalid input generating highz state) can
be enabled by changing the option PropagateInvalidState to 0 in the
configuration file. Due to the severity of this change it's possible
that this introduced some bugs.
- I believe 7447 BI/RBO pin functionality is now fixed.
- New program icon
- Added some custom, context-sensitive mouse cursors. These can be
disabled in the config file.
- Toolkit slider now works more like people might expect it to, for
good or bad. This one can't be disabled in the config file. =)
- If user clicked on an item, released, and then click-dragged item
from the toolkit, the work area would move a bit when the item was
created. Fixed.
- Newly created items now get keyboard focus.
- Labels can now span several lines (i.e. accept enter) Still can't,
and probably won't, support cursor movement.

 

[Mr. Yantho]

Ever since my first post about this, lots of new features have been
added, bugs fixed, etc.

Still available fromhttp://atanua.org=)

The website has also been updated to include more information,
screenshots etc. Requests, ideas, and so on still appreciated.

Changelog:
- New chips: 74181 (some signals may be inverted), 74240, 74241,
74244, 74245
- New chip: 2051 (a 20-pin 8051 variant) based on my 8051 simulator
- Inverted (low-active) LEDs added
- New/load/save button order changed
- Wires now use anti-aliased lines with variable thickness depending
on the zoom factor. Probably have to make a config file to control
these kinds of features vs. performance.
- Windows open-with system should now work (as well as giving atanua
filename to open, same thing in practise)
- Wire tooltip for invalid state re-labeled
- Homework validation system added
- Deleting connection pins with only two wires will now join the two
lines (as if they were never split). Pins with more (or less) than two
wires are deleted as before.
- Wires are now "fried" when a chip is deleted - connecting wires are
deleted recursively if connected to non-complicated connection pins.
- Added atanua.xml, user-editable config file with several options.
- Made toolkit 15 pixels wider by default.
- Crash at startup in some configurations fixed.
- Using 7420 caused crash; fixed.
- Major logic change: invalid state is now propagated. That is, if you
feed 'invalid' signal to a chip, it will generate 'invalid' signal
out. The old behavior (i.e. invalid input generating highz state) can
be enabled by changing the option PropagateInvalidState to 0 in the
configuration file. Due to the severity of this change it's possible
that this introduced some bugs.
- I believe 7447 BI/RBO pin functionality is now fixed.
- New program icon
- Added some custom, context-sensitive mouse cursors. These can be
disabled in the config file.
- Toolkit slider now works more like people might expect it to, for
good or bad. This one can't be disabled in the config file. =)
- If user clicked on an item, released, and then click-dragged item
from the toolkit, the work area would move a bit when the item was
created. Fixed.
- Newly created items now get keyboard focus.
- Labels can now span several lines (i.e. accept enter) Still can't,
and probably won't, support cursor movement.

I've been looking to use this in a classroom setting to do some
experimenting that might be a little too time consuming on an actual
breadboard. Using it to explain flip-flops and digital counters
should be good. Ive had a problem with trying to set up a 7 segment
display using the 7447 chip. I match up the pinouts from the 7447
(the pop-up labelling is slick) And the other inputs are on, except
what would be ABCD. I can't get any type of numbers to show up. I've
done this same experiment physically, so I'm a bit confounded. Any
idea what I'm doing wrong? PS Love the prog.

 

[David L. Jones]

Ever since my first post about this, lots of new features have been
added, bugs fixed, etc.

Still available fromhttp://atanua.org=)

Damn, that looks good!
Nice work.

Dave.

 

[Sol_HSA]

Still available fromhttp://atanua.org=)

I've been looking to use this in a classroom setting to do some
experimenting that might be a little too time consuming on an actual
breadboard. Using it to explain flip-flops and digital counters
should be good. Ive had a problem with trying to set up a 7 segment
display using the 7447 chip. I match up the pinouts from the 7447
(the pop-up labelling is slick) And the other inputs are on, except
what would be ABCD. I can't get any type of numbers to show up. I've
done this same experiment physically, so I'm a bit confounded. Any
idea what I'm doing wrong? PS Love the prog.

The output from the 7447 requires "inverted" 7-seg parts, which is the
most probable reason for problems. Load up the 7447.atanua from
'tests' directory for a reference.

P.s. OS X and Linux versions are now also available.

 

[Stephen J. Rush]

P.s. OS X and Linux versions are now also available.

Thanx for not assuming that Windows = the universe. I've seen a few
other logic simulators for Linux, but they don't include the 74181, and I
don't feel like stitching one together from individual gates. The CPU I
want to design to serve as a target for Jack Crenshaw's 'Tiny' compiler
will take long enough.

 

[lopes]

7447 and Mac OsX Version

Hello,

I try to use a 7447 with an inverted 7 segments display, all the outpout of the 7447 are in red when I atempt to connect something, and when I put the cursor on the red line I got an error message.

If I connect the an outpout of the 7447 to an inverted led I also got the same red line error.

Is something to do to activate the 7447 device.

Is it a bug of the Mac OsX version of atanua?

Lopes