WB_PRTIO - Configurable Wishbone Parallel Port Unit (AD10)

Altium Designer 10 delivers an enhanced configurable Wishbone Parallel Port Unit (WB_PRTIO), configuration of which is far more powerful and intuitive. No longer are you constrained to having a peripheral configurable to 1, 2 or 4 ports only. Now you can add and define as many ports as you'd like – ensuring that your design needs are not inhibited in any way. What's more, you are not confined to having all ports a single, defined width and kind. Each port is definable in its own right. In other words, each port is configured individually to suit your design requirements.

Configuration dialogs accessed from the OpenBus and Schematic incarnations of the parallel port unit.

Specifying Port Signals

Each individual port (or register) interface within the unit is defined in terms of the following information:

• Name – a meaningful name for the incoming and/or outgoing signal. A signal can be from 1 to 32 bits in width. Specify the required width as part of the signal name. For example, a single bit signal would require just a name (e.g. FLAG). A 32-bit signal would require a name and a bus index suffix (e.g. FLAG[31..0]).

• Kind – what type of signal it is. A signal can be either an input (Kind = In), an output (Kind = Out), or both input and output (Kind = In/Out). There is no Tristate kind. Where such a type has been defined for the component in a previous release of Altium Designer, the port interface will be translated to two entries in its corresponding configuration – one signal of kind In/Out and an additional signal for the tristate pin, with kind set to Out, as illustrated in the following image.
   
  
  A previously defined tristate interface will look and function the same as it did in a previous release of the software. It is simply handled
  differently in the configuration of the port interface signals.

Adding and Removing Signals

When you initially place a parallel port unit a single port interface is defined, with signal name PA[7..0] and kind set to In/Out. Change the signal's Name and/or Kind as required. To add a new signal (port/register interface) to the unit, simply click the Add button. A new signal entry will be added to the Signals list. By default, new signals are added with naming in the format PA[7..0], PB[7..0], and so on. Signal width is 8 bits and kind is set to In. Again, change the definition of each signal added as required for your design.

Example signals defined for a schematic-based parallel port unit.

Removal of signals is simply a case of selecting them in the list – use Ctrl+click and Shift+click to select multiple signals – and then clicking the Remove button.

Changing Interface Ordering

After defining the port signals, you may find that you want to change the order in which their corresponding interfaces appear – on the WB_PRTIO's schematic symbol, or in the external interface signals fed from the OpenBus System to the parent sheet symbol above. Support for interface reordering is provided through two additional buttons in the dialog
– Move Up and Move Down.

Change the order in which the port signals appear at the click of a button!

Pasting Signals using Windows Clipboard Content

To aide in setting up signals in a more expedient manner, the configuration dialog supports the ability to paste content from the Windows clipboard, through the additional Paste button. You can use this time-saving feature to paste, for example, a column of copied signal names from an external application such as a spreadsheet or a text editor. Closer to home, you can select net labels in a schematic, use the standard Ctrl+C shortcut to copy their content to the clipboard, then paste them into the configuration dialog.

Copy net labels and paste them into the configure dialog to instantly define signals of the same name.