Welcome to the home page for Icarus PAL. Have a PAL? We want to program it.

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What is Icarus PAL?

Icarus PAL is a suite of tools for manipulating programmable array logic devices, PALs. The suite includes C libraries for manipulating and interpreting PAL fuse maps, and programs that decompile or display compiled PAL designs.

PALs are relatively small devices, compared to such devices as FPGAs, but the are still persistently popular as they are small, regular, standardized, even socketable:-) Some devices can even be reprogrammed in place. By far the most popular architecture is the 22v10, though there are more modern variants and more ancient precursers still in use.

Where is Icarus PAL?

Currently, there are no stable releases. Development snapshots are made often, and made available in the FTP directory <ftp://icarus.com/pub/eda/ipal/snapshots>. The files are gzip compressed tar files that contain the source and makefiles. These snapshots follow development progress, and, although the latest features are included in this source, compatibility from snapshot to snapshot is not guaranteed.

A daily snapshot of my CVS repository is available via anonymous cvs. This allows those who wish to track my progress and contribute with patches timely access to the most bleeding edge copy of the source. Access the Icarus PAL source with the commands:

cvs -d :pserver:cvs@icarus.com:/home/demon/anoncvs login

       (Password is "cvs")

cvs -d :pserver:cvs@icarus.com:/home/demon/anoncvs get ipal

From here, you can use normal CVS commmands to update your source to the very latest copy of the source. Note that if you submit patches, it is most convenient for me if they are relative the latest cvs copy of the source.

A Test Suite?

Not yet. Any ideas?

Who is Icarus PAL?

The main tool libraries and suite is written by (and copyright) Stephen Williams <steve@icarus.com>. That's me. In fact, I'm still working on it. I also work on Icarus Verilog, which is in fact my principal project.

There is currently no mailing list unique to Icarus PAL, but it is often discussed in the gEDA-dev mailing list. See the gEDA home page for information about that project, and information about how to join the mailing list. While you are browsing the gEDA web site, notice all the other nifty EDA related tools that are there. While Icarus PAL is not literally part of the gEDA project, or Icarus Verilog, we cooperate and try to support each other. Icarus PAL users are often gEDA users as well.

Technical Support

Support for Icarus PAL is self serve. The software distribution includes documentation (as ASCII text) that is the first place to start for help. I include here a FAQ page that attempts to answer some questions about the software and its use. If the documentation and the FAQ fail you, then Icarus PAL is discussed on the gEDA-dev mailing list. I and other contributers read the list regularly, and I encourage users to subscribe to the list, so in that forum you have a chance of getting a human being to help you.

If you think you have found a bug, then see the "Bugs" page. This tells you how and where to report bugs with the software. I try to promptly look to bug reports, but this is free software that I work on when (if!) I have time so please don't get impatient.

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