Time well spent

[throwaway]

After a couple of hours of trying to implement an Or gate using Not and And, I finally realized that I was using the projects/01 directory as my working directory - forgetting the fact that my Not and And were implemented in the builtInChips directory and there are no chip fallbacks in the 01 zip file.  

My lesson is this: total brainfarts happen.  Easy mistakes like this (especially with new topics and tools) are also VERY easy to overlook.  Just spend time with them.  This is not a race, it's a learning experience.  Mistakes (like mine) are still useful to make.  I won't be making this one again, or if I do I will have experience that constant 0 output is a sign that there is something else wrong.

So good luck to you all and don't be discouraged, failure IS an option when you're learning!

[Shimon Schocken]

I completely agree with the general spirit of your message: "errors are the portals of discovery" (George Orwell).  But, I am not sure what was is the specific nature of your problem. If you are trying to build And / Or gates, then working in the Project 01 directory is just fine. In general, if your HDL program includes a chip part x and there is no corresponding x.hdl file in the current directory, the simulator tries to invoke an x.hdl program from the builtIn directory.  -- Shimon  

[cadet1620]

throwaway wrote

After a couple of hours of trying to implement an Or gate using Not and And, I finally realized that I was using the projects/01 directory as my working directory - forgetting the fact that my Not and And were implemented in the builtInChips directory and there are no chip fallbacks in the 01 zip file.  

I read this to say that you created a separate working directory in which to build your parts and accidentally were working in projects/01 when you meant to be in your part directory.

Note that in projects/03 there are two subdirectories.  Since the complexity of the RAM chips grows exponentially they quickly get too big for the simulator if you try to use your implementations to make the entire hierarchy.  Be sure to split your working directory tree the same way as projects/03.

--Mark

[throwaway]

Shimon Schocken wrote

I completely agree with the general spirit of your message: "errors are the portals of discovery" (George Orwell).  But, I am not sure what was is the specific nature of your problem. If you are trying to build And / Or gates, then working in the Project 01 directory is just fine. In general, if your HDL program includes a chip part x and there is no corresponding x.hdl file in the current directory, the simulator tries to invoke an x.hdl program from the builtIn directory.  -- Shimon

Basically what happened is I first started implementing all the chips in the ../builtinChips, then found the project and started working from the freshly downloaded directory without copying over my earlier implementations.  :)  Like I said, silly mistake to make, but it taught me quite a lot about the simulator, how the .hdl files interact, etc.

[throwaway]

cadet1620 wrote

throwaway wrote

After a couple of hours of trying to implement an Or gate using Not and And, I finally realized that I was using the projects/01 directory as my working directory - forgetting the fact that my Not and And were implemented in the builtInChips directory and there are no chip fallbacks in the 01 zip file.  

I read this to say that you created a separate working directory in which to build your parts and accidentally were working in projects/01 when you meant to be in your part directory.

Note that in projects/03 there are two subdirectories.  Since the complexity of the RAM chips grows exponentially they quickly get too big for the simulator if you try to use your implementations to make the entire hierarchy.  Be sure to split your working directory tree the same way as projects/03.

--Mark

Thanks for the warning Mark, I'm starting chapter 3 tonight so def. glad to know now.