Installation

To use Mecrisp Ice, You have to do three things:

  1. Download Mecrisp Ice and untar it. I recommend the d version. the newer versions lack a license file. If you are developing on the Pico Ice circuit board, then you are better off downloading Mecrisp Pi.

  2. Download and install the open source Yosys OSS CAD suite development tools.

  3. Download and install Free Pascal

  4. Download and install gforth I am running mecrisp ice 2.6e, with gForth 0.7.3. The mecrisp 2.6e release does not work with the more recent gForth 0.79.

Now change into the root directory and compile the Miecrisp Ice Forth Emulator.

cd common-crosscompiler
fpc -XX -O3 icecreammachine-8kb.pas
fpc -XX -O3 icecreammachine-16kb.pas
rm *.o
cd ..

Then search the root directory for your board, change into that directory read the local readme, and type:

./compile
./compile nucleus

You can now flash the board, although the instructions to do that may well depend on the particular board.

Simulator

There are also a number of verilator simulators. Which one should you choose? Well on Mecrisp Pi, there are only two simulators, the two that are relevant for the ICE40 PSRAMs.

  • verilator-16bit

  • verilator-16bit-dualport

  • verilator-16bit-dualport.tar

  • verilator-16bit-quickstore

  • verilator-32bit

  • verilator-32bit-quickstore

  • verilator-32bit-singleport

  • verilator-64bit

To run them, first install Verilator, change into the appropriate directory and type:

./compile
./emulate

And finally visit the repository for this documentation, and create an issue or pull request for anything that you had to do differently.