book on PAL/GAL programming?

[Tim Shoppa]

Andrew wrote:
> I am interested in PAL / GAL programming and would
> like to buy a book on the subject.  Does anyone have
> any recommendation(s)?  Alternatively, there may
> be websites with PAL / GAL programming how to
> guides.  Those would be useful
> too.  I have a rough idea using PALASM but it has been
> a long time since I have used anything like it.

Since you mentioned it... and since this IS classiccmp...

The first version of PALASM I used was back in 1984 or 1985,
and it ran on a VAX and a PDP-11. If I recall correctly, it came as Fortran
source code and was from MMI, the big seller (at the time)
of PAL's. The MMI databooks of the era were very good at
convincing old stuck-in-the-mud-types like me that PAL's were
a huge improvement over discrete logic, showing how logic
equations map into blowing diodes, and blowing diodes
in a PAL results in exactly the function you wanted to begin with.

If I google for pages with MMI, PALASM, and Fortran, I see
several pages that would help you go this route.

As a practical matter, for a modern board, you'd probably
use gate arrays for all but the most straightforward decoding
to do it really modern.

Tim.