Welcome to Arbadell Computer Homepage


I love my grandma


Arbadell is a computer designed by Shane Avery and is developed completely from scratch. The CPU is a FPGA designed in Verilog and the chipset is a PIC microcontroller developed by Elohim Holguin as a senior project.

Why build a computer from scratch? Well, I just graduated Cal Poly as a computer engineer and was looking for a project to test and develop skills relevant to my major. The ultimate goal is to take Arbadell into job interviews with me to show what I am capable of as a computer engineer.

How did you come up with the name Arbadell? Well, it the name friends and family know my grandma by. She has been a constant source of support both financially and emotionally throughout college. Besides, I think it's a kickass name.

What tools did you use to develop Arbadell? Xilinx software is free. I got the student version from a book on digital logic and happened to find a cheap enough development kit that had an FGPA in it which happened to be a Xilinx part. The PIC was used as a chipset because they are cheap and I happen to already have a programmer. I've been using Icarus Verilog a lot in Linux to write the Verilog code. Also, the loader is an AVR microcontroller. I got a development board that included downloading tools and an assembler from a company called Xess. I am attempting to develop Arbadell as cheaply as possible.



I love my wife.

I love my wife.

Here are some pics of Arbadell during early development.

Links to Arbadell documentation
This is a document that describes all the pieces of Arbadell and how they work.WordPDF
This is a document that shows the basic architecture of Arbadell.VisioPDF
This is a document that shows the architecture of Arbadell's CPU.VisioPDF
This is a zip file that contains the Verilog code for the CPU.CPU code
Here is a document of the control module state machine.VisioPDF
Here's the source, documentation (Word and PDF), and Windows executable for CPU assembler.ass.zip
Here's the source and documentation (Word and PDF) for the memory loader.loader.zip
Here's the schematic created with Eagle 4.09r2.EaglePDF
Here's the PCB created with Eagle 4.09r2.EaglePDF
This is a zip file that contains the documentation(Word and PDF) and Java source files.ArbSimulator.zip
Here's the source for the PIC chipset.chipset.zip
Here's the Verilog code and the .svf file for the VGA CPLD.VGACPLD.zip
Here's the PIC assembly code that is the interface between to chipset and the video buffer.VGAPIC.zip
Here's a technical description of the VGA portion of Arbadell.WordPDF


Here's a link to the Arbadell blog