How to use an OLED display for an Avnet Virtex4?

Question

I have an Avnet ADS-XLX-V4FX-EVL12-G (Virtex4 Evaluation Board) with OLED display. I used Xilinx EDK 10.1 with Xilinx Platform Studio 10.1 and succeded to upload some basic app to the board (serial communication).

Now I would like to use the OLED display mounted on the board but I have no ideea how to begin. I found the uCLinux distro for FX12 (http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~jwilliams/mblaze-uclinux/Downloads/ platforms.html#avnet_lx25) and I tried to folow the steps descibed in the documentation. When I try to download the .img file to the the specified address it does not work. I get the following error MDM Peripheral Not Detected on Hardware. They say that I should use EDK 7.1 but I have 10.1. Could that be a problem ? (I used xmd.exe from 10.1). There is a support answer on Xilinx (http://www.xilinx.com/ support/answers/20060.htm) where I have to recompile the netlist but I cannot open the project file in 10.1.

Anyway could you point me a resource where I can find some basic example of using the OLED? Even lighting-up a pixel could be a good starting point ...

Answer 1

You will need 2 pieces of information:

1. The documentation of the board - which will show you how the display is connected to the FPGA (i.e. pins)
2. If there is a controller chip for the OLED, you will need the documentation to interface to that chip too. You may need to use some sort of microcontroller or basic state machine for the interface logic.

Then, try a little 'hellow world' design that does something like blink your OLED. Then, go on to the bigger stuff.