GPIO to memory to Ethernet

[Altera_Forum]

Hi all, we are research grad students trying to figure out how to get information from the DE2 board's GPIO i/o connectors and store it in the DE2's internal memory. The GPIO connector will recieve a digital signal from a board containing a DAC. 

 I assume we will have to get this task done on hardware (QUARTUS) and then develop a program (NIOS) that will process this information. We would also like to ask how we could output the processed information through an ethernet connection. Any help will be greatly appreciated, thanks all! :)

[Altera_Forum]

You have a long road ahead of you. And if this is your project, then this is where the learning is supposed to occur. You could do it all in just Quartus (using either vhdl or verilog), or a combination of this and NIOS II software code running on the processor (compiled with the Quartus II tools )the hardware part). 

 Read lots of stuff on all of these Forums, and also on the NIOS II Forum's and good luck.

[Altera_Forum]

1. Learn the schematic of the DE2 board and get to know what FPGA pins correspond to which GPIO pins on the board. Do the same for the Ethernet PHY chip on board (don't quite remember if there is one on the DE2). 

 2. Learn NIOS II as Avatar suggested.  3. Get a software guru to write a program that reads Ethernet packets from your system and makes sense of them.  Good luck! -dB