So, as mentioned earlier, the proof-of-concept I'm working on now is based on the Avalon A3218. As there isn't a publicly-available datasheet on the A3218, I'm assuming the protocol works about the same as documented in the A3222 datashet.

So today I started setting up a test rig to establish SPI communication with one of the chips. But I need to know what data to send it. If anyone's got advice on this, I'd be happy to hear it.

Specifically, stuff like the A3222 datasheet gives three clock configuration segments, but I don't know why. And especially a means of calculating the midstate and other preprocessed values (a0, e0, etc). I'm spending time parsing through cgminer code, but by now there's a heck of a lot of cgminer code to look through and I figure surely after 3 years of Avalon products in the wild someone knows how those calculations work. Mostly I just need a valid sample I can push to the chip and see if it talks back with something that seems in any way "correct".

And yes, if it helps motivate someone to assist a bit, I will try to implement an A3218 stickminer based around this work.