Pull down a pin output at the same time set as Z state VHDL

Question

When I set a pin in 'Z' state it keeps the state it has before.

For example:

if rising_edge(Clock) then
   counter <= counter + 1;
   case counter is
      when 0 =>
        PIN <= '0';
      when 1 =>
        PIN <= 'Z';
      others =>
   end case;
end process;

If I execute this code I'll have PIN set at '0' in 'Z' state.

if rising_edge(Clock) then
   counter <= counter + 1;
   case counter is
      when 0 =>
        PIN <= '1';
      when 1 =>
        PIN <= 'Z';
      others =>
   end case;
end process;

If I execute this code I'll have PIN set at '1' in Z state.

What I need is to have PIN set to '0' in Z state regardless of the state it was before. But I need to accomplish this without using an additional clock cycle to set PIN from '1' to '0' and then to 'Z'. Is that possible?

Answer 1

If you need an FPGA pin to be tristated, but also have a pulldown, you must set up the pulldown in your toolchain's pin configuration tool. I'm not aware of any FPGA toolchain that will infer a pulldown from assignment to 'L', which appears to be what you want (tristate with pulldown seems equivalent to 'weak low'). If you are running simulation only, try setting PIN <= 'L'.