FPGA Replay Board

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@yaqube, 75% of the Spartan-3E 1200 ..?

75% is a lot, and makes me wonder about the space for the AGA core etc..

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75% of the Spartan-3E 1600

Isn't the fpgaarcade equipped with an Spartan-3E 1200 ..?

75% is taken by: Minimig AGA core (with 24-bit scandoubler) + SDRAM DDR memory controller + TG68.C (V0.40) + dual CPU caches + 16-bit DMA AHI sound card module + 128 channel embeded logic analyzer

That sounds better

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How much does the pcb board itself without any components cost?
(size?, layers?)

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Just curious what pcb price you got for small runs for use in other non-amiga related projects

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I think a small run = 4 cards, I thought you used another one more physically close.

As I recall you used one company for the first 10 (or one?), and another one for the full 50?

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I think 80 MHz signaling speed with the FPGA might be a stretch. It requires some consideration.

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wawrzon, There are Analogue -> to -> DVI/HDMI adapters. Not cheap but they exist.

Btw, I think mikej could build one
(A/D + FPGA + Transmitter)

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Tip for identifying that Apple connector:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_connectors#Physical_connectors

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DVI/HDMI has a quirk.. it sends horizontal and vertical sync along with the digital pixels....

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Another trick/hack is to dump the Amiga screen into a buffer and have your own scaler algorithm.

As I recall the PAL color modulation is responsible for some of the blurring. Some C64 emulator has this blur mode. And it certinly improves the picture beauty.

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Asfaik some logic can only be expressed in VHDL and not Verilog. Especially in regards to flank triggering and dependencies. Thoe Verilog is easier and VHDL is cumbersome.

You can all thank US Department of Defense for VHDL being based on ADA. Rather than start with a clean sheet and design a hardware description language based on its own merit. Where definition of states, dependencies, parallism, etc would be central.
It should be said that hadn't DoD put down the foot there would been a forrest of different HDL languages from each manufacturer all incompatible with eachother..

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mikej, As you seem to work with ASIC design. Do you think it's realisable to create a design consisting of a plain matrix of CLB elements? as way to an open source FPGA chip?

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You mean to make our own FPGA silicon? That's an enormous amount of money. You don't necessarily need a lot of people, I've seen it done with 4 or 5 chip designers, 9 or 10 software guys to make the place/route tools etc. And you'd need some legal to make sense of existing patents to keep yourself out of trouble. But the EDA tools are HUGE expensive. The legal part is likely also HUGE expensive. And you'll also likely need a few years of work time for anything to happen. I'm not sure it's worth the trouble...

The first FPGA was put on the market in 1985 so any patents for a plain matrix setup is likely obsolete many times over (5yrs). So for that part one can just make a simple circuit and duplicate it over and over. It won't be as good as the current topsellers but the point is to make a huge matrix available without the entanglements that currently exists.

As for software there already exist some really serious tries to replicate the existing routing software and that's with a unknown chip layout. Making the same effort for a simple and known layout should be way easier. Besides there are a lot of people prepared to write open source software..

A configurable logic matrix chip without ties to corporate directions and without ties to a specific platform would be of significant benefit in the long run.

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I saw the thread about a dead CatWeasel and the problems to find the fault. As he has to make the right combination of attached hardware, interface hardware, drivers, configuration, and user software for it to work. Something missing = doesn't work, no explenation.

So it might be a good idea to create some test software for the board. Once the flashmemory with test software is inserted it would test the onboard MCU. If it works it could blink with a easy recognisable cycle. Then the MCU is used to test the FPGA. The FPGA is used to test the video ports, audio, keyboard, mouse, flashport stresstest for timing errors and so on..

That way it's easier to diagnose "bricked" boards without resorting to a heap of external test instruments. It could help with bad soldering diagnose too.

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32-bit wide transfers, where?