Interest check: An updated MiniITX-MiniMig ( Pics!!! )

[alexh]

Interesting stuff. Shame it is not possible to add larger SRAM.

As for LCD panel, the Spartan III has LVDS I/O so it should be possible to create HDL to drive any old laptop LCD panel directly...

[alexh]

freqmax wrote:
Usually "LCD" means black/grey screns like the ones on wristwatches. TFT are the popular colour ones used today.

TFT is a type of LCD.

[alexh]

yaqube wrote:
I consider it as the next step of Minimig evolution (all together with switching from SRAM to SDRAM, 16MB of SDRAM are cheaper and faster then 2MB of SRAM).

But are there enough I/O on the FPGA to support SDRAM? Can you get them the same form factor as the SRAM? Or are we talking a new PCB?

[alexh]

Bloodline never reads posts properly, get used to it ;-)

ARM Micro seems overkill, especially if it needs own RAM and program Flash on the plugin board, I guess it is what you had to hand, which model is it?

[alexh]

yaqube wrote:
@alexh
It has 256KB Flash ROM and 64KB RAM on chip. It's not an overkill, it's a simple and small MCU with ARM7TDMI core.

Which is almost 3x the price of the device it is replacing. I wonder what that does to the overall retail price of MiniMig? (Which was already very high).

How much does it cost? [Edit: ~$11]
How much was the PIC? [Edit: ~$4]

But if you could reduce the cost equally by switching to SDRAM you might be able to bring it back in line.

@55MHz it would have considerably more power than MiniMig :-)