FPGAARCADE minimig compatible board, comments?

[mikej]

Hi,
yes - I've been on holiday for the last two weeks. I'm now in China and will be back to work on the Replay bring up as soon as possible. Several boards are with other developers who are also making good progress
/Mike

[mikej]

Delshay,
Thanks, a kind offer but I am ok for now.
I got hold of a 68060 and a 68030 as well so I am good
Best,
Mike.

[mikej]

I've put some pictures of the LCD board and IO board up on the website.
I should probably stop playing with the LCD and focus on the main video output
/Mike
http://www.fpgaarcade.com

[mikej]

When I'm happy with the board design (and hopefully got the new website with forums up) I'll open a list of all those who wish to pre-order. Aiming to push the order button mid to end August.

/MikeJ

[mikej]

The Replay board is more of a platform, so it will support many different cores from different developers. The boot structure is designed from the start to make this easy.

I'm really an FPGA person, so once the hardware is up and running I'll maintain and enhance the Amiga core. I'm working with a few other people on it as well.

You can expect initially the board to behave like an ARM enhanced MiniMig with more RAM and DVI, but the short term aim is to get a 68020/30 softcore and enhanced video so ECS level at least. AGA may not be the best way to go, the hardware can do much better but the problem is driver/software compatibility.

/Mike

[mikej]

Most of the cores already exist and need only minor tweaking to get running. All the work at the moment is on the Replay boot system.

At startup the ARM boots from a directory \replay\loader.bin. This gives you the on screen menu etc.

You can then choose a directory on the Sd card, you might have
\amiga_ocs\  
\amiga_ocs_dvi\
\amiga_aaa\
\vic20\
\c64\
etc.

In this directory sits any ROM images you might need as well as the FPGA image. A control text file loads these files into internal/external ram. It also configures the clock generators for the platform and you can set up any options such as disk images. Then it reboots the FPGA into the system you've chosen.

You could also make it boot directly to a specific system.

All the cores will be available for download, so you just stick them on the SD card when they are available. As they will not contain any ROM images I should be able to provide pre-compiled FPGA images (.bin) as well as the sources.


/Mike

[mikej]

Just back, I was away for a bit longer than expected, got flu and then went to IBC in Amsterdam - so I am a bit broken.

I have a huge amount of components, I'll post some pics. There is a slight tweak to the PCB I need to finish, but I promise you will like it

Best,
Mike.

[mikej]

For the last batch the PCBs were made in China and then assembled in Sweden. The plan was to get 50 boards assembled in China, but due to cunning plan I didn't finish the layout work in time - so I have carried all the bits back home.

I found some stacking svhs/composite and stacking 9 pin Ds which means I can put all the IO on one side of the board and the power connectors on the other, meaning most people won't need the expansion board.
/Mike

[mikej]

well, it's only one PCB change. I had always expected to have to make some minor changes, it is unusual to get everything completely right on the first go. The ReplayA board could have shipped with one wire on it, but the Chrontel power problem really needed to be fixed. If you are going to make any changes it costs the same no matter what you do, so it seemed a good time to add the new connectors. It takes a bit of time but I think the end result is better - and it means I can scrap the mini expansion board.
/Mike