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Author Topic: FPGA Replay Board  (Read 822267 times)

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Offline mikej

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Re: FPGA Replay Board
« Reply #44 on: April 17, 2011, 05:17:37 PM »
reproducible bugs are can be easily fixed usually. I have a real a1200 to play with so I can compare the blitter behaviour.
I am starting a log of known bugs, and this will eventually go up on the website, along with hopefully a code repository so everybody can submit fixes.
/MikeJ
 

Offline mikej

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Re: FPGA Replay Board
« Reply #45 on: April 17, 2011, 09:59:29 PM »
It's a bit early to comment on the daughter board but it will be available without the processor.
/MikeJ
 

Offline mikej

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Re: FPGA Replay Board
« Reply #46 on: April 17, 2011, 11:14:20 PM »
yup, still looking in the 200Euro (+vat) range for the non-composite/svhs version.
Direct from me, although some distributors will also carry stock.
Things have been delayed by the need to respin the board slightly to adjust the DVI - audio spacing. This is done and I should get the PCBs back in a few weeks.
/MikeJ
 

Offline mikej

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Re: FPGA Replay Board
« Reply #47 on: April 18, 2011, 09:29:18 AM »
The board has a firmware recovery mode where you can re-flash the ARM code - no matter what happens!

The board has a 1 year return to me in case of hardware failure, and will be repaired or replaced at my option. After that I'll deal with returns on a individual basis and will repair at cost if possible.

It's pretty easy to tell if the board has been damaged by abuse, and user inflicted damage is not covered, but will be repaired at cost if possible :)
Best,
Mike
 

Offline mikej

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Re: FPGA Replay Board
« Reply #48 on: April 18, 2011, 03:51:07 PM »
I have a list of people who have expressed interest, and some of those have received prototype board.

There will be another 40 boards shortly and as soon as I get around to it I'll set up a pre-order page. If you email me (mikej@fpgaarcade.com) then I'll add you to my informal list.

/Mike
« Last Edit: April 18, 2011, 08:11:02 PM by mikej »
 

Offline mikej

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Re: FPGA Replay Board
« Reply #49 on: April 18, 2011, 08:10:41 PM »
Quote from: mikej;632295
I have a list of people who have expressed interest, and some of those have received prototype board.

There will be another 40 boards shortly and as soon as I get around to it I'll set up a pre-order page. If you email me (mikej@fpgaarcade.com) then I'll add you to my informal list.

/Mike


Wish I hadn't said that now, I've been emailed to death.
Sorry if I don't respond to everybody, I'm keeping a list though.
Cheers,
Mike
 

Offline mikej

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Re: FPGA Replay Board
« Reply #50 on: April 19, 2011, 04:09:56 PM »
The AROS chaps sent me some code, I'm working on it....
 

Offline mikej

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Re: FPGA Replay Board
« Reply #51 on: May 11, 2011, 10:34:40 PM »
PCB B2 about to go to fabrication (tomorrow).
This is the optimized for production board and fixes the power-off issue and improves the DVI to audio spacing.

I'm off to China on Monday and will pick the boards up.

/MikeJ
 

Offline mikej

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Re: FPGA Replay Board
« Reply #52 on: May 11, 2011, 10:55:10 PM »
I was going to ask you, it seemed to be taking a while to get across the pond.
Ah, so we will both be in th UK on Monday, I'm passing through on my way east.
Cheers,
Mike
 

Offline mikej

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Re: FPGA Confusion
« Reply #53 on: May 12, 2011, 09:15:50 AM »
Quote from: Darrin;637300


Minimig AGA and FPGA Arcade are the same thing.  I have one of the last beta boards and MikeJ is off to China this week to run off a batch of "gold" boards for general sale.  It will also run other cores to give you other classic computers and arcade machine games.  A 68060 board with USB and other features is in development and running.

The Natami should be an advanced version of the basic FPGA Arcade with the most of the features of the FPGA expansion board included along with some other goodies.  It looks to be an advancement of the classic A1200/A4000 chipset.


The FPGAArcade (Replay board) Amiga codebase has diverged significantly from the Minimig code - and will continue to do so as I am re-writing all of it to improve area and timing at the moment. It also has different video / audio / memory interfaces.
It has been tested with 1920x1080P (HDMI) and 24 bit 192KHz audio. The 68020 core is also new of course.

The Natami is a very interesting project, but I do not see a need for legacy interfaces like floppy and IDE. A large SDHC card on the Replay board will support 4 virtual floppy drives and two 4G hard disks - and the transfer rate probably out performs old IDE drives.

I may do a floppy interface to play with my Atari disk controller, but I really can't be bothered to dig out a drive. I would rather fix the remaining disk capture problems. I have been rescuing a lot of my old code from amiga/atari floppies recently and some of the disks are not readable after 20 odd years.

My aim is to get the cost down and end up with a board which can actually be produced. That's why it's so small (6 layer PCBs are expensive) and the features on the base board have been chosen for as wide an audience as possible while keeping the components used to a minimum. A lot of techniques used for "real products" have been used here, such as stress testing the memory to test the operating margins and high-speed measurements using 20Gig test kit to measure eye-patterns on DVI, clocks etc. Also, the entire board is impedance controlled to get good signal integrity.

The other big difference between the Natami and Replay board is the use of the ARM controller. Not only does this do the bridge to the SD card file system, it also acts as a boot and configuration controller - so you can choose your platform and options using the on-screen display.

You don't need to "reflash" like the Natami. You can take the SD card out, replace the core binary file, stick it in again and do a soft-restart of the system.

You can change from an Amiga to an Atari to a Spectrum without powering down.

Anyhow, I've got to finish the DRC (design rule checks) for the boards...
Cheers,
MikeJ
 

Offline mikej

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Re: FPGA Replay Board
« Reply #54 on: May 13, 2011, 06:45:34 PM »
Quote from: freqmax;637542
With FPGA it's possible to load any hardware combination you can imagine.

The only thing this FPGA thing lacks is an Zorro bus interface.


The core options, such as AGA enable are set up with the on screen menu. They can actually be switched live (at the moment) but this may make the system fall over. I guess I should force some options to only become active on a restart.

Why do you want a Zorro bus? There are a huge amount of pins to the expansion connector, so I could implement a Zorro bus if needed, and a daughter board bridge. What would you connect though?
Cheers,
MikeJ
 

Offline mikej

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Re: FPGA Replay Board
« Reply #55 on: May 13, 2011, 10:22:12 PM »
Quote from: freqmax;637611
I was thinking on say unusual video grabbers etc.. that could need this. I don't think it's worthwhile atm to persue Zorro. But I hope all I/O that would be needed is available at the expansion slot?

Btw, how is XC3S1200 supply?, seems Xilinx is going for Spartan-6 for the "low-end" FPGAs.


There is no reason other people can't produce daughter cards - Jakub built his own from my specs. I have a proto-card as well which you can build your own circuits on. You'll get ethernet and usb on my daughter card.

It's a Spartan3e1600 actually. No problems with supply, I've got around 50 arriving next week. I can always get them in China as well. No EOL on these yet.

Spartan6 is very interesting but is quite a bit more expensive at the moment.

Once we've knocked out a few hundred of the current card it may be time to move on, next year I guess.
Cheers,
Mike
 

Offline mikej

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Re: FPGA Replay Board
« Reply #56 on: May 13, 2011, 10:25:28 PM »
"While I could see a PCI slot"
You can already do this with the expansion bus available.
A simple bus mastering PCI core is not hard (I've written one before), but again, not sure I see the point.

For next gen card I would use a Spartan6 and then you could wire up a few SerDes lanes to the expansion connector and have PCIexpress.
/Mike
 

Offline mikej

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Re: FPGA Replay Board
« Reply #57 on: May 17, 2011, 01:15:15 PM »
Status update:
I'm in China now. The production B02 database has been sent to manufacture today. I will source the remaining couple of components in the next week to build the next batch. I've also getting the ATX power adapter board made and some more patch daughterboards for attaching other stuff.

There are a number of developers working on a range of platforms - I'm working on a ZX spectrum port at the moment.

I've had some very nice communication with the NatAmi team and I wish them well.

I'll post some more pics ASAP.
Best,
Mike
 

Offline mikej

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Re: FPGA Replay Board
« Reply #58 on: June 01, 2011, 07:38:36 PM »
I'm just got back home.
I have the new boards and almost all the components to get them built :)
/MikeJ
 

Offline mikej

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Re: FPGA Replay Board
« Reply #59 from previous page: June 02, 2011, 01:08:02 PM »
It's ok to email, I try to respond to everybody!
There is 50 in this batch. The FPGAs will not be delivered until mid June, so if all goes well I can get the boards built first week in July. It normally just takes a day or two to build.
Best,
MikeJ