FrenchShark wrote:
Illuwatar wrote:
RedskullDC wrote:
A bigger FPGA might be an advantage for expansion later on (XC3S1000 for example).
Cheers,
Red
If You find a way for homebrewers to mount a BGA to the PCB in a cheap and simple way that could be performed at home, I will be more than happy to design the board...
As it is now, the largest Xilinx FGPA in a hand-solderable package is 500k gates. Any larger uses BGA.
We should move to Altera FPGAs. The Cyclone III chips with QFP-240 package have pretty decent sizes. I use a 16k LEs one (the smallest available) which is equivalent to a XC3S1000. There are enough gates to put a 68000 inside and enough I/Os to have Audio, 30-bit VGA, 8MB SRAM, 2 x PS2, IDE and 2 joystick ports and I still have 10 I/Os available. Moreover, if you use the serializer trick (like on the AGA Amigas) for the joystick ports, you can save 5 more I/Os.
Regards,
Frederic
Thank You for the tip. I could look into that Altera chip. For me, it doesn't matter what is written on the FPGA as long as the code could be ported. Regarding IDE - isn't that what the PIC should do (emulate harddisk-files from UAE)? And for AGA, 24-bit VGA should be enough? Finally, who are willing to take the task of implementing AGA into the FPGA? And if we are into it - going for AGA (A1200) would require a swap of CPU, from the 68000 to a full 32-bit one... (and there we lost the "Mini" in this thing).
The idea of using a development board is fine for developing and testing, but for a final solution, it is not the best option.
