FPGA Replay Board

[espskog]

Thecrow, Interesting!

@MikeJ, How many boards are taken out those 50 ?

+1.
I am also interested in hearing this, as I know of people who wants to buy if there are boards available of the current batch.

Espen

[espskog]

That is cool. You probably have a feeling how many Replay board you can send (based on how much feedback you've received and pre-orders etc). Do you know if there are plan to have third party re-sellers aswell ? I think that now that the electronics is more or less done, the big thing is to make this Replay board into a kick-ass product (even better than it is now...if possible) by expanding the software side of it.

Have you had some talks with other Arcade  dudes to use the Replay board inside pre-made Arcade boxes ?


I hope you can sell heaps of the board and make big bucks from it. That would be very very awesome. I for sure hope that the Amiga community can help out by buying as many boards as possible

It's a very natural upgrade from the current MInimig owners to go to the Replay board. It's the closest thing you can get to go from upgrading from A500 to A1200 :-)...only, it's WAY cooler and better

[espskog]

DVI does the job just as well. We feed audio separately instead and that should be good enough We are used to compromises from the Commodore world, so HDMI or not...we don't need no stinkin' HDMI

Yet, having all in one single cable is of course very nice, but I would gues that it's possible to get a DVI2HDMI adapter which ALSO has a little jack-plug on it so you can feed the adaper with audio that is then carried on thru the hdmi cable to the TV.

[espskog]

I set my controls for the heart of the amplifier instead, and not the (so often) crappy internal speakers of monitors

[espskog]

I love this project because you get:

1. real information
2. developer feedback from consumer input
3. they use Drupal
4. updates on production, with realistic timelines
5. less hype more real...
6. Did I mention it's real?

:hammer:

Are you gonna hook up UberCart and sell & ship through that ?

I totally aggree with you there. Especially on #2 above. Mike actually took time to call me about an issue with 15kHz a few week back. That is what I call kick ass customer support :-) This is what's so cool about the Commodore-world...everybody cares :-)

Thumbs up to Mike and Yaqube. They do fantastic work!

@Mike -- yes, the Slay.org party was nice. I have never played pool for 7 hours straight before while listening to retromusic :-)


Espen

[espskog]

I am pretty sure they do not pay those people a fortune to assemble things...yet the asian assemblers make the world go around

[espskog]

Here's an idea: Manually label them with the serial number. It's cool

Just wondering, the card I got. Do you remember which serial# it is ?

[espskog]

There was a picture somewhere of the new replayboards with a white label on it for serial numbers espen ;-)

edit: Here it is (LOL) http://www.fpgaarcade.com/common/replay_b02_back.jpg

Cool

[espskog]

Yup - it's B01-ESPSKOG

I can live with that

[espskog]

WHo'll be the happy owner of post #1000 on this thread ? Maybe that person can get a prize ? Like...maybe a replay board with 10% off ? hehe...that'd be kewl.

This thread has already 100.000+ viewing and no almost 1000 posts. That is quite cool.
One can pretty much draw the conclusion that the fpga-replay board really has got some attention in this forum, for sure.

Now -- we just need more juicy details on the daughterboard. Some pics, specs ...hell, i'll take black&white printouts if necessary

[espskog]

I put a quick snap of 16 of the new boards on the website.

http://www.fpgaarcade.com

Is that plastic anti-static ?

[espskog]

The changes to b02 over b01 have been verified.
You can plug the DVI connector in at the same time as the audio.
The board powers off correctly even when back-powered from the TV.

Audio, DVI, Analog, Composite (with selectable luma trap), SVHS are all performing very well - in fact the analog picture and sound quality are excellent.

Memory testing on-going....

Nice!!!
Which steps are needed to make my B01 a B02 (apart from the audioconnector which is ok since you moved it a few clicks to the right already), and can they be done by ourselves or will they require some new parts ?

Espen

[espskog]

Anyone who is not sure about purchasing an FPGA Arcade Replay Board yet and wants to see one running first should attend the AmiWest 2011 Show in a bit over 2 weeks, as I will have one running at my display table at the show.

Cool. You got hold of one from Mike already ? That's pretty quick

[espskog]

None, the boards are completely compatible for firmware.

When will the new firmware be available for download ?

The only difference is the luma trap on composite out is driven from an extra line on the ARM controller (so turning it off will have no affect on B1). The trap can be disabled by removing a component if required.

What will the lumatrap do for the image if I disable it ?

The power-on control has been improved, but this is only an issue when you use DVI later.

My board tends to now power-off when i physically switch it off with the on/off switch. As this is not a problem for me, I am just curious what the cause is and what the fix was on the B02 board to handle it.

//Espen

[espskog]

Sorry to change the topic. I am just curious on where in the run the daughterboard is :-)

What is the current focus as of today, and when do you think the daughterboard might see the light of day for beta-testers ? Ballpark estimates are more than adequate :-)

[espskog]

@Mike: Awesome news!! But one thing I am still eager to hear is whether the functions of he daughterboard will be available if I run a core with 020 soft cpu instead of booting up with the onboard 060 cpu.