[Coco] COCO DTV

[jdaggett at gate.net]

On 15 Feb 2007 at 17:19, ben jimenez wrote:

> sorry to say I think your info is wrong, check this link
> 
>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-One
> 
*************

C-One like Coco cou ld be done. CocoDTV can be done if and only if you have millions to 
invest in the design, tools and people. 

A C-One like board dedicated to just a Coco would  have to go in the range of $200 to $400 
populated. All depending on what extras you place on it and how many you can sell. My 
guess less than 5,000 units total. For starts a 4 layer PCB up to 40 square inches is in the 
neighborhood of $60 to $80 dollars. The FPGA used may be one that the individual will not 
be able to solder. I am not sure of your ability to solder 208 pin QFP or even a 256 pin BGA 
package onto a board. The real cost come when you take all the components and have 
someone reflow them. My experience with having an outside house do a small quantity of 
boards is dated. Last time I had an company do that was about ten yrs ago and they did 40 
boards at about $200 each. I supplied them premade board and all they did was populate 
them. 

So yes we can do a C-One like board for the Coco 4/5 or what ever. Just remember it is not 
going to be a $50 resale item. The C-One is 269 Euros. That is about 350 dollars US. That 
is not including shipping from Europe. Besides many of the cores are not yet released. Yes 
it is nice, but is still essentially a development board and is not very user friendly. Right now 
it is more hype than reality. 

Finally you asked if you could help. Answer this:

1) Are you familiar with HDL languages and which one, Verilog or VHDL. Right now most of 
my work is being done in VHDL. Not sure what Mark is doing his in. 

2) Right now there is no concesus on which platform to develop on or which FPGA to use. 
Right now do you have the resources that may require you to purchase one or more 
development boards and any add on cards that may be needed to design. 

3) Currently I have the Digilent D2FT board that has a Spartan 2E 300K gate Xilinx FPGA. 
This is the bare FPGA and su pprt chips like regualtors, clock and configuration PROM. 
Expect to pay about $125 for board and configuration PROM, which does not come with the 
board. I am looking to do add on board(s) for memory, video interface, IDE, and some other 
peripherals. Peripheral cards will be upwards to another $100 to $125 US.

4) There is an outside possiblity that I could go with an Alterra board or even go with XESS 
XSA-3S1000 with XST-3 board. WIth this the cost is $399. This baord is the most complete 
board that will do everything and then some. It will have USB 1.1, a 10/100 MAC ethernet 
adapter, 32M of SDRAM, 2M of flash, 20 bit stereo audio codec, stereo input/output 
conncetors and a video decoder. Oh by the way the FPGA has 1 million gate capability. 
Plenty of room for a lot of expansion. 

james 
 
> jdaggett at gate.net wrote:
>   On 15 Feb 2007 at 10:17, ben jimenez wrote:
> 
> > Thats some interesting stuff, I see she's a consultant now, maybe
> > she can be contacted for some more info on how she designed it.
> 
> ************
> Ben
> 
> While she may give insight on how she designed the C64 in a chip, what
> she did is not all that difficult or earth shattering. The real issue
> is that the C64DTV is an ASIC. That stands for Application Specific
> Integrated Circuit. The company that developed this chip with her
> guiding consultaion probably cost in the range of $500,000 or more to
> do. The rest of the project development probably cost another $500,000
> to a $1 million. 
> 
> Now if you have a nice cool $2 to $5 million laying around, one can do
> the same thing with a Coco3. Otherwise the next best thing is to do
> something in the line of the C-One. Still that is going to require an
> initial investment of at least a thousand dollars and a lot of
> volunteer's time. 
> 
> Right now there is some work ongoing to move in that direction. With
> just a few and limited resources, work will be slow. Then there are
> copyright infringement issues to worry about. Microsoft has the
> copyright for ECB and DECB. The heart of the Coco. Inrecent time many
> of the writers of the games for teh Coco have released to pu blic
> domain. That will be a small issue there. 
> 
> james 
> 
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