[Coco] Dual UART with FIFO Card for the CoCo

Tue Jun 15 10:30:42 EDT 2010

John,

Thanks for the kudos. When we started to see your items popping up on Ebay I checked our database and saw it was you. You have been a customer. :)

As far as Gary's board. As Gary has acknowledged my help with his project, it has been minimal. The bulk of the work has been done by Gary, Aaron and Boisy. Not enough time and time committed to projects with shifting technologies. I did get a spot setup exclusively for my DE-1. It is addicting!

I will check out our PCB vendor specs and prices. Thanks.

Profits? You might not care but when your Dad has 40 products with 40 board spares of each, sitting on the shelf, not moving, he **might** notice..... :) Trust me when I say that the margins are not huge but you have to cover the backside otherwise you will loose $$$. NRE cost need to be addressed as well.

PS/2 Interface. I have a new design that requires the firmware to be written. The design works, there are two. One uses the old cross point switch and the new does the cross point in a CPLD. Board supports both devices.

Your approach...not sure how typing would effect a device transfer's throughput, probably not that big a deal, I can't type that fast... :) SLENB* is a powerful signal. The SuperIDE uses that signal. Just follow the rules. Other devices are present that utilize it as well.

Don't take this as I am cutting you short or blowing you off, keep up your hard work! I just am remaining focused in my spare time.

Regards,

Mark
Cloud-9

----- Original Message -----
From: sales at gimechip.com
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:34:32 -0000 (UTC)
Subject: Re: [Coco] Dual UART with FIFO Card for the CoCo

Mark,
I've been using PCB-Pool. I'm not really good at laying out PCB's and they 
are pretty forgiving.
So far, they've never let me down.
I don't know if they do Gold Plating, but it shouldn't be to difficult to 
find out:
http://www.pcb-pool.com/ppus/index.html?PHPSESSID=84a6ef594ca448bad0b319e60cb2491c
I would really like to find a cheaper place - their prices are good, but I 
want to be able to sell my stuff as cheaply as possible. I don't really care 
about profits - that's why I started uploading everything to coco3.com - I 
figured if someone wanted to manufacture and sell any of my stuff, they'd 
have the files available for use freely.

This DE-1 Expansion board that I have just finished the design of includes 
2-Megs of RAM (as 1Mx16), Gary's Analog Joystick Circuitry, An additional 
PS/2 port, and a 16-bit IDE Interface. I am hand routing that as we speak. 
It will be the first board that I have entirely hand routed. The IDE is 
actually just a 40-Pin connector & 3 pull-up resistors - the D0-D15 and 
A0-A3 of the IDE connector are connected to the same signals as the SRAM - 
My thinking is that the FPGA can contain the actual interface circuitry. I 
think this will work since the CE* of the RAM and the CE*'s of the IDE 
should ensure that no two devices will be ''contending'' as long as the FPGA 
doesn't assert CE* of more than one device at a time.
It is at this point that I would like to ask your advice. Does that sound 
like it will be okay, design wise?

I am about to order the boards for the PS/2 Mouse Interface from PCB-POOL so 
I can fill the 9 orders that I have. I was originally going to only order 
the 10 boards since it doesn't appear that too many people are interested in 
the device, However Dad has offered to pitch in so I can order 50 boards - 
he says if nothing else, I'll have 40 spares :-).

My Dad's system sounds similar to your new station - he built it from a 
Q6600 because the Phenom's weren't available at the time - it's pretty fast, 
yet EAGLE still drags it's butt on this thing.

You have some really awesome stuff. I was about to embark on a PS/2 Keyboard 
Interface. Since you already have a keyboard adapter available, I'll explain 
what I was thinking: I was going to design an interface that plugged into 
the cartridge port - this way the CoCo wouldn't even have to be opened and 
it would not matter which CoCo Model you have - the keyboard connector 
wouldn't matter. My thinking was that whenever the CoCo made an attempt to 
access the keyboard memory areas, the plug in cartridge would assert SLENB* 
disabling the internal devices and replacing them with the circuitry inside 
the keyboard interface cartridge. It seems plausible - of course it would 
need a feedthru cartridge connector so the disk controller could be plugged 
into it. Do you think perhaps this is something that you would like to 
design? It would be awesome to be able to buy it from cloud-9 :-) and I 
don't know when I'll have the time to work out the design.

Thanks for chatting with me - I have admired your products for quite some 
time.

-John

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Marlette" <mmarlette at frontiernet.net>
To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 15, 2010 6:07 AM
Subject: Re: [Coco] Dual UART with FIFO Card for the CoCo

> John,
>
> Nothing wrong with free. What you will find is what you are already 
> finding out.
>
> First design I did, it took about 1 day to hand route. On a slow computer, 
> ~10 yrs ago, it took Specctra under 4 seconds. It is all ASCII and if 
> something goes haywire, you can look at the file source and adjust, of 
> course that is a 300 page manual in itself.
>
> The SuperIDE should have been a 4 layer board but I pushed it as far as I 
> could to make it happen. So far that is as hard as my PC works, took it 90 
> seconds to route that board.
>
> The real test of a system is to compile Gary's core. Took my laptop ~20 
> minutes the last time. Just brought a new workstation on line at home that 
> has dual,  dual cores at 3.2GHZ, that is four uPs that show up in the 
> performance window.
>
> As you can tell, I don't like to wait. :)
>
> Curious...Who is manufacturing your circuit boards that you are designing? 
> I am always looking to reduce cost and that is a major cost area. Quality 
> is critical at 6 mils or less and the ability of the vendor to do gold 
> plating.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mark
> Cloud-9
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: sales at gimechip.com
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 03:30:52 -0000 (UTC)
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Dual UART with FIFO Card for the CoCo
>
> I'm stuck with EAGLE since that's what Dad uses, I get to use it free -
> which means I'm always hogging his computer.... John
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Mark Marlette" <mmarlette at frontiernet.net>
> To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 10:05 PM
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Dual UART with FIFO Card for the CoCo
>
>
>> james,
>>
>> I would have to agree. That is the autorouter we have at Cloud-9. You can
>> control it to the nth degree. Pricey though......
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Mark
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: jdaggett at gate.net
>> To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
>> Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 7:37:59 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Coco] Dual UART with FIFO Card for the CoCo
>>
>> Phill
>>
>> The only autorouter that I found worth a darn was the CCT router used in
>> Spectra. Best
>> autorouter I ever used. Still in RF at 900MHz and above situations there
>> really is no decent
>> autorouter.
>>
>> james
>>
>> On 15 Jun 2010 at 0:14, Phill Harvey-Smith wrote:
>>
>>> sales at gimechip.com wrote:
>>> > I've finished a layout of a 1mx16 upgrade for the DE-1 but I've gotta
>>> > turn the "right-angle" tracks into not right angles :-) Still got to
>>> > add
>>> > the additional PS/2 port and a bit of other extras. It's taking a bit
>>> > longer due to all hand routing (no auto-route) on this thing
>>>
>>> I've generally found the auto-rourter in Eagle to be pretty brain dead
>>> in places for all but the simplest circuit, and found that I get much
>>> better results by manually routing things, though as you say it does
>>> take longer :)
>>>
>>> Cheers.
>>>
>>> Phill.
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Phill Harvey-Smith, Programmer, Hardware hacker, and general eccentric !
>>>
>>> "You can twist perceptions, but reality won't budge" -- Rush.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Coco mailing list
>>> Coco at maltedmedia.com
>>> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>>
>>
>>
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