[Coco] Today, I have seen the CoCo 4...

[Frank Swygert]

Marks comments make sense. I never meant that a CoCo FPGA specific board could be cheaper than the DE-1, only that it might be cheaper than the DE-1 PLUS another satellite I/O board. I was thinking it would still be around the cost of the DE-1 with FPGA alone, the real advantage would be a single compact unit. But he does point out that the volume of the DE-1 means it is substantially lower in cost than any special low production board could be, so that's the real point. A new "CoCo4" in hardware will cost around $400 but be a small unit. Which brings me back to why not merge an emulator with an OS (or "hide" the OS behind the emulator interface) and use something like a Mini-ITX board with a VIA or Atom processor, and create an optional expansion card that either uses the PCI slot or a parallel printer port. Cost of those boards is under $200, and the "look and feel" would be about the same.

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Date: Thu, 27 May 2010 22:52:15 +0000 (UTC)
From: Mark Marlette<mmarlette at frontiernet.net>

I disagree. The FPGA is a BGA. As I recall the DE1 has 584 pins in about 1" sq. The hobbiest can't assemble this, let alone verify the quality of workmanship. You must have XRAY to verify the solder columns/balls.

A board house will want to set up a line or manually place the BGAs. I have such a machine at work that I run but we don't have a XRAY so we don't do BGAs, just QTFPs. Either way my experience has been ~100 boards just to get the line setup right. Either way is $$$$$.

I doubt it can be done in 4 layers, so 6 or 8. You will need almost all the resources that are on the DE1 and they produce those in several thousand boards runs, if I was to guess.

Putting on a larger SDRAM, etc. So how can one conclude that it could be built it cheaper? Hard to compete againest volume pricing.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see it for $50 but then again, the FPGA costs more than that.

Regards,

Mark
Cloud-9


----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank Swygert"<farna at att.net>
To:coco at maltedmedia.com
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2010 1:02:13 PM
Subject: Re: [Coco] Today, I have seen the CoCo 4...

After the I/O is done it would be a good time to design a specific board for the FPGA. Even in small quantities (10-20) it shouldn't cost any more than the DE-1 and the special I/O board. Then however much SRAM as is needed could be put in too.


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Frank Swygert
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