[Coco] General question for the fpga guru's out there

[T. Franklin]

The FPGA boardsused for CoCo emulation are simply ?evaluation?boards that MFG?s sell for Engineers and Schools to use as a teaching tool.They are not specifically made to be used for 8 bit computer emulation. Most ofthese boards have hardware that support VGA, Serial, Sound etc. but not all. Hemost common FPGA used to emulate the CoCo isthe Altera DE-1 board. There are many of these still available but there boardsare discontinued.I doubt the MFG'swill build boards in support of what you are trying to do. The companies thatmake these boards are in the business of making and selling FPGA?s. It?s your jobas an Engineer to design and build boards using their chips. 10 to 20 boards to them isn't bulk. To them, that's annoyance. The DE-1 board is still sold by DigiKey (Stock is going down though). I would have to check but I think they do knock a few bucks off if you buy 10 or more already. Just get 10 or more users to commit to buying one and then you can buy them in bulk from DigiKey.






Hi guru'sWould it be possible to make an announcement of which of the fpga boardwould be best to have the coco 3 on.The reason I ask is that I would like to lobby at those manufacturers tosee if we can buy those boards on bulk, say by 10 or 20 at a more downsizedprize. For some of us hobbyist the prize is still steep and out of rangeeven, if we get 30 to 50 $ off, that would be a significant drop. Worth atry I guess, "NO" we already have a "yes" is what we can get. So let meknow guys. Maybe it comes out for the better.Radio shack wants to doe something big, so maybe they would help us in thisquest, to buy on mass an retail them next to the arduino stuff.Just an idea ( and a shot to get one for myself .. LOL )PS. Also a fpga question, thus the board has harddisk, vga, and other stuffintegrated, or is there need to add this all on?cba--Coco mailing listCoco at maltedmedia.comhttp://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco