[Coco] CC-Five (was Re: Pseudo CoCo4???) (LONG)

[Mark McDougall]

jdaggett at gate.net wrote:

> The Spartan 3 XC3S250 is on the low end of a rather low cost Xilinx
> device. Probably like ALterra,Xilinx has its high end large devices but
> they carry a rather large price tag far in excess of $1000.

Understood. But I think it's safe to say that the "CocoFive" isn't a project 
that's going to be finished this month - or year!

There's no reason why we can't design "for the future" to some degree. 
Capacities are always going to increase, and prices are always going to 
decrease - that's the beauty of our chosen profession/hobby!

In the mean-time, there are other options. Commercial FPGA dev kits, for 
example. That would allow cheap, 2-layer "personality" boards to be 
produced. I can see a growing market in no-longer-required dev kits as older 
devices are phased out. Perhaps someone in the industry at the right place 
and time will have an opportunity to leverage off a bulk buy in devices to 
get a good price?

I think the rarest commodity in all of this is going to be *time*. :(

Regards,

-- 
|              Mark McDougall                | "Electrical Engineers do it
|  <http://members.iinet.net.au/~msmcdoug>   |   with less resistance!"