[Coco] This may be of interest to FPGA devs, ZX-UNO

[Francis Swygert]

Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2016 21:54:31 +0100
From: didier derny <didier at aida.org>

for a similar price I would rather be tempted by this board:
http://store.digilentinc.com/arty-board-artix-7-fpga-development-board-for-makers-and-hobbyists/
include a chip locked license...

--
didier

On 26/03/2016 21:28, Mark McDougall wrote:
> Actually for $100 I don't consider it particularly good value.
>=======================================================
The Arty Board does look good, but it only has a micro USB and Ethernet port. So you can't use it without buying more add-on boards. You'd have to make your own video display board. Maybe one of the 12 pin PMOD ports can be used, but there are no full display modules now, just some small LCD character displays. It's not made to be a stand-alone computer, not a general purpose one anyway. It can do lots of things that any headless computer can do of course. So it's not that cost effective, you'd need at least another $100 for a display board, unless of course one of the PMOD connectors is usable as an output with minimal circuitry. You'd still need a small video interface board of some sort though, adding to cost. 

I don't think a used board is a viable alternative. New DE-1 boards are $150, which isn't a bad price. I think the issues with the new boards and the CoCo3 core have been taken care of. 

I'm not saying this to defend the "new" board -- which may not be available. That board was designed to emulate a desktop 8 bit computer though, and has all the IO needed. There are others, but I can't think of any of them now. There was/is one small FPGA computer that is progammable for several cores and has most IO on it, but no expansion port. Grant Searl'es "multi-comp" could possibly be modified into a full CoCo3 clone. The MIST board would work, but it's about $225 (http://amigastore.eu/en/318-mist-fpga-computer.html). The "replay" board looks promising, but I could find no purchase details (http://www.fpgaarcade.com/replay/). The $65 flea board may be more palatable to the budget conscious (http://www.fleasystems.com/fleaFPGA.html). Might not have enough IO though.  

 Frank Swygert
 Fix-It-Frank Handyman Service
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