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

[jdaggett at gate.net]

Mark 

Just some more mullings:

Which FPGA would be the best to implement a Coco 1 on? If Xilinx, I would 
rather see staying in the Spartan 3/3E line over the Virtex lines for cost reasons. 
Secondly I would rather see a board that uses two or more FPGAs than  trying to 
do it all in one large FPGA. This is mainly due to board construction. After about 
400K gate densities, FPGAs are in BGA packages and that would require contract 
assembly houses to make the boards and upward to 6 layer boards for routing 
issues. Staying with QFP packages will keep the board layers managible at four 
layers. 

>From what I  have read the Xilinx tools seem to be the better of the free tools out 
there. Alterra is a close second. At least for the hardware (HDL) tasks an 
agreement on which FPGA to use and an overall cost objective. This will help into 
move the direction of the hardware design and what peripheral need upgrading.

Taking John Kent's System09 as a start would be nice. While the SoC peripheral 
are mapped for Flex OS, I doubt that mapping them to the COCO I/O range is all 
that difficult. 

I also have PCB layout experience and could lend time for that. 

Someone would have to setup a CVS system so that members of the community 
can work on the project. 

james 
On 22 Jan 2007 at 17:58, Mark McDougall wrote:

> Joel Ewy wrote:
> 
> > WARNING:  Extended musings about hypothetical enhanced CoCo
> > compatible follow.  This is not a short note.
> 
> Are you familiar with the C-One project Joel?
> 
> It's pretty much *exactly* what you envisage for the Coco.
> 
> Sadly, it's pretty much a failure, though it could be argued that it
> is largely due to the original architect's failure to deliver. I have
> a theory or two of my own too..
> 
> If such a project was ever seriously considered by the Coco community,
> they would do well to learn a few lessons from the C-one before
> setting anything in concrete.
> 
> Having said all that - bring it on! First step would be getting a
> working Coco 1 FPGA implementation though...
> 
> Regards,
> Mark
> 
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