[Coco] A faster "Real" CoCo Re: General Memory Question about speed

[Mark McDougall]

jdaggett at gate.net wrote:

> Yes one could be based on that. There are several hurdles to overcome in 
> doing so. One would be do we base it on a given FPGA development board 
> or go for a dedicated board something like the C-One. 

You can go a *long* way with the design before having to decide on target 
hardware. There are an increasing number of development boards with 
compatible resources which would serve as a prototype platform for any 
"Coco4" project.

I have successfully ported a number of projects to several different 
development boards with minimal changes. Perhaps the best choice to make 
up-front is the FPGA vendor (Altera/Xilinx). That simplifies the work 
somewhat, especially where FPGA memories and timing constraints are 
involved. The PLL/DCM is not so much of a problem.

Using a single generic 'core' the design can accommodate several hardware 
platforms using a top-level wrapper in conjunction with generics/constants 
if required. In fact, I find it even promotes better design practices...

Regards,

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