[Coco] Today, I have seen the CoCo 4...

[Stephen Adolph]

The beauty of FPGA is that is it 1/2 the price in 2 years...so right
on schedule.

I'm sure someone will be watching Altera/xilinx/Lattice/Actel for new
parts that are cheap and fit the bill.

..Steve

On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 6:52 PM, Mark Marlette
<mmarlette at frontiernet.net> wrote:
> Frank,
>
> I disagree. The FPGA is a BGA. As I recall the DE1 has 584 pins in about 1" sq. The hobbiest can't assemble this, let alone verify the quality of workmanship. You must have XRAY to verify the solder columns/balls.
>
> A board house will want to set up a line or manually place the BGAs. I have such a machine at work that I run but we don't have a XRAY so we don't do BGAs, just QTFPs. Either way my experience has been ~100 boards just to get the line setup right. Either way is $$$$$.
>
> I doubt it can be done in 4 layers, so 6 or 8. You will need almost all the resources that are on the DE1 and they produce those in several thousand boards runs, if I was to guess.
>
> Putting on a larger SDRAM, etc. So how can one conclude that it could be built it cheaper? Hard to compete againest volume pricing.
>
> Don't get me wrong, I would love to see it for $50 but then again, the FPGA costs more than that.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mark
> Cloud-9
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Frank Swygert" <farna at att.net>
> To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2010 1:02:13 PM
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Today, I have seen the CoCo 4...
>
> After the I/O is done it would be a good time to design a specific board for the FPGA. Even in small quantities (10-20) it shouldn't cost any more than the DE-1 and the special I/O board. Then however much SRAM as is needed could be put in too.
>
> ---------------
> Date: Wed, 26 May 2010 23:33:58 -0500
> From: Allen Huffman<alsplace at pobox.com>
>
> I can't wait to see where this one goes.  Get the I/O there (so we could, say, put the board inside a CoCo case), and we'd be set!
>
> --
> Frank Swygert
> Publisher, "American Motors Cars"
> Magazine (AMC)
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>
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