LUCAS & FRANCES Boards, PAL Code & PCB Masks

[AJCopland]

Wow this is getting interesting!
Good luck with it, you seem to be getting past every obstacle pretty quickly.

[whiteb]

Originally Posted by plasmab

The idea here is to give me something to develop from so there are a bunch of features on a 10cm x 10cm board. I had originally thought of using a single TQ100 CPLD but this is harder to solder for a novice than 2 64VQ chips. I may change this in later designs

Is it any harder than the Quad 208 pack that the Spartan 3 on the Minimig had ??

If you group bridged the pins, it was a prick to sort out, Lots of time and lots of Flux

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by pandy71

You should give a chance to hot air and soldering paste. After gaining experience you will probably never return to manual soldering.

Its not so much about me as other people doing the work. As it stood the routing was extremely tight. 2 more tracks would not have fit on the 10cm x 10cm board.

[plasmab]

On the subject of the 020 board...

The revision 3 020 board arrived. I built it and I have now published the sources at

https://github.com/terriblefire/tf520

This includes the fixes I needed for the Atari ST. Many thanks to the Atari Forum guys.

You can buy the 020 boards (bare) from DirtyPCB at this link

http://dirtypcbs.com/store/designer/...sl520-rev3-zip

However the 030 boards will also be available in a month or so and they have many more features.

I am also now designing an 040 board for the A500 but it has the same level of features as the 020 board. It will focus entirely on bus protocol development (NO RAM, IDE etc)

EDIT: To keep up to date follow me on twitter or youtube (TerribleFire on both). I'll post here periodically too.

https://www.youtube.com/c/TerribleFire
https://twitter.com/terriblefire

[plasmab]

Sneak preview of the 030 board completely routed...



And the 040 board in development....



Very early days on the 040 board.

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by whiteb

Is it any harder than the Quad 208 pack that the Spartan 3 on the Minimig had ??

If you group bridged the pins, it was a prick to sort out, Lots of time and lots of Flux

Bridge pins are easy. Plain alignment is hard on bigger packages. Plus the 100 pin CPLD on the 530 board would have sat in the middle of the 68K socket with 10mil clearance each side... not for the novice.

... and then i'd have had to route all the RAM CS signals from there to the RAM up the top of the board. I lived with it for a week and chatted to some professional board developers before deciding to go down the 2 CPLD route.

[jediknight]

hi if your making an 040 board can you add voltage droper to add an 060 as well be good if it could do 040 060 be awesome.

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by jediknight

hi if your making an 040 board can you add voltage droper to add an 060 as well be good if it could do 040 060 be awesome.

If there is space i'll add a CPU voltage selector but I'm not convinced an A500 can supply the wattage for an 060 from a linear reg. And i'm not putting a SMPSU on there this time. Just like the 020 board this will not have any RAM so the performance gains will not be worth anyone getting one. It is intended as a stepping stone to a full 060 board... probably for the cd32 though as i've ordered up some 182 pin edge boards.

[jediknight]

ohh please doit ill just run my 500 off an atx 450 watt pc supply , that will run it , yeah i dont care about memory i would just love to say i got a 060 on my 500 lol many thanks cant wait.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by plasmab

If there is space i'll add a CPU voltage selector but I'm not convinced an A500 can supply the wattage for an 060 from a linear reg. And i'm not putting a SMPSU on there this time. Just like the 020 board this will not have any RAM so the performance gains will not be worth anyone getting one. It is intended as a stepping stone to a full 060 board... probably for the cd32 though as i've ordered up some 182 pin edge boards.

IMHO you should go for programmable SMPS like those use nowadays on PC motherboards - small voltage tweak may improve OC stability and as such extend board capabilities (i would consider some mini-module mounted vertically if you are really out of space), such voltage regulators are nowadays very popular not only in PC area but also lot of FPGA use similar approach..

Also consider to add programmable (SPI/I2C) CPU clock source maybe with some uC watchdog to restore default frequency if something went wrong.

Thumbs up and good luck with your project - i almost begin to think about starting something similar on my own due lack of affordable priced A500 accelerator.

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by pandy71

IMHO you should go for programmable SMPS like those use nowadays on PC motherboards - small voltage tweak may improve OC stability and as such extend board capabilities (i would consider some mini-module mounted vertically if you are really out of space), such voltage regulators are nowadays very popular not only in PC area but also lot of FPGA use similar approach..

Also consider to add programmable (SPI/I2C) CPU clock source maybe with some uC watchdog to restore default frequency if something went wrong.

Thumbs up and good luck with your project - i almost begin to think about starting something similar on my own due lack of affordable priced A500 accelerator.

Well... these are open source so if you want to take my sources, swap out the 040 for a 060, and add a SMPSU then go for it. I spent years designing SMPUSs and they dont interest me. If i need more power i'll power it all up off my bench power supplies. I've taken a few suggestions from cosmosamiga and exxos (atari forum) and i'll ship them exemplars.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by plasmab

Well... these are open source so if you want to take my sources, swap out the 040 for a 060, and add a SMPSU then go for it. I spent years designing SMPUSs and they dont interest me. If i need more power i'll power it all up off my bench power supplies. I've taken a few suggestions from cosmosamiga and exxos (atari forum) and i'll ship them exemplars.

Sorry, didn't mean to offend you.

[utri007]

I would be really interested to have one, but I don't have needed skills to solder it myself.

Could somebody help me with this?

[jediknight]

plasmab how can i purchase this board when its done , 040 one or 060 , have you got a website to buy them off????????

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by pandy71

Sorry, didn't mean to offend you.

None taken. Just being firm about what I want to do with this project (since its all in my very limited spare time). But at the same time I'm not stopping anyone building on my designs.

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by jediknight

plasmab how can i purchase this board when its done , 040 one or 060 , have you got a website to buy them off????????

I am not planning to sell them. Best way to keep up to date is to keep an eye on my YouTube channel (TerribleFire). I'm probably going to do some giveaways there in the future.

If the designs are any good I expect cosmosamiga to sell them and maybe exxos (atari st) also.

[plasmab]

DHL just texted to say the 030 board will arrive on Thursday. Expect updates soon.

[plasmab]

I have the 030 boards.. See @terriblefire twitter feed for pics as I assemble.

I noticed i have the wrong pads for the CPLDs. I've managed to just about solder round it but i'll need a rev 2 to fix that properly. I'm going to wait until I have all the botch wires on before respinning though.

Exciting! Best of luck to you good sir!

[plasmab]

Just got the 030 board to boot!








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