H5 assembly drama

Information and progress towards the H5 board.
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PhilC
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Re: H5 assembly drama

Post by PhilC »

Part assembled for me would be fine as I can do the rest quite happily.

And as Steve said the gold was problematic.
If it ain't broke, test it to Destruction.
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Re: H5 assembly drama

Post by sporniket »

As for me, at the time when I discovered the H5 project (last summer), I was pondering whether going with retro hardware or with mister fpga. The price tag of the H5 motherboard was one of the deal maker compared to the other side (I counted the base board + the required RAM extension, thus around 4 times the price of the H5). And I kind of wanted to do something like that, involving some soldering.

Sure, I will have spend more when I will get a running system, but it will be little by little, so it's easier to do for me -I mean, I can get a quick satisfaction with a small order regularly, instead of painfully save some money for monthes before making a big order-.

And as a side note, it also spurred a growing list of ambitious hardware and HDL projects ( :D ) so it's for the greater good.
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Re: H5 assembly drama

Post by exxos »

What I'm plotting now is to add a small FPGA onboard to run the suska blitter core.. While blitters are expensive and hard to find, adding a £10 chip to get a blitter would help offset the higher assembly cost...but, I think we could add the glue in there as well and get tos206 decoding for free as well. I'm not looking at the MMU core, as if I do anymore bodging,it would really involve a huge PCB rework, which we are not ready to do yet.

Also, I do have a lot of SMT MMUs which could be fitted.. But everyone really needs to be in agreement for that to be done..I think as we are looking at FPGA cores, it would be better to use the SMT MMUs as they are all the same batch.. Its possible some older MMUs may not work as well as others, so if everyone starts with the same MMU, I think it would save work in the long run.
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TheNameOfTheGame
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Re: H5 assembly drama

Post by TheNameOfTheGame »

exxos wrote: Wed Mar 10, 2021 5:22 pm What I'm plotting now is to add a small FPGA onboard to run the suska blitter core.. While blitters are expensive and hard to find, adding a £10 chip to get a blitter would help offset the higher assembly cost...but, I think we could add the glue in there as well and get tos206 decoding for free as well. I'm not looking at the MMU core, as if I do anymore bodging,it would really involve a huge PCB rework, which we are not ready to do yet.

Also, I do have a lot of SMT MMUs which could be fitted.. But everyone really needs to be in agreement for that to be done..I think as we are looking at FPGA cores, it would be better to use the SMT MMUs as they are all the same batch.. Its possible some older MMUs may not work as well as others, so if everyone starts with the same MMU, I think it would save work in the long run.
Something to consider is that it looks like the suska blitter implementation might not be 100%.

https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.p ... 45#p413945
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Re: H5 assembly drama

Post by exxos »

TheNameOfTheGame wrote: Wed Mar 10, 2021 7:26 pm Something to consider is that it looks like the suska blitter implementation might not be 100%.
We already know.. there's a huge thread on it.. but as far as cores go, it's the best one currently until we get it cycle accurate. Overall it works very well.

https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/forum/viewt ... 320#p52684
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Re: H5 assembly drama

Post by sporniket »

Now that you talk about the blitter recreation, having PLCCs MMU, GLUE and BLITTER allowed to replace easily the original chips with fpga recreation, but working on the three together required something like "the three amigos" by @Icky.

I would like something more simple like a dual row of header (2.54 mm or 2 mm for the pitch) that would allow a more simple design of such card (I'm aware that it would be likely to cause routing nightmares and all, and anyway I'm already full and happy with my current H5)

Now that I'm thinking about that, there could be 2 variants:
  • the Tinker edition : the motherboard with "birdseed" that you would get from the manufacturer, nothing more. Like the H5. The buyer could get it as soon as you received the boards and dispatch them.
  • the Almost done edition : the motherboard with anything that you feel ready to pre-install (blitter fpga, smt mmu, etc...) for those that would like to minimize the work. The buyer pays for the supplemental work, and has to wait.
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Re: H5 assembly drama

Post by exxos »

There can't be 2 variations.. I need 30-50 orders to get one "Type" done, if your talking more variations, it would need a additional 30-50 people.. As we are struggling to get to even 30..

People would have to fit the MMU one way or another, so I dont see it being a problem.. the FPGA can just be blank and ignored if people want to just use the original chipset anyway.
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Re: H5 assembly drama

Post by exxos »

The current plan is to try and equal the H5 build, but get the DAC and other SMT soldered on as well.

I'm doing some changes to the 3.3v area and want to add a buffer to add a FPGA on board to push things forward in fixing all the problems with the GLUE and add the blitter core. This doesn't mean original chips can't be used.

Some people may not like the idea, or the higher costs. But in terms of keeping what remaining sanity I have left, this will just have to be the next board. I will post costs and get @Icky to do a render in a few weeks time. Then I will start a new buyers interests thread and just let the people decide if this board gets done or not.
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Re: H5 assembly drama

Post by alienkidmj12 »

wow, been a while since i checked progress, but its sounds like its going somewhere positive, im available to grab a board when it comes :)
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Re: H5 assembly drama

Post by exxos »

Around in circles we go. JLC have 166 the otherwise out of stock buffer chips, aside from the other part which I have not checked, this could potentially mean a batch of 20 H5 rev C1 boards could be produced.. BUT.. As said right from the start, quantities under 30 the price really starts to ramp up.

There was about 20 people interested in obtaining one previously, I do still have that list, but obviously those people Were from some months ago now and the price could go up £20 per board.

If there are still some interested parties, I may just get them done and put them in my store. I know there is talk about the future H6. Though realistically, this will not happen this year, we have not even started routing it yet or really finalised what we want to have on there yet.. For syntax onto these boards could be double the price because of having to change assembly companies etc.

So while it is annoying for the price bump, is the best deal I can currently come up with for the H5 C1 boards.
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