exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

terriblefire wrote: 08 Aug 2021 10:50 Performance numbers for the TF1230.... Not yet got the burst mode sorted ..

Capture.JPG

So the TF1230 can be preassembled... has 8 user soldered components needed and the bom add up is about £40 minus CPU.

Not bad for a "not well made card"

What board you use for tests ?
Normal amiga or Chucky Reamiga?

Both. Both work for me

ok, got it.

centuriontech wrote: 10 Aug 2021 20:56 ok, got it.

Apologies for being quite so grumpy. I didnt get any sleep last night... insomnia.

These cards will highly likely pop up on centuriontech :?

They will not, unless I know they can. Thats why I have asked for a licence.

No there will be no GPL of this card. Its open source but its not free to modify and distribute.

Its modification for personal use only. Commercial sales are fine. Copyright must be maintained.

The license is Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

This is the license i want to use going forward.

However if someone does make a modification for their own use and demonstrates to me with evidence that their version is better I will update, integrate and give credit. I just do not want proliferation of multiple crappy versions of the same card that people expect support with. I'm one guy with 4 unreleased card so i need to reduce my workload not increase it.

I also think that going to bigger pads is a step backwards. JLCPCB will assemble the caps on that board for >$5 including parts.... so why mess about with a different version and hand soldering. JLC can also do 4-4-4 DRC.... TF1230 is 6-7-6... Its 4 layer so signal purity is fine... its also a proven DRC with the TF1260, TF330, TF536 etc... all of them are the same.

Also, as someone who has etched a lot of pcbs in the past... the trickiest bit is when you have thin traces with big gaps. not dense traces with small gaps. So making it a 9.5 track separation doesnt necessarily help. You get undercut.

One more thing...

I really feel like the limitations and fetishes of hobby soldering is holding the community back. Embrace the technology that we can leverage to make the cost of delivery of products cheaper. We should only be soldering things that the board house cannot supply. If there was a BGA CPLD that they could solder for me I would choose that part.

A PC can be done on 4-4-4 technology with >100Mhz signals on it.. The TF1230 is only 50Mhz in a few places... it doesnt need perfecting.

Ultimately this is about getting cheap cards to people so they can enjoy their Amiga.

terriblefire wrote: 11 Aug 2021 09:09 I really feel like the limitations and fetishes of hobby soldering is holding the community back.

If it helps I can get a quote for full assembly by the guy who did the last batch of H5 boards. They can solder BGA.. but not put that to the test yet.

It is nice to be able build TF cards, but it is just extra feature for people who just like to build stuff.
Still with BGA and 0402 it would be possible, but microscope and a little bit more gear would be needed.