exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

So playing around with possible layouts , its far from fun :roll:

Pretty much everything is going to have to go "external" to the blitter header pins, as the routing "inside" the header pins will be hard going with such small gaps.

I guess as its a test board, its not going to matter much how it looks anyway. It would be nice to squash it down enough to fit in a normal STFM, as that will be where its tested.. and as blitters are hard to find now...

Ultimately the core needs testing out fully by a few people, it helps the STF project and helps Wolfgang with more testing on his code cores...

I'm willing to bet you've already thought of these two suggestions but:

How about putting the chips on either side of a multi layer board?
or stacking one pub on top of another, sandwich style if you get my meaning?

Forgottenmyname wrote: 07 Sep 2018 16:34 How about putting the chips on either side of a multi layer board?

It is something I am considering, I was mostly trying to get all the SMT on one side, its assembling double sided boards its pretty tricky :-\

Forgottenmyname wrote: 07 Sep 2018 16:34 or stacking one pub on top of another, sandwich style if you get my meaning?

I know what you mean yes, what puts me off is it would need more header pins, ideally smaller pins which already shown on the image, but these are the tiny to solder by hand.. I could use larger pins, but is making the whole thing larger again..

In terms of size, probably the double sided board would probably be best option overall I think... That's assuming it is physically possible to route it.. I guess worst-case is a four layer board...

I think it does makes sense though...

Going to be interesting to route that, with all those narrow pins in close proximity. Might have a better chance with the small chips rotated 90 degrees. I take it the smaller chips aren't available as DIPs? would take more room but more room for routing and the possibility of putting sockets over header pins etc.

Once I finished doing some naming on the pins, I'm going to try routing it.., at first glance I think be possible on two layers I don't know until I try...

Looks like it will route...

Buffers on top layer, PLD on bottom, it should route direct from buffers to PLD without to much messing about...

exxos wrote: 07 Sep 2018 16:26Ultimately the core needs testing out fully by a few people, it helps the STF project and helps Wolfgang with more testing on his code cores...

you can count on me...
how much for such a fpga blitter?

Cyprian wrote: 07 Sep 2018 19:47 how much for such a fpga blitter?

Not sure yet.. The blitters I was selling before were a silly £28 due to high costs in obtaining the things, I don't expect the cost to be more than that.. but could be close.

With such a coded core.. it is of course possible to add functions.. not sure what, that's up to the coders to think up what might be possible/useful..

OCD issues...

Is it me or the vodka....

.. and why do I want to put a smiley face in the middle...