Hi Milesunder,
All ICs (WIth the exception of the MC68030) were bought from Digikey this time as I'd previously built a couple of TF530s trying to economise on the component expenditure and it didn't end well! - They had various issues which I couldn't easily pinpoint and are still sitting on the shelf waiting for me to take another look at them.
I think I've also slipped up with the 534 as well, as the passives, specifically the caps I've currently got on there are mostly ones that I had left over from another less complex project and I suspect they aren't up to the task. I'm currently experiencing stability issues and consistent crashes despite having checked and re-flowed the soldering on the CPLDs and RAM a few times. I wasn't trying to be tight with the caps but just didn't think that the ones I had would cause an issue. I plan to re-order some decent quality passives and replace what I have on the board at the moment.
In short I'd suggest getting all your components from a quality source as repeatedly advised by TF and the other heavy hitters on the forum to give yourself the best possible chance of avoiding headaches. I'd also say a USB microscope is essential for this one. The XC95144 especially is a tricky customer but is actually pleasant, in a zen-like way, while working under the scope.
The scope I'm using is a 25x - 200x usb scope that I've placed on an adjustable overhead mount. It was super cheap but the picture quality and resolution are more than suitable for this work. If you're buying one of these cheap usb scopes go for a low magnification range ~25x - 100x. Higher magnification than this is overkill as I don't really need to see the electrons moving
Also, if you plan to put an FPU socket onto this board don't do it until you're 100% happy that your XC95144 has been soldered correctly. Once the FPU socket is on it makes one side of that CPLD practically inaccessible from a comfortable angle.
Also, possibly more controversially, I use standard square header pins/sockets between the 534 board and the CPU re-locator. The gold, round pins are necessary between the re-locator and the 68000 socket i.e. the re-locator underside, but they are extremely fragile and very prone to snapping when repeatedly plugged in and out or indeed if there's a draft in your room or you sneeze near the board
The square pins are a lot more robust, I appreciate that these accelerators aren't supposed to be thrown around but those round pin connectors are just too fragile for my liking, unfortunately I'm stuck with them on the underside of the re-locator.
Any more pearls of wisdom I gain, I'll let you know.
Cheers.
