exxos blog - random goings on

[exxos]

I was thinking about the fast RAM board again... This was going to be a part of the SEC booster (and probably still will be, but it is basically on hold that project for the moment).. But adding SRAM to a expansion board for the next remake motherboard would be relatively simple.. Things like the IDE board have a large PLD which could easily take care of the fast ram decoding with only a small number of jumper wires to the board..

So I have stripped back the SEC design (Most of the RAM was already rooted anyway) which basically leaves me with this...

fr.jpg

So if I can get it squashed into a DIP68000 type layout, then this could be a easy plug-in expansion board for the next remake motherboard..

With the likelihood of 16MHz being possible on the next motherboard, we could easily have 8MB of 16MHz Fast-RAM.

Of course when the FPGA MMU is created and working, we would actually render the fast ram stuff totally obsolete anyway. Where we would just basically have 14MB of ST-RAM running at 50MHz for example.


EDIT:

Only just fits...

3.jpg

[PhilC]

That does look good actually but wont there be a clearance issue? Could just rotate the chips 90 degrees I guess?

[exxos]

That does look good actually but wont there be a clearance issue? Could just rotate the chips 90 degrees I guess?

It does fit, but I already wired them up like that, my sanity can't cope with routing those chips again :)

[PhilC]

That does look good actually but wont there be a clearance issue? Could just rotate the chips 90 degrees I guess?

It does fit, but I already wired them up like that, my sanity can't cope with routing those chips again :)

LOL ok, I'll shut up then. P.s. sign me up if you need a Guinea pig for it. Be interesting to see if it works with this Pak.

[exxos]

LOL ok, I'll shut up then. P.s. sign me up if you need a Guinea pig for it. Be interesting to see if it works with this Pak.

Its not a stand alone fast-ram board.. it needs external decoding like I said earlier....

[PhilC]

Oh yeah, missed that bit :shock:

[exxos]

Basically done... I gotta add in a SRAM enable port next....

VCC & GND are flood filled on top and bottom layer (not shown )

4.jpg

[exxos]

Been doing a little bit of tidying up on the schematic and board, I have also added in a total of 4 DIP 68000 sockets which will be basically the expansion sockets..

For example the SEC booster, fast-ram board, IDE can use 3 sockets easily.

h2.jpg

[exxos]

Added the OE header to the fast-ram board :)

1.jpg

Good solid gnd layer as well :)

2.jpg

[Icky]

Nice!