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From: Brian Drummond on 18 Oct 2009 06:45
On Sat, 17 Oct 2009 22:33:54 -0700, "nwreader" <noone(a)home.com> wrote:

>The trenz boards only offers 55 IO pins for the large FPGA if I read it
>right. And they're German so shipping might be rather
>expensive to US. The Digilent board has the same 100 pin IO limit as the
>original S3E boards, which I
>have 3 of. I don't know if the 1600 S3E board has the same huge signal
>stubs on the FX2 connector as the
>original S3E starter board but those stubs make higher speeds difficult.
>
>What I would like is at least 200 IO signals that can run at over 150Mhz, so
>fairly decent & direct signalling. I don't really
>want all of the extras, I'll put those on the daughter cards. Also at least
>5A power supply.
>
>Any other possibilities ?


Enterpoint may have something approaching your needs.
http://www.enterpoint.co.uk/boardproducts.html

A PC104 card with 115 I/O on 0.1" headers, plus the PC104 connector (I couldn't
determine if they are shared; ask Enterpoint.
http://www.enterpoint.co.uk/moelbryn/hollybush1.html

A PGA replacement with 219 I/O pins.
http://www.enterpoint.co.uk/moelbryn/darnaw1.html

- Brian
From: nwreader on 18 Oct 2009 14:11
1. It doesn't have to be 1 connector.
2. Doesn't the typical cheap DDR2 dimm module plug into a 240 pin connector
capable of > 150Mhz speed ?

"Antti" <antti.lukats(a)googlemail.com> wrote in message
news:bbc6176e-176e-48f1-b300-0387ca2b365e(a)j4g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...
On Oct 18, 8:33 am, "nwreader" <no...(a)home.com> wrote:
> The trenz boards only offers 55 IO pins for the large FPGA if I read it
> right. And they're German so shipping might be rather
> expensive to US. The Digilent board has the same 100 pin IO limit as the
> original S3E boards, which I
> have 3 of. I don't know if the 1600 S3E board has the same huge signal
> stubs on the FX2 connector as the
> original S3E starter board but those stubs make higher speeds difficult.
>
> What I would like is at least 200 IO signals that can run at over 150Mhz,
> so
> fairly decent & direct signalling. I don't really
> want all of the extras, I'll put those on the daughter cards. Also at
> least
> 5A power supply.

if you want a module with 200 high speed IOs this means the module
shoud have connectors with total amount of pins about 400 (for power
and gnd)

that kind of connectors exist, but i bet you have hard time find such
a module
for low price

Antti



From: james on 18 Oct 2009 19:18
On Sat, 17 Oct 2009 09:40:49 +0000 (UTC), glen herrmannsfeldt
<gah(a)ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

|Antti <antti.lukats(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
|> On Oct 17, 11:56?am, I wrote:
|>> nwreader <no...(a)home.com> wrote:
|>> > Is there any interest in a group buy & design of a Xilinx fpga board ?
|>> > I would like a fairly large Spartan FPGA + lots of
|>> > IO expansion + low cost $200 - $250 usd.
|
|>> > The exisiting FPGA boards on the market seems either too
|>> > expensive or small FPGA or too little expansion potential.
|
|>> One that I have wondered about for a while:
|
|>> Can the Digilent S3E board take a larger FPGA than the one
|>> it comes with? ?That wouldn't require a new board design, though
|>> it does require unsoldering and soldering.
|
|> what board you mean?
|> digilent s3e board was available with s3e-1600 what is the
|> largest s3e for a while i think they stopped selling it
|
|As far as I know, it comes only with the S3E-500.
|
|Otherwise, it would seem a fine board for the OP.
|
|-- glen
|===============

Digilent still has the S3E-1600 development board for $225 listed on
their webpage and available to ship. The Nexsys2 board comes with
either the XC3S500E or XC3S1200E for $40 dollars more than teh base
price of $129.

james
From: glen herrmannsfeldt on 18 Oct 2009 19:45
james <bubba(a)bud.u> wrote:
(big snip)

> Digilent still has the S3E-1600 development board for $225 listed on
> their webpage and available to ship. The Nexsys2 board comes with
> either the XC3S500E or XC3S1200E for $40 dollars more than teh base
> price of $129.

Yes, I just saw that last night. They didn't have that when I
bought my S3E with the -500 on it, but it looked like there were
sample designs to use with the -1600.

The -500 should be good enough for many designs, but I had some
ideas for bigger ones. One was to implement something like the
Sun Sparcstation1. Well, Sun has available the HDL code for
newer Sparc processors, probably too big for even the -1600.
I had asked someone at Sun about the older SPARC versions,
which might fit on the 1600. (Hopefully also including some
support circuitry.)

Or, if you have BGA soldering tools, then just replace one
with the other...

-- glen
From: John Adair on 19 Oct 2009 03:24
The Hollybush1 board mentioned by Brian has headers that are not
shared and have about 116 on the main header set from memory. The
PC104 interface can also be used if not running stand alone giving
another 50+ I/O. We have boards like Raggedstone1, MINICAN that have a
similar amounts.

Generally large pinout devices cost a lot more if you do want to make
your own board. Commercial manufacturers like oursleves are also
recovering design costs over what is normally a smallish market so I
would be surprised if you got this many I/O, with a high quality
connector, for such a low price.The chance may well be a board with
multiple DIMMs assuming they don't share I/Os between DIMMs.

The other aspect that I ddn't see mention of is that the larger
devices are not usually covered by the "free" versions of tools so you
may want to qualify how big a device you want.

John Adair
Home of Drigmorn3 - The Spartan-6 Starter Board.


On 17 Oct, 06:21, "nwreader" <no...(a)home.com> wrote:
> Is there any interest in a group buy & design of a Xilinx fpga board ?
> I would like a fairly large Spartan FPGA + lots of IO expansion + low cost
> $200 - $250 usd.
> The exisiting FPGA boards on the market seems either too expensive or small
> FPGA or too little
> expansion potential.
>
> The idea is to get a high capacity & low cost expandable board via a group
> buy to save on the
> PCB + assembly. Probably only for US participants.

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