Leon
Just a quick comment going back through
the messages.
In this country the military has almost
unlimited funding and lotsa free samples. The Wolfson rep and distributor when
he came and gave me the 20 Wolfson chips, showed me a box of connectors which
would make the din 41612 look like a “Sick Puppy”. Some of them
ranged into the low triple digits in cost, but they WERE beautiful! We are not
the military, so we gotta be thinking universal, cheap, and off the shelf. We
MUST have universal appeal, not universal cost and as little individual outlay
as possible. Also we are designing a prototyping system which becomes a product
NOT a $2000+ FPGA OR $200 dollar Xylo board which have no group appeal beyond ‘fooling
around’, wether commercial or hobbiest. We will survive as a group or not
survive at all, each with different and valuable qualifications and interests
as to where this can go. Otherwise your hard work with the “Leon<–>
Lion FPGA” part goes for naught, and becomes just another competitor on
the Xylo market. This group formed rapidly and was given impressive resources
like SVN, Web Page, Forum, Reflector in a matter of a week. NOT to forget Bill –
KD5TFD and Phil VK6APH who are not following the “enclosure” stuff carefully,
but dead bugging and proving that IT WILL WORK! Astounding! But why?
Because they saw something of universal appeal and design and contributed their
non-fpga expertise. To steal a line from Jim Lux about absolutes: “What
makes you think that the DIN41612 is the ONLY way to go?”
I got about 100+ of inexpensive L-brackets
which fit perfectly into a PC which I can drill and file out to accommodate a
typeB usb connector SMB etc. I’ll givem away. Coupled with a “Phil-Bill”
board the ‘front panel’ travels with the board to any slot.
No disrespect, but we can really do
something here as a group with brilliant talents, as a group effort and not a ‘one
off’.
Thanks
Eric
From:
xylo-sdr-bounces@lists.ae5k.us [mailto:xylo-sdr-bounces@lists.ae5k.us] On Behalf Of Leon Heller
Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2006
1:24 AM
To: Xylo-SDR
Discussion
Subject: Re: [Xylo-SDR] Teamspeak
FPGA discussion - Have we paintedourselves into a corner? Boxed ourselves in?
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, January
22, 2006 2:00 AM
Subject: Re: [Xylo-SDR]
Teamspeak FPGA discussion - Have we painted ourselves into a corner? Boxed
ourselves in?
Leon
will be pulling his hair out if we totally keep changing the card.
PCI cards are very expensive, you have to cut the board to have the edge
connector. No cheap deals with PCI.
It's also a real pain to design, being a funny shape with all those
contacts. There is also the metalwork for the brackets, they will probably
require special cutouts.
As someone has said, we won't get any cheap deals on
prototype boards. Then there are issues like quality control of the gold
plating.
The military have used Eurocard-based VME equipment for over
20 years, because of its reliablity and robustness. Indirect connectors like
DIN41612 are the only way to go. It's even possible to replace the connectors
if they get damaged.