[SqNOS] boards (was: driver framework)

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr]

Luciano,

> I looked at the SiliconSqueak web site, it is awesome.

Thanks! I consider the current pages to be mostly place holders for the
pages with more detailed text to be written later.

> Is the Plurion board available? How do you develop for this?

The boards have not been designed yet. In the past I have designed and
built several boards and so consider this to be the most risk-free part
of the project and also a step which takes up just a few days. The focus
is on simulating the design within Squeak and implementing it in FPGAs
using the two development boards I have (both with Xilinx chips - the
ML401 with a Virtex 4 and the Xess SA100 with a Spartan 2). I might also
use some Altera based boards (like the DE2) from the university. I don't
expect that using one kind of FPGA for initial development and switching
to another (Lattice) for production will present any problems at all.

The next step will be to develop the boards for the Sketchpad low cost
toy. It will actually be a Squeak computer, but not selling it as such
will avoid expectations of full featured office applications or web
browser. Closer to the topic of this list, the more restricted hardware
will allow SqueakNOS as it is now to be a satisfactory solution.

The Plurion boards will follow after that and will make more demands on
SqueakNOS, as I mentioned in my previous email.

It is very hard to make low cost products without really high volumes
(and using custom chips instead of FPGAs), so the initial idea was to
start with the Plurion boards. But that was backwards in terms of the
software development required.

> I didnt find quotes for LatticeECP2 development boards.

A PCI Express development kit is about $900:

http://www.latticesemi.com/store/dev_kits.cfm

I don't know what the other options cost:

> http://www.latticesemi.com/products/developmenthardware/lowcostfpga/index.cfm?source=topnav

Though the Xess kit I mentioned is very nice, it really didn't save me
any time compared to my own board. So this time around the plan is to go
straight to Plurion boards instead of getting one of these kits.

-- Jecel