Tom Sylla wrote:
rsmith and I had been discussing that the past couple of weeks. I plan to just make one, and see how much it costs. The PLCC plug-in doohickey is always the problem, the cheapest I can find is 30USD (qty one, small discounts for more). My plan is minimum 8Mb, using a CPLD
After some digging I found a much cheaper source. Segor electronics ( http://www.segor.de/ ) sells single PLCC32 plug-ins for 14.00 Euro (including 16% german sales tax). Quantities above 10 cost 11.20 Euro per part. If you're ordering from the US, you can get a tax refund (or maybe the tax won't even be applied in the first place). http://www.segor.de/bilder/000066d5.jpg has an image. Ordering information (where to find it in their catalogue): Hauptgruppe: Steckverbinder/Fassungen Obergruppe: Converter und Programmieradapter Warengruppe: PLCC-Stecker Artikelbezeichnung: PLCC32-Steck
The big hazard to this is that SPI is going to take off as the boot source soon (it is in most modern southbridges already). Talking SPI is not a problem, but the ROMs are all going to be soldered down, so running in emulator mode takes on a whole new level of pain. This project is doomed to quick obselence.
Wait a second. You mean socketed flash chips won't be present on future mainboards? Are there no socketed SPI chips or will the ROM storage itself be integrated into the south bridge?
When done, I would open the design fully, so anyone could build one, or modify it to their heart's content.
Please reply to me how many of these things you would buy for $50. $75?
Given that I'm a university student with limited budget, I'd appreciate a target price of $30-40. Of course this may be totally infeasible depending on how expensive the parts are.
Regards, Carl-Daniel