SuperCPU for the Vic-20

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Kakemoms
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Re: SuperCPU for the Vic-20

Post by Kakemoms »

The solder paste arrived yesterday and the first testcard was mounted and soldered with paste (using a stencil). The reflow temperature was a little uneven as I used a hotplate (the only thing at hand at the moment), so the reflow was only complete in the middle. For the next cards I am going to use an oven to prevent that.

I will go over with a hotgun once I get home again (on travel now) to get the few remaining spots fixed up, plus solder the connectors. Apart from that it looks quite ok:
IMG_5699.JPG
Oh, and Mouser managed to send me the wrong component for the ESD protection, so I will not mount those until they send new ones.
Kakemoms
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Re: SuperCPU for the Vic-20

Post by Kakemoms »

After soldering and reflowing the first test card with some hot air, I have been working with the FTDI 2232 chip to program the MachXO3 with that. For some reason it's eprom refuses to respond even if flashrom.exe detects the 2232 via the USB connection. I will continue to work on that, but its not strickly needed since we can use the 232 as an alternative USB interface via third party software (the 2232 is more for convenience).

Anyway, I can program the MachXO3 via the JTAG interface and its working. I haven't done much testing outside of that since all the Verilog code has already been made. Next thing will be to plug it into a Vic-20 to see that the transceivers are ok. I will also test the 1MByte SRAM memory interface before it ships.

As for the new MachXO3-9400 I have gotten a confirmation from the supplier that they will deliver, but that the lead time is 10-12 weeks (up from 8-10 weeks) due to high demand.
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plbyrd
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Re: SuperCPU for the Vic-20

Post by plbyrd »

I have the perfect project for this...

http://i1305.photobucket.com/albums/s54 ... h2jv9v.png

And no, that is not a hoax.
Kakemoms
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Re: SuperCPU for the Vic-20

Post by Kakemoms »

plbyrd wrote:I have the perfect project for this...

http://i1305.photobucket.com/albums/s54 ... h2jv9v.png

And no, that is not a hoax.
If you need to post images to Denial, please add them as a file to ensure that other people can see it (the image you posted is unavailable at the moment). It would also be nice to get an explanation of what this project is supposedly about and how you want to use a SuperCPU expansion to accelerate it?
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plbyrd
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Re: SuperCPU for the Vic-20

Post by plbyrd »

Kakemoms wrote: If you need to post images to Denial, please add them as a file to ensure that other people can see it (the image you posted is unavailable at the moment). It would also be nice to get an explanation of what this project is supposedly about and how you want to use a SuperCPU expansion to accelerate it?
Fair enough! I didn't know you could upload and reference images here, I'll have to figure that out. I've started another thread about the project, that will have more details as I go, but here's a synopsis:

Robo-VIC will be one of three GUIs for the VIC20, C64 and C128. They will utilize the existing kernal for normal I/O stuff, but the basic editor and language are completely unnecessary and will be turned off/ignored as may be the case. The GUI is being prototyped in C, but will eventually be ported to CA65 assembler as time permits. What the SuperVixen does for me is RAM (especially that 1MB which would enable some heavy duty buffering of data), and of course a faster CPU never hurts a GUI.

I know it's probably too late to ask for features, but a PS/2 mouse port would rule the world with some logic to simply map it as some of the registers being created for the second CPU.
norm8332
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Re: SuperCPU for the Vic-20

Post by norm8332 »

This is a very cool project and I'm following it intently. I noticed the pictures of the boards you posted and I was wondering where you had them made and what you think of the quality. I can't tell by the pictures really, but is the silk screen clear? How about the solder mask, is it all good?
“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination... whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”

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Kakemoms
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Re: SuperCPU for the Vic-20

Post by Kakemoms »

norm8332 wrote:This is a very cool project and I'm following it intently. I noticed the pictures of the boards you posted and I was wondering where you had them made and what you think of the quality. I can't tell by the pictures really, but is the silk screen clear? How about the solder mask, is it all good?
Without high volume its basically a quest to find a manufacturer that deliver good enough specs for a 0.8mm pitch BGA-256 with enough layers to enable proper routing. Most EU and US based companies will charge upwards from 150USD per PCB for 10pcs, so I had to go to Asia to find one that would add it to a larger production. The PCB's seems to be fine without shorts or poor solder mask, even if wire-wire and wire-pad spacing is down to 5-6mil some places. Thus the quality seems to be within requirements.
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plbyrd
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Re: SuperCPU for the Vic-20

Post by plbyrd »

Kakemoms wrote: Without high volume its basically a quest to find a manufacturer that deliver good enough specs for a 0.8mm pitch BGA-256 with enough layers to enable proper routing. Most EU and US based companies will charge upwards from 150USD per PCB for 10pcs, so I had to go to Asia to find one that would add it to a larger production. The PCB's seems to be fine without shorts or poor solder mask, even if wire-wire and wire-pad spacing is down to 5-6mil some places. Thus the quality seems to be within requirements.
That's great that you've found a supplier for the boards. This has probably already been asked, but when do you think you might do a second run of boards if this first run is all spoken for?
Kakemoms
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Re: SuperCPU for the Vic-20

Post by Kakemoms »

As long as there is demand I will make more runs, but before that, VGA, SDCard and memory interface needs to be finalized.

As for other addons, there is a 25-pin expansion interface that can be utilized. Once all other things are done I will probably offer some addon for that.
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plbyrd
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Re: SuperCPU for the Vic-20

Post by plbyrd »

So the DB25 will basically be a breakout? It would be nice to have another joystick port, at least one USB host port, and the aforementioned PS/2 port. A breakout box to this would be perfect.

BTW, will you be sourcing and selling cases for this? I think that'd be worth some extra $$$ to me so I don't mess it up.
Kakemoms
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Re: SuperCPU for the Vic-20

Post by Kakemoms »

plbyrd wrote:So the DB25 will basically be a breakout? It would be nice to have another joystick port, at least one USB host port, and the aforementioned PS/2 port. A breakout box to this would be perfect.

BTW, will you be sourcing and selling cases for this? I think that'd be worth some extra $$$ to me so I don't mess it up.
The units include a lasercut white acrylic case that is made in cooperation with the local hackerspace.
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plbyrd
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Re: SuperCPU for the Vic-20

Post by plbyrd »

Kakemoms wrote:
plbyrd wrote:So the DB25 will basically be a breakout? It would be nice to have another joystick port, at least one USB host port, and the aforementioned PS/2 port. A breakout box to this would be perfect.

BTW, will you be sourcing and selling cases for this? I think that'd be worth some extra $$$ to me so I don't mess it up.
The units include a lasercut white acrylic case that is made in cooperation with the local hackerspace.
Final question (I hope). Is it compatible with the Ultimem? Will it be able to use Ultimem 8M images?
Kakemoms
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Re: SuperCPU for the Vic-20

Post by Kakemoms »

It will be compatible with original Commodore memory expansions. Any specialized expansion may or may not run, depending on compatiblity of that expansion with original hardware.

It will be possible to switch off some or all of the memory, if you want to run your old expansion.
Kakemoms
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Re: SuperCPU for the Vic-20

Post by Kakemoms »

Short update:

I was asked by Lattice to run an updated simulation of the software on the new MachXO3L-9400 to see if there were any thermal issues. Apparently the 9400 is so big they are starting to call it a small FPGA instead of a CPLD, and Lattice has determined that they need to run thermal analysis on these to prevent problems.

In the current configuration with a 133MHz base clock and 30MHz cpu & memory clock it runs fine up to 56C room temperature.

Once the rest of the glue logic is included this might change. I will therefore ship a heat sink with all the units to prevent any issues in the future.
Kakemoms
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Re: SuperCPU for the Vic-20

Post by Kakemoms »

I finally got around to test a card in the Vic-20 and it had some problems. I managed to debug these in a few evenings and it now looks to be stable in my PAL Vic-20. I have another Vic-20 which has slight problems in that it reads the memory of the SuperVixen with a faulty D5 line. It may be due to some internal problems, but I will continue to get to the bottom of that to ensure that bus stability is not causing problems (since most Vic-20's out there are fairly old, some may have that). I also have a NTSC machine I will test it in.
IMG_5877.JPG
Currently there is only 24KB expansion memory for the Vic-20 since I am using a MachXO3L-6900C for the test card and I need to make more code for the CPLD to access the external SRAM. As can be seen in the attached image, tokra's crosstalk.prg triggers only on the BLK1<->BLK5 at the moment which is intended (it wraps around to BLK1).
IMG_5878.JPG
Detail of the MachXO3L-6900C.
IMG_5874.JPG
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