What type of boards will be available?
dr hydra
Posts: 212
I just was watching the video from the conference...the prop II looks awesome...
I have a quick question...Chip was showing a 32 mb board...Will that board be made available to the public when the prop II is release? The reason I am asking is because when Chip was talking..some questions were asked and Ken started talking (but the audio was poor) and Ken said something about 3rd party boards only?
I have a quick question...Chip was showing a 32 mb board...Will that board be made available to the public when the prop II is release? The reason I am asking is because when Chip was talking..some questions were asked and Ken started talking (but the audio was poor) and Ken said something about 3rd party boards only?
Comments
We'll make a little module with the Prop2, Flash, crystal, 1.8V regulator, and SDRAM. And a few boards to plug the modules into. We don't want to make many boards, though.
Originally, I heard about a small module with either 2 rows of holes or two rows of solder tabs so you could solder the module directly to a PCB.
That sounded pretty good to me.
Yesterday, we saw the plan is to use a PCI-Express-4X connector and the module would be a card that plugs into it.
Somebody in the audience complained about this because it would stick up from your board about an inch or so.
I was kinda groaning internally too.
But, then Ken said that they might not be doing some kind of P2 Quickstart or other board at all and let 3rd parties do that.
This would obviously be good for me, because I can then sell P2 boards.
On the other hand, the P2 package is the same as that of the SSD1963 chip that I use in my DVI and VGA Graphics modules for P1.
While I can handle this package, it is really at the limit of what I can do and it's a real pain for me since about 50% of produced boards need rework on this chip.
This is because the pins are very close together and my setup is very basic.
So, I was really hoping for a module that could be directly soldered to a board, to save me a lot of trouble...
The PCI connector is cheap, but according to Jeff only available as a straight up plugin like on PC compatible motherboards. A dual header row header at the card edge would allow mounting the board flat against a mother-board.
Using the PCI connector immediately conjures up vision of a slotted ATX chassis for the propeller computer fans. One or more P2 boards could go into such a chassis having some ID pins. Implementing a PCI specification doubtful but not beyond experimenting.
On the other hand, having dual-row headers for horizontal mounting allows for low-profile box designs like the Mac-Mini or smaller. I could revive the MicroPropPC for example which would even have room for two P2 boards and the peripheral connectors.
http://lwn.net/images/pdf/LDD3/ch12.pdf
@Rayman, I don't think we talked yesterday. Sorry I missed you!
Got up this morning to think about that vertical arrangement... One thought was it's now the time for creative laser cut acrylic casing. Time to fire up the CAD systems and figure out a simple assembly that can secure these things. Doing that is really cheap. To me, it makes a lot of sense over bare boards, particularly those with mechanical stress potentials built in. Let's get cracking!
Another thought was, "it's kind of like a PC" but the difference being the CPU is in the "card" instead of on the main board... Well, one CPU could be on a main board, controlling others to do things, but that's not really where my mind is at. What I like is that a board with lots of I/O options can be produced with just that little connector for the CPU. We've got a lot of options now. Multiple displays, keyboard, mouse, audio, SD card, and who knows what else. Seems to me people can explore that with various boards, packaging, etc... and having the common connector might make for products instead of boards and this could be a really good thing. That's my .02 right out of the gate.
You know, I kind of want one with a lot of RCA jacks for doing analog things with the DACS. We've not really gone there yet, but audio is going to be as much fun as graphics is....
Any chance of posting the pin out of the connector?
And the schematic?
We can have conenctor boards that just pull buckets of I/O pins out to RCA jacks, digital I/O boards that pull pins out to 3 pin (pwr/gnd/sig) headers, all kinds of fun stuff to experiment with and build on.
As I understood it: Ken mentioned that he didn't want to make P2 boards much beyond Chip's board (and likely whatever else Chip deems appropriate). Ken wants the community to make boards. IIRC a board with nothing but power, crystal, USB, and headers has been designed by Saphiea already. I know there are other boards itching for that first chip.
Ari and Andrew should be considered for builds. Talk to them about any designs you want to outsource.
Ari and Andrew gave presentations about turnkey and consignment options for making boards off-shore and in the USA. I have a small SD Card SPI Flash design with Tubular that I want to fund; I have talked with both Ari and Andrew about it and need to talk with Tubular about a final design. This is a case where Parallax is interested in a product, but they don't want to make it themselves because of overhead costs. Once I get 500 to 1000 made, Parallax and others would be interested in reselling it.
Let's face it, almost all of us need/want the SDRAM, and with 47 I/O left, we have plenty to play with.
If Parallax will commit to keeping that connector as their main connector (for their boards/modules with SDRAM) I think a lot of us (3rd party board makers) will adopt it for a lot of our designs.
I agree...it could work well with both the consumer and 3rd party board markers
Ideally, I'd like to make a handheld unit with the whole thing being about an inch thick or less.
This module would make that very difficult...
Also, I'd like to have a Propeller Platform compatible P2 board. But something stucking up 1 inch from the board
makes it hard to plug in "shields" to it...
PCI-e 4x has 64 pins. I can think of several (to me reasonable) alternatives:
32x2 2.00 mm headers
32x2 1.27 mm (0.05") headers
mini pci-e only has 52 pins
http://www.samtec.com/documents/webfiles/pdf/pcie.pdf
The nice thing about the vertical and right angle versions is they break out to 4 rows x 2.0mm pitch, which makes them easy to design mating boards for, solder etc.
I think its a good, bold decision to go with these, and Jeff or whoever made that call is to be commended
Also... while we're all focused on USB dongles (for Wifi, bluetooth etc) the mass market is also driving the price down on PCIe GSM, Wifi, GPS modules that will have a similar outline size to the P2 module.
I'd also love to see a pinout diagram for that board - hopefully the power pin positions can be preserved in case of accidental connection, at least for the +3/+5 and +12 rails, not so important for the GNDs of which there are very many
I am big on leveraging off mass-market PC parts and add-ons :-)
The 2.00mm dual row ones would be easy to solder!
Worst case scenario: we may have to get together to do a bulk buy, or Parallax can stock the right angle connectors and sell them.
Ray, Newark have a good amount of stock of the 3 variants.
Pricing is all over the place but as Chip mentioned they come right down from the right sources. As for other options
http://www.findchips.com/avail?part=pcie-064-02-f-d
Finally Samtec have a good samples program with fast shipping. I've ordered a couple of samples in each style.
Anyway I'll follow up and see what can be organized with respect to a group buy of those.
Lawson
P.S. I also wouldn't mind a module that used a right angle PCI-E 8x or 16x connector without the SDRAM that brought all the IO pins out. This would be good for all the people that have a use for 96 analog IO pins but don't want to try surface mount assembly yet. (and don't forget the mounting holes!)
Seconded.
The Samtech link (by tubular) shows connectors that take gold finger pcb edge connectors spaced 1mm. So not male and female connector pairs??? Am I missing something?
Presuming I have it correct, so why then doesnt the Parallax pcb just use gold fingers?? Then we just make a pcb with the socket(s) to match.
I must say I would prefer that there be provision for pin headers. Even 2mm would be fine - we can organise a group buy for them if it going to be a standard.
My understanding is that Parallax module does use just the gold fingers, which is great because it will keep the cost down where it matters.
Depending on the thickness of that pcb it may also be possible to use other styles of connectors that have a 1mm pitch, or if they dual footprinted behind the gold fingers perhaps even a 0.5mm pitch fpc connector, that would enable flat solutions like Rayman was seeking at the expense of a few mm of pcb length
Has anyone found the "cheap" ~27c connectors Chip/etc referred to ? everything I find is >$1 in 1K qties.
It seems like the cheaper ones are all vertical:
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/10018783-10201TLF/609-1978-ND/1002293
Andy