Request for input for a new HYDRA expansion card

AndreL

The 512K SRAM card is done and shipping. But, the show must go on. I have 1000 ideas for new expansion cards, but anything I make can't just be cool, it has to be VERY useful. For example, it would be cool to put an IDE interface on there, but nearly useless.

So I am open to suggestions for the next expansion card for the HYDRA, think if something that YOU can use, and would really make YOU happy, don't try to anticipate others. Tell me your request and why you want it. In a month or so, I will collect all these ideas with my own and pick the one with the most hits and start working on it.

Some ideas I am toying with are:

·An SD card interface, just so people don't have to frankenstein one, not very high concept though.

·A propeller co-processor on the card, straight interface to the bus lines, could potentially be used as a BYTE wide device.

·An ethernet card with a PIC / Dallas semo or something else that has built in ethernet support, stack, memory etc. so all we have to do is talk to it.

·A mechanical interface card that is parallax appmod friendly, so you can plug as many app mods into the hydra as possible, might be able to kill n birds with one stone.

·A much larger experimenter card with solderless breadboard on it, maybe 3-4 times the footprint of the current card with solderless breadboard on it, power, lights, etc. you build stuff on it, then plug it into the expansion port. Limits to size since it will tend to hang in the air a bit as it gets large, but might be nice for experimenting.

I would say an FPGA card, but the 512K SRAM card has a baby FPGA on it with 64 logic blocks, so I think we will see how many people use that before we do another FPGA specific experiment card add on.

Andre'

JT Cook

For me #1 would be SD card, #2 ethernet controller. I don't think I would want anything else.

alinious

Ideally for me: 1) ethernet controller, 2) Propeller co-processor, 3) SD Card interface

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"I learn when I succeed, but I learn more when I fail."

Jasper_M

Well, Ethernet card would be number one, then the Prop card, then the SD card but only if it has something more than just an SD socket (as I'm definitely going to build an SD card myself. How about puitting a Prop on the Ethernet card as TCP/IP or Whatsoever/IP stack would be huge?

AndreL

The prop isn't a good choice for an ethernet controller, there are much better chips for that. Anyway, looks like a prop co-processor and the ethernet are bubbling to the top...

Andre'

Jasper_M

I meant that an ethernet processor AND prop on the board, so that the */IP stack could be on the card, no one wants to use all the 8 cogs on Hydra to just implement a basic network stack.

AndreL

The network stack is part of the ethernet controller, this way you basically send commands to it at a high level. And again you would never really use a propeller to control a low level ethernet interface, you would use something with a very large memory like an arm, avr, pic. But, there are many ethernet controllers that have the ethernet interface along with a risc processor on them, so from your perspective they are black boxes that take commands that are very high level.

Andre'

Jasper_M

Ah. ok.. I didn't know that controllers like that existed (except thoes XPorts etc. which cost a little bit too much for a product like that?)... But not getting to program an own network stack kinda ruins part of the fun : P (as I like writing library/system code...)

Baggers

I know I don't have a Hydra but I'd say...
Modify the 512KB card to also give support for an·SD card,
that way, people can store more than one thing on it,
have a boot loader on the eeprom which then loads any app from SD and have memory for a·bitmap display,
and eventually lead to some kind of SCUMM emulator, or an RPG type game.
and with keeping the SDRAM on same card as SD with having screen ram outside the props 32KB, would also help for larger program space.

just my 2p's worth.

PS, don't know off hand how many IO pins the hydra plug in port has access to, as if it's not more than 8, this would be a pain to handle, as the SRAM would need it's own 8 + 4 for SD

RedNifre

My wishlist:
1. Combi card: 512SRAM + SD slot
2. if thats not possible only SD slot
3. ethernet (not that important, thou)

Baggers

I was thinking, to save wasting your current 512KB card, and if the cards have access to more pins, would it be possible to make an SD card ( or is that an SD card card? [noparse]:)[/noparse] ) that the 512KB card could plug into it, thus saving people who have already paid for the SRAM card and also the rest of your stock.

Jim.

mahjongg

It's a pity the 512KSRAM card can't be combined with VGA output. Perhaps you could design an "adapter" inbetween the 512KSRAM card and the hydra that somehow uses a latch to latch the VGA data, so that VGA output could still be generated even when using the SRAM. However, how the latching signal could be generated without soldering wires to the hyra, I dont know.
The hydra allready has a buffer to "isolate" the VGA port, when the expansion port is used. It occured to me that you could replace this chip with a pin compatible latch, and control the latch with a unused I/O pin. Unfortunately you need good soldering skills to do this, so for most people its not a solution.

The SD slot interface is a good idea.

Perhaps an interface to a dual-shock PS2 controller would be usefull.

I don't see a real use for an ethernet interface.
For transferring files there is allready the serial port, which is adequate enough, and for LAN connected gaming I don't see anybody connecting two hydra's in this way, even when they wanted to.
Also, the current serial connection is good enough for connecting two hydra's.

John Abshier

Propeller co-processor

Lord Steve

Andre...baby...you know what to do:· 3D-coprocessor.

Baggers

Lord Steve isn't the fun in writing it yourself? if you want 3D do it on your pc, or buy a PSP or DS and movie player to make/play homebrew 3D games.
or wait for next prop chip, it sounds promising, if they say it'll wow us, and we know how good prop1 is, I'm sure prop 2 will be a scorcher.

Jasper_M

Well, the propeller co-processor would make a perfect 3D co-processor : P

Bob the Builder on a C64

I think that A co-processor is the thing to go with, or maybe an SD card slot? Well, although the Hydra is meant for the fun of developing simpler-games, I think that it would be great to develop complex games through practice and expirimentation once the Propellor 2 comes out.

Damien Allen

For me it's gotta be:

#1:·Some form of 3d assist hardware/accelerator utilising a FPGA as a GPU perhaps, it could be reprogrammable for different things also.

#2: Ethernet stack, always wanted to play with that and I use my hydra for ALL my development work, for industrial control it would be useful

#3: SD card, 100% everyone who owns a hydra will buy one. It could make the hydra the number one dev board instead of the demo/proto boards



Also why do you only have to do one?? because of the simplicity of an SD card interface why not produce more that one expansion card??



Just my 10 pence worth.



Damo

Forrest

I'd like the 512K SRAM card in a different form factor. Have all the data lines feeding into a 0.1 inch header, and the power, ground and other signals on a different header. This board could easily be plugged into Brian Riley's PRC board or a breadboard. It could also be used with the Propstick or Propstick USB.

Lewis

Would an SD interface be fast enough to stream video at an NTSC resolution? If so, then the SD interface would be nice, otherwise, the coprocessor would kickass.

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- Lewis [noparse][[/noparse]m80] -

JT Cook

I am still pulling for the SD card just because it would be practicle and there is already code for the prop to use it. Large storage is the only thing the Hydra is missing.

Another thing I would think would be completely awesome would be a speech synth chip·card to make your Hydra talk, but I don't know if enough other people would want it or if it would even be cost feasable.

Besides I don't know what would be more fun than making your Hydra sound as smart as Stephen Hawking?

·

Mike Green

The SD interface is nowhere near fast enough to stream video. It's fast enough (with a little effort) to stream audio. Keep in mind that an SD card is still flash memory and takes around 5ms to write a block from an internal buffer to the flash array. These blocks can be anything from 512 bytes up in size. Also, the interface is bit serial. It can be driven at speeds upwards of 10MBit/sec, but probably just in bursts. There's really very limited room for buffers and those make a lot of difference.

AndreL

Hmmm, I think the SD card is probably the most practical, so that and maybe another prop co-processor card, just to experiment with runn a duel processor app with multiple cores is fun. Ethernet is cool also, so people can get little webservers, sites, etc. on the hydra, so I think these 3 are at the top of the list so far...

Andre'

Baggers

JT Cook, your hydra can already sound like Stephen Hawking.

http://forums.parallax.com/forums/default.aspx?f=25&p=1&m=152683

You'll just need to change the port to 7 not 10. ( not sure if it's JUST one pin, if it doesn't work you might need to check if it goes to pin 10+11 which would make it go to 7+8)

Bob the Builder on a C64

Hey guys, why don't you add a 3D FX 2·chip to the·SD card along with an FPGA for 3D renderring assist and some video generation circuitry along with it? It'd make for a Retro 3D feel and maybe, we could make the chip compile spin programs into the·3D·FX chips programming!

·!!?

AndreL

That would break the point of the hydra. If I wanted to make a more powerful game console, Iwould just start with a more serious blackfin or TI processor, etc. at a reasonble clock of 400-1Ghz and it would have nothing to do with the propeller. The idea here is to use the propeller to do things, its pointless to put a 1000 HP engine on a go cart, it can't take advantage of it. So I am thinking of things to help get more out of the hydra and the propeller, but without cheating and putting somehting on there way better than the propeller chip in the first place.

Andre'

Dennis Ferron

What about a Vinculum card?

Otherwise, definitely the SD slot + Propeller coprocessor. You could attach the SD slot *through* the Propeller coprocessor, so that the file system code could run on the co-processor, and that way you would use fewer I/O lines on the Hydra.

Edit: BTW, for those of you who want 3-d, I'm working on a 3-d engine that will run on the Propeller. I'm proving the algorithms in C#, then I will code reference drivers in Spin, and finally the full speed drivers in assembly (using the reference drivers to check the output against). I just extended the Bresenhen line drawing algorithm to draw polygons instead of lines, and I'm working on a "one scanline at a time" TV driver for the engine that will render the screen directly from the list of polygon vertices (so doesn't use any memory to buffer whole screen, so you can use one byte per pixel color without needing much RAM). I can't guarantee how fast it will be on one Propeller, but a Propeller coprocessor could speed it up.

Post Edited (Dennis Ferron) : 6/2/2007 7:37:13 PM GMT

Bob the Builder on a C64

Andre, I was refferring to the old one that was used for starfox on the SNES. Dennis's idea seems to be better though...

JT Cook

Bob - that was an FX and FX two which I beleive were just math co processors. Either way they were not ever sold by themselves and the Prop runs at 80mhz compared to the SNES's 4mhz.

Andre - wouldn't a Prop co processor card get kind of expensive since you would also need the prop plug or clip as well?

AndreL

Well, you could program it via a USB2ser and I could drag a couple pins onto the programming pins from the interface, Chip posted some code to download to another prop, so you could do that. Of course, we could get creative and do this...you plug the card into the HYDRA, flip a switch on the CARD, then when you download code it programs the EEPROM on the CARD, flip the switch back, it programs the HYDRA's eeprom, so you can use the HYDRA to program it like you would anything, then when it run, they are seperate.

So that's an idea, the only problem is that you start to get bandwidth limited for computation, the only fun in doing remote procedure calls and processing is if you can get the data back fast enough to make it worth while, but I suppose we could make it work with the 2 control lines, 8 data lines and 1 clock strobe like the HX512.

Anyway, looks like we are settling into an SD card definitely and a prop accelerator / co-processor.

Andre'

potatohead

I'm up for the SD card.