[NCLUG] Homebrew Computer Club - Meeting and Project Notes for 9/1/02

John L. Bass jbass at dmsd.com
Mon Sep 2 02:21:03 MDT 2002


We had our second organizational meeting Sunday afternoon. We decided
to take on for our first group project building our own cheaper version
of the OggOnAChip project (http://oggonachip.sourceforge.net/). Using
currently available surplus parts and doing a more limited board design
in a PC104 form factor, we are targeting a cost closer to $100-150 than
the $1500 board the original developers used. The design uses a soft
core cpu in an large FPGA, using a System-on-a-Chip design strategy.

It's an interesting and agressive first project for the group, but the
harder parts of the design are mostly done. We started with doing a
block design today and quickly reviewing the Oggonachip project. Over
the next two weeks we will use email to nail doing the component list
and start a PCB layout for fab in about a month. It looks like we have
a good range of experience and resources in the group to bring this
project to a close in a few months.

The board will be a great starting platform for a number of other
homebrew projects for robotics, wearable computers, and automotive
computing. It will also be a great experience starting point for
PCB design, surface mount technology, FPGA design, and System
interfacing.

Next meeting is Sunday Sep 9, 2002.

Have fun,
John

Reading, Design resources and Tools for the project:

	http://oggonachip.sourceforge.net/

	http://bach.ece.jhu.edu/~haceaton/pcb/

	http://www.xilinx.com/partinfo/ds003.htm

	register and download free ISE web pack tools:

		http://www.xilinx.com/xlnx/xil_prodcat_landingpage.jsp?title=Design+Tools



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