On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 12:31:16PM -0600, John Maier wrote:
> > so, comments about the cpu?
>>
>>
>> Per DigiKey (US)
>> 386DX (33Mhz)(PGA) = $44
>> 386SX (33Mhz)(QFP) = $15
>> Z380 (20Mhz)(QFP)  = $20
>> Strong Arm SA-110 (166Mhz)(QFP) = $34
>> MC680x0 020-060 = all over $130

>look closer at the embedded lines like i386EX, 683xx / coldfire, and various
>strong arm chips from motorola, cirrus logic, and atmel.
>
>my project at work uses 25MHz 68331, and price is under $20 per part.  I know
>some of the arm chips from atmel are around the same price, and have all
>kinds
>of nifty interfacing features, like built-in serials, chip selects, timers,
>DMA, crap like that...

>another option would be to take existing single-board-computer and add
>requisite QBUS interface.  some starting points might be various PC104
>manufacturers, the ucsimm http://www.uclinux.org/ucsimm/ (you don't have to
>run linux on it, of course), or one of the various open hardware projects at
>http://www.opencores.org/projects .

> >From a cost/performance the 386SX seems the best..but it QFP and I can't do
> >surface mount.

>most everything is surface-mount these days.  it's going to be very hard to
>find non-surface mount parts.  motorola supposedly still makes pin-lead
>packages, but good luck finding a distributor who'll carry them.  :P

>if you can stick to 8/16 bit parts, it's a little easier to still find DIPs.
>
>--
>  Aaron J. Grier | "Not your ordinary poofy goof." | agrier@poofygoof.com
>      "[...] I generally haven't found IDM guys to be very good
>       live acts, most of them just sit down at their laptop and
>       tweak reaktor."  -- Brandon Daniel

I agree that the embedded CPUs are much more suited, you just have to get
resigned to do surface mount I think..

We are using one of the low end Atmel (40MHz/8K RAM/2 serial ports/3timers)
ARM chips in one of our projects and its only ~$8.00 in low quantities. Its in
a TQFP100 though...

The non embedded CPUs are a mess to support...

There are a number of embedded x86 chips, but I think aesthetics forbid using
them in a VAX...


The ARM or other embedded CPU chip, a 128Kx16 cache RAM for code, an FPGA for
QBUS and IDE interface, a serial flash EEPROM for boot loading the FPGA/code
RAM and the QBUS interface chips is about all you need (thou you might want to
add a level shifter to give you a serial port) The FPGA would allow other
interfaces types to be added later, should someone develop the ambition...




Peter Wallace