by MikeJ | Apr 6, 2010 | News
I have samples of the Chrontel DACs so I’ve decided to push on and build a few boards at least now. I’ve updated the schematic and layout drawings in the previous post and told the PCB house to re-process and complete the boards. Waiting for the components...
by MikeJ | Mar 29, 2010 | News
The RevB Replay PCB is waiting in China for some parts. For some reason a number of components are on two month lead time at the moment, which is a bit annoying. I’m trying to get samples of the missing parts so I can at least populate a few proto boards to test...
by MikeJ | Mar 9, 2010 | News
The RevB Replay PCBs are currently being manufactured. We should have boards in 2-3 weeks. I’ll post more details of the new board over the next few days. Jakub has a demo of the board running Amiga with AGA available here :...
by MikeJ | Jan 27, 2010 | News
The RevB Replay PCB respin is taking shape. The main reason for doing this is to fix a Chrontel power issue. I’ve taken the opportunity to move the connectors to one side, and it has composite/SVHS output on the board as well now. The power has moved to the...
by MikeJ | Dec 27, 2009 | News
First of all, Happy Christmas and New Year to everyone. Wow, another month has gone by already. This ASIC project I am working on has had some last minute hiccups, and I am still very busy working on that. Mid Jan will see it done I hope, and I am going back to China...
by MikeJ | Nov 20, 2009 | News
Right, I’m back on the case. I’ve had quite a lot going on in my life, but things are settling down again now. I’m involved with taping out an ASIC which has one of the biggest die areas in the world, so it’s been very challenging and taken all...
by MikeJ | Sep 21, 2009 | News
I’ve completed the PCB library work for the new parts. This was a bit more complex that I expected as I had limited data on some of the connectors. I have placed everything on the board and am working on the routing now. We are still discussing some changes to...
by MikeJ | Sep 14, 2009 | News
Well, I was away for a little longer than expected, then got Flu and then went to Amsterdam so I now need a bit of recovery time 🙂 The idea was to get the boards assembled in China, but having talked to the other developers they really wanted a few changes in the way...
by MikeJ | Aug 15, 2009 | News
Rather busy here, I will be in Asia next week so I will get 50 or so boards made. These will be the RevB board which has a few minor tweaks, so I am trying to finish testing the prototype PCB. Still no support from Chrontel (who make the DAC) who are strangely...
by MikeJ | Aug 9, 2009 | News
It’s been very sunny in Stockholm this week, so there has been much beer drinking and less time working on the bringup 🙂 I have made a minor patch to the board to fix the Chrontel power issues – still no word from them on this problem. 1080P and 720P...
by MikeJ | Jul 31, 2009 | News
This week I have coded up the boot loader OSD. This took more time than I expected as a decent anti-aliased fixed space font is hard to find. I ended up writing some software which takes the output of Angelcode’s font renderer and converts it into a suitable...
by MikeJ | Jul 25, 2009 | News
A brief update to say the video output is working well. I’ve tested DVI -> HDMI at 576i/50Hz (Pal) and analog out with a DVI to VGA cable. Both work fine, although I am upset that the M227WD TV chops off the outer few pixels in HDMI mode – but they are...
by MikeJ | Jul 21, 2009 | News
Phew, never again am I hand building more than one board this complex! I have been away on holiday at Glastonbury music festival, and then to recover from that I had another two weeks away. Now I am back, and apart from some contract work to finish (which pays for...
by MikeJ | Jun 4, 2009 | News
I have been really busy finishing off some contract work, so I have not had much time to complete the Replay bringup. I am ordering some more PCBs so I did a quick layout of a daughter board for the LCD. It has an analog joystick and some buttons. Really, it’s...
by MikeJ | May 6, 2009 | News
I’ve finished the layout of the large patch card needed for testing with a real 68030 processor. The board is also used to test the IO on the main Replay card. The three daughter boards will go to manufacture tomorrow. Four main boards are now in existence and...
by MikeJ | Apr 27, 2009 | News
Sorry, living in Sweden I couldn’t resist this. This is what a Replay parts kit looks like. This board is going off to another developer. Just to repeat, the production board will be available fully assembled only, you don’t want to try and build this...
by MikeJ | Apr 22, 2009 | News
I’ve just been finishing off the layout of the 68K daughter board and the video IO board (pictured below) for the Replay card. The IO board contains audio RCA connectors, front mounted joystick and SVHS / composite video outputs. These are needed to finish...
by MikeJ | Apr 16, 2009 | News
It’s been a bit of a busy week, I was away for Easter and I am busy installing a kitchen, so I haven’t had as much time as I would like to carry on with the board bring up. However, I’ve got a rough cut of the boot software optimised for the ARM....
by MikeJ | Apr 5, 2009 | News
Well, so far so good with the testing of the Replay board. The power supplies are all working well with good phase margin. I can configure the FPGA through the JTAG interface and flash the LEDs, so the clock generator is also working. I can find the ARM with the USB...
by MikeJ | Apr 5, 2009 | News
The first Replay board is fully assembled. I am about to power it up…..
