nickpunt Posted November 20, 2020 Report Share Posted November 20, 2020 Thought this overview of open-toolchain FPGA hardware might be of interest to hardware hackers looking to build new projects with FPGAs: https://www.ktemkin.com/exploring-open-fpga-hardware/ Quote Link to post Share on other sites
quorten Posted November 26, 2020 Report Share Posted November 26, 2020 So looks like the state-of-the-art in open-source FPGAs is still pretty much "Lattice only." Fortunately, looks like Lattice FPGAs might be good enough for implementing a replica BBU for the Macintosh SE. Good thing was that I was already looking at candidate FPGAs from Lattice. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
aeberbach Posted November 27, 2020 Report Share Posted November 27, 2020 I'm wondering why open source matters here; you won't get very far without buying the proprietary silicon from one of the big vendors, so what does it matter if you use the tools provided by them also? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
paws Posted November 27, 2020 Report Share Posted November 27, 2020 All the same reasons you use an open source compiler to generate machine code for a proprietary CPU: Out of principle, because it's more future proof, and frequently also because they're just better software. I don't know about the Lattice tools, I've only used the open source ones, but the Xilinx tools are gigantic, slow, buggy, and the versions I used made you do a complete 7GB download for each tiny bug fix upgrade. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Kai Robinson Posted December 7, 2020 Report Share Posted December 7, 2020 On 11/26/2020 at 8:38 PM, quorten said: So looks like the state-of-the-art in open-source FPGAs is still pretty much "Lattice only." Fortunately, looks like Lattice FPGAs might be good enough for implementing a replica BBU for the Macintosh SE. Good thing was that I was already looking at candidate FPGAs from Lattice. The iCE40 perchance? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
quorten Posted December 8, 2020 Report Share Posted December 8, 2020 @Kai Robinson Yeah I believe I looked at that one. The other thing I was thinking was that a CPLD might also fit the bill, the advantage being voltage level shifters would not be required. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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