🚀 go-pugleaf

..what would you like to see on it?

Given the recent rekindling of interest/discusion on the PC532, if (just *if*,
no offer or promise made or implied) _someone_ was to be considering designing
and building a graphics board for the PC532; and if that person had to make
some design decisions Real Soon Now; what would you suggest?

For instance:

LSI Logic makes a sweet little puppy called the 33020 which is a MIPS R3000
embedded processor core sans MMU but including a built in DRAM/VRAM interface
(including 64-bit wide interleaved), BitBLT co-pro, serial i/f, prom i/f,
timers and chip select logic and cache.  The thing was designed with Xterm
in mind.

They also build an evaluation board and will make (have made :->) the
schematics for that available.  The eval board has both a monchrome and a
colour interface (up 1280x1024 mono or 1024x768 colour), keyboard i/f, mouse
and serial port i/f's, boot prom i/f, and ethernet (done in effectively two
components for an AUI-only interface).  Since there is no SCSI, you would
have to loose either the colour or the ethernet if you wished to use only
the built-in chip select logic.  Also the mono version can be done out of
DRAM only - no VRAM required - with approx. 17% memory bandwidth lost to the
display with a 25MHz. processor.  The colour version requires separate VRAM
and a RAMDAC - a lot more real estate (and $$'s).

Now if that was your starting point, what would you do?  Monochrome with
optional ethernet (no *need* to populate)?  Colour with no ethernet?  AUI-
only thick ethernet or go the distance and include a thin (or UTP?) interface
as well?  Would you even be interested?

The processor runs in the $250US area for Q100 ceramic PGA (224 pins! That's
more than the 32532 - looks real busy).  There is also a QFP package due out
soon and while my employer has the equipment to do the mounting, most others
would not be so lucky - but the surface mount package is cheaper (I forget
off-hand how much).

NO PROMISES AS TO WHEN SOMETHING MIGHT BE READY FOR REVIEW (we just bought a
house yesterday!), but having access to the prototype design has made the
project easier to manage.

To date there are two definites for a board - me and Tom Rushworth - but there
are a lot of questions.  Where to get the PC boards fabbed?  How to source the
components?  Good Grief!  What about software?
--
Robbin W. Johnson				     rjohnson@mprgate.mpr.ca
MPR Teltech Limited		Advanced Technology/Broadband Communications