I am designing myself a FPGA board to interact
with a PCI Bus and i havecouple questions. 

First, Is it mandatory to have 2 power layers (GND + VCC)? 

Second, i just got a quote from a PCB manufactury and it should cost me$250 to make a board. Is it possible to find a cheaper board? The cheapesti found was Dragon Board from Knjn with a price of $300. Once i hearedabout a Insight Eletronics Board but i could not find it ...

Any sugestions? 

Thats all for now!! 

Thank you!

	   
					
---------------------------------------		
Posted through http://www.FPGARelated.com

On Wed, 18 Aug 2010 06:59:58 -0500,
"Sink0" <sink00@n_o_s_p_a_m.gmail.com>
wrote:

>I am designing myself a FPGA board to interact with a PCI Bus and i have
>couple questions. 
>
>First, Is it mandatory to have 2 power layers (GND + VCC)? 
>
>Second, i just got a quote from a PCB manufactury and it should cost me
>$250 to make a board. Is it possible to find a cheaper board? The cheapest
>i found was Dragon Board from Knjn with a price of $300. Once i heared
>about a Insight Eletronics Board but i could not find it ...
>
>Any sugestions? 

Enterpoint have ready made boards, with lots of expansion I/O, and example PCI
driver software (not trivial!) within your price range. The most likely
candidate:

http://www.enterpoint.co.uk/moelbryn/raggedstone1.html

Also, PCIe boards are worth considering as an alternative.

- Brian

Insight Electronics was a Memec company, and
Memec was acquired by
Avnet in 2005.  The board to which you are referring is a Spartan-2
PCI board, which you can find here: www.em.avnet.com/spartan2pci for
$295.  Spartan-2 was the last Xilinx device to be 5V tolerant, so this
board is 100% PCI compliant.  Avnet also has a Spartan-3 based PCI
board as well, but it uses level shifters and is not 100% compliant --
www.em.avnet.com/spartan3-evl.  When I just looked, I don't see any
stock for the Spartan-3 Eval boards.  Both these boards require a PCI
license from Xilinx to do development -- www.xilinx.com/pci.

I agree with Brian that you should definitely consider PCIe.  Xilinx
Spartan-6 LXT has embedded transceivers and PCIe block, so you can do
PCIe development without consuming logic resources in your FPGA and
with no extra licensing cost.  You could consider the SP605 --
www.xilinx.com/sp605, $495, or upgrade to the Avnet S6LX150T board --
www.em.avnet.com/spartan6lx150t-dev, $995.

Bryan

On Aug 18, 7:59=A0am, "Sink0" <sink00@n_o_s_p_a_m.gmail.com> wrote:
> I am designing myself a FPGA board to interact with a PCI Bus and i have
> couple questions.
>
> First, Is it mandatory to have 2 power layers (GND + VCC)?
>
> Second, i just got a quote from a PCB manufactury and it should cost me
> $250 to make a board. Is it possible to find a cheaper board? The cheapes=
t
> i found was Dragon Board from Knjn with a price of $300. Once i heared
> about a Insight Eletronics Board but i could not find it ...
>
> Any sugestions?
>
> Thats all for now!!
>
> Thank you!
>
> --------------------------------------- =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0
> Posted throughhttp://www.FPGARelated.com

"Sink0"
<sink00@n_o_s_p_a_m.gmail.com> wrote:

>I am designing myself a FPGA board to interact with a PCI Bus and i have
>couple questions. 
>
>First, Is it mandatory to have 2 power layers (GND + VCC)? 

No. Just look at cheap network cards; they are two layer boards.

>Second, i just got a quote from a PCB manufactury and it should cost me
>$250 to make a board. Is it possible to find a cheaper board? The cheapest

If you go for 2 layers then it should cost much less (depending on the
board size).

-- 
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------

Bryan <b...@avnet.com> wrote:
> Insight Electronics was a Memec company, and Memec was acquired by
> Avnet in 2005.  The board to which you are referring is a Spartan-2
> PCI board, which you can find here: www.em.avnet.com/spartan2pci for
> $295.  Spartan-2 was the last Xilinx device to be 5V tolerant, so this
> board is 100% PCI compliant.  Avnet also has a Spartan-3 based PCI
> board as well, but it uses level shifters and is not 100% compliant --
> www.em.avnet.com/spartan3-evl.  When I just looked, I don't see any
> stock for the Spartan-3 Eval boards.  Both these boards require a PCI
> license from Xilinx to do development -- www.xilinx.com/pci.

I thought if you had the right notches a PCI board wouldn't fit
in a 5V slot.   That would seem easier than adding level shifters.

-- glen

Hmmm i agree that if that board was intended to
be used on a normalcomputer PCIe would be a much better option, but it is just a intermediateboard becouse the final one is going to be used on a PC/104+ board thatdoes not have PCIe. But so for i do not have the PC/104 processor board. 

The cheappest board they sell at Enterpoint got a good price, $225 + VATbut they are out of stock. They sell a PCI/104 board too.. that is a veryuseful information. I am going to develop myself a PCI bridge to FPGA so iwont have to pay for any IP. I am taking as reference a IP core that ifound at OpenCores. 

And finaly i am using quickswiths myself to make the board universal. Tohave a only 3.3V board would be a problem as many computers have 5V onlyPCI bus. Thank you for all the sugestions and answers guys. If some oneelse knows any available board with that price i am still acceptingsugestions. I will put all my efforts on making my board double layers, butat the final board it is going to be 4 layers anyway.

Cya 	   
					
---------------------------------------		
Posted through http://www.FPGARelated.com

I asked the office to check as the website stock
levels are not
totally live and accurate and we have had a run of sales on these
lately. We have 2 Hollybush1 HB1-400C and 1 HB1-1500C and we can make
more on our assembly line fairly quickly as we have stock for all of
the parts for them.

John Adair
Enterpoint Ltd.

On 18 Aug, 23:54, "Sink0" <sink00@n_o_s_p_a_m.n_o_s_p_a_m.gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hmmm i agree that if that board was intended to be used on a normal
> computer PCIe would be a much better option, but it is just a intermediat=
e
> board becouse the final one is going to be used on a PC/104+ board that
> does not have PCIe. But so for i do not have the PC/104 processor board.
>
> The cheappest board they sell at Enterpoint got a good price, $225 + VAT
> but they are out of stock. They sell a PCI/104 board too.. that is a very
> useful information. I am going to develop myself a PCI bridge to FPGA so =
i
> wont have to pay for any IP. I am taking as reference a IP core that i
> found at OpenCores.
>
> And finaly i am using quickswiths myself to make the board universal. To
> have a only 3.3V board would be a problem as many computers have 5V only
> PCI bus. Thank you for all the sugestions and answers guys. If some one
> else knows any available board with that price i am still accepting
> sugestions. I will put all my efforts on making my board double layers, b=
ut
> at the final board it is going to be 4 layers anyway.
>
> Cya =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0
>
> --------------------------------------- =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0
> Posted throughhttp://www.FPGARelated.com

>
>I am going to develop myself a PCI bridge to FPGA so i
>wont have to pay for any IP. I am taking as reference a IP core that i
>found at OpenCores. 
>

"Good luck with that!"

From personal experience, PCI is a rather tricky standard to design to.

	   
					
---------------------------------------		
Posted through http://www.FPGARelated.com

>I asked the office to check as the website
stock levels are not
>totally live and accurate and we have had a run of sales on these
>lately. We have 2 Hollybush1 HB1-400C and 1 HB1-1500C and we can make
>more on our assembly line fairly quickly as we have stock for all of
>the parts for them.
>


Thank you very much for the information. I am going to talk with my otherteam members to discuss that. Can you answer me if you can write down onthe bill a lower price than the board cost? Thats becouse i live in Braziland here i would have to pay 88% of taxes to goverment.. My second problemwould be that i still need a Xilinx USB download cable (we do not have anyparalel potr available). A clone would cost me $80 with my usual chineseeletronic supplier.. thats something i must take in consideration becousewe already have an Altera one.

Thank you very much for all the answers!!	   
					
---------------------------------------		
Posted through http://www.FPGARelated.com

Sink0 wrote:

> Thank you very much for the information. I am going to talk with my other
> team members to discuss that. Can you answer me if you can write down on
> the bill a lower price than the board cost? Thats becouse i live in Brazil
> and here i would have to pay 88% of taxes to goverment..

Do you really think he wants to help you with tax fraud? And do you expect
a public commitment to underhand dealings in this newsgroup?

-- 
Frank Buss, f...@frank-buss.de
http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de