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Thomas Richter
Germany
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Posts 1425
14 Feb 2011 15:40
| Congratulations, the next milestone has been reached. I believe you made quite an investment into creating this board, time, money, enthusiasm. Say, can you give an estimate of the production costs? Say, how much do the raw materials cost (chips, FPGA hardware), how much does it cost to produce the board as a small production run? Given the small production volume, I would believe that this isn't going to be exactly cheap. What's your target price for a minimal return of investment? Greetings,
Thomas
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Niclas Aronsson
Sweden
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Posts 57
14 Feb 2011 15:48
| Any chance of getting the correct measurements for the mx ? Started designing my own case in Sketch up :D WIP EXTERNAL LINK
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André Jernung
Sweden
| | (MX-Board Owner)
Posts 988
14 Feb 2011 16:02
| Niclas Aronsson wrote:
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Any chance of getting the correct measurements for the mx ?
Started designing my own case in Sketch up :D
WIP EXTERNAL LINK |
Good luck with your design!
The measurements are on the fourth page, third post in this very thread ;)
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Niclas Aronsson
Sweden
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Posts 57
14 Feb 2011 17:04
| André Jernung wrote:
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Niclas Aronsson wrote:
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Any chance of getting the correct measurements for the mx ?
Started designing my own case in Sketch up :D
WIP EXTERNAL LINK |
Good luck with your design!
The measurements are on the fourth page, third post in this very thread ;)
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170x140mm i already knew. Was more thinking of motherboard holes and some indication of the backplane.
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Asaf Ayoub
United Kingdom
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Posts 332
14 Feb 2011 18:57
| Impressive work Thomas ! is it me or is the MX board look kinda cute ? i am very happy with the quality of the MX motherboard :-) Thomas has worked very hard and it shows. I really do appreciate all his hard work. You are one talented guy. Great work. keep it up !
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Wojtek P
Poland
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Posts 1597
14 Feb 2011 20:52
| Thomas Richter wrote:
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Congratulations, the next milestone has been reached. I believe you made quite an investment into creating this board, time, money, enthusiasm.
Say, can you give an estimate of the production costs? Say, how much do the raw materials cost (chips, FPGA hardware), how much does it cost to produce the board as a small production run? Given the small production volume, I would believe that this isn't going to be exactly cheap. What's your target price for a minimal return of investment?
Greetings,
Thomas
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Used main FPGA costs ca 300$. add other chips and board and this is 400$, and they have to earn something.
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Ian Parsons
United Kingdom
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Posts 5
14 Feb 2011 21:35
| If the main FPGA is the EP4CE40F23C7N as shown in the new pictures on the hardware page, it's $82.96 in single quantity at digikey.
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André Jernung
Sweden
| | (MX-Board Owner)
Posts 988
14 Feb 2011 21:55
| Ian Parsons wrote:
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If the main FPGA is the EP4CE40F23C7N as shown in the new pictures on the hardware page, it's $82.96 in single quantity at digikey.
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No, this will not necessarily be the main FPGA for the boards getting sold. Alteras Cyclone-IV stocks are low at the moment, and Thomas bought the 40K LE FPGA because it was available and would allow him to start working on the development system immediately.
Cyclone-IV 55K LE at C6 speed grading is the chip I myself hope we can put on the boards. This is enough to hold most of what is designed and what is planned for the chipset of the current Natami revision.
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Ian Parsons
United Kingdom
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Posts 5
14 Feb 2011 22:32
| Thanks for the clarification André. So will using a C7 on the current board have much impact on performance of the SAGA hardware or would it only be important for N68050 performance. I don't know much about how FPGA speeds are calculated or about the impact speed grades have on the architecture being implemented. But maybe it's something we will need to keep in mind if performance figures are given for this board.
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André Jernung
Sweden
| | (MX-Board Owner)
Posts 988
14 Feb 2011 22:47
| The 40K LE version at C7 and the 55K LE at C6 will be runable at approximately the same clock rate, but the latter will be able to hold more logic, or in other words: the bigger the chips are, the faster they need to be to perform as well as the smaller ones.
The FPGA-heads can explain this better than I do.
Wojteks calculation is not quite right. The 55K LE FPGA is not as expensive as 300$, and the rest of the components and the board are not as cheap as 100$. But in the end, it will be component deals of the day and which production quantity we decide on in our first run that will decide the price of the system.
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Ian Parsons
United Kingdom
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Posts 5
14 Feb 2011 23:06
| Thanks that makes perfect sense. I've been following progress on the Natami project for a long time but I'm currently a lapsed amigan hoping to be tempted back by this exciting development. Hopefully FPGA prices will fall rapidly and progress on Aros68k will allow a small saving in complete system costs if the projects can converge.
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JeeBee McJibble
United Kingdom
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Posts 85
15 Feb 2011 00:05
| Niclas, I guess you could use the mini-ITX specs to find the locations of the holes, as this board is compatible.
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Alan Haynes
Australia
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Posts 74
15 Feb 2011 00:54
| André Jernung wrote:
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@Alan Haynes
Hello Alan,
The board does indeed comply with Mini-ITX (170x170mm) but is in reality a bit smaller (170x140mm).
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Thanks Andre for confirming what I suspected. The important thing to me is that the mounting holes and the back-plane requirements should allow any case that will accept a Micro-ITX board to be used.
I am still hopeful that the Team will ultimately provide the options of "Complete Systems" as well as the "BYO" (Bring Your Own case) one to those of us who live a long way from the action so as to provide a serious cost saving through reduction of shipping charges. Keep going with this great work. Cheers from Downunder.
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Michael S.
Germany
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Posts 9
15 Feb 2011 01:17
| May I ask what the developers have for experiences with the temperatures?? Board looks great but there is the main board, directly above the fpga is the cf-card and third there is the extra cpu-extension above...doesnt it run too hot when it all is in use? What about air-ventilation? Is it already tested? Not that system is running too hot when inserted in a case...
And how is the cpu-extension fitted to the port, only plugged into the slot? Doesnt look very solid or is it fitted towards, on the other side of the port, somehow with pins or something like that?
But all in all it looks great - really good work!Edit: And are there adapters or cables or something like that available to extend the cf-slot "outside" the case, to a cf-card-reader or sth like that? Would make changing the cf bit easier ;)
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Wojtek P
Poland
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Posts 1597
15 Feb 2011 09:11
| Ian Parsons wrote:
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If the main FPGA is the EP4CE40F23C7N as shown in the new pictures on the hardware page, it's $82.96 in single quantity at digikey.
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no idea why i was sure it's largest Cyclone IV.
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Wojtek P
Poland
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Posts 1597
15 Feb 2011 09:13
| Michael Steffen wrote:
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May I ask what the developers have for experiences with the temperatures?? Board looks great but there is the main board, directly above the fpga is the cf-card and third there is the extra cpu-extension above...doesnt it run too hot when it all is in use? What about air-ventilation? Is it already tested? Not that system is running too hot when inserted in a case...
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Michael, don't you forget it's Natami not latest Core i9 Nehelem turbo super overclock?
Main FPGA will take MAYBE 2 watts, everything else maybe another.
68060 @ 133MHz maybe more but it's on top.
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Joe M
Norway
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Posts 500
15 Feb 2011 09:28
| Michael Steffen wrote:
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Are there adapters or cables or something like that available to extend the cf-slot "outside" the case, to a cf-card-reader or sth like that? Would make changing the cf bit easier ;)
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As far as I know there is no such extension cables to be bought. Then you have as far as I can see two options:1. Custom-build a cable. I assume you can use wires from an old IDE cable for example and solder them onto the pins of the Natami CF card slot and use parts from an IDE adapter like this for the rest: EXTERNAL LINK I wouldn't recommend this though ;) The best thing would be if someone could fabricate a cable with a female connector in one end and a male plug in the other. Even though most people probably do not want to replace their system disk often, a cable like that would have been handy for those who want to have multiple system disks lying around with different configurations to boot from. One could for example have a CF card with WB 1.3, one with OS 3.1, one with AROS etc. 2. Connect a CF adapter to the IDE port and use this as a system boot device instead. I assume it is possible to use the internal CF port in conjunction with the IDE port (and use the internal CF port as a slave device only).
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André Jernung
Sweden
| | (MX-Board Owner)
Posts 988
15 Feb 2011 11:05
| A third option for an external CF reader could be: Connect a CF card reader to USB. ;)
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Przemek Tkaczyk
Poland
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Posts 54
15 Feb 2011 11:22
| Exactly. I don't see the point in connecting CF reader any other way than via USB... Multi format card readers cost nearly nothing these days.
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Joe M
Norway
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Posts 500
15 Feb 2011 12:14
| André Jernung wrote:
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A third option for an external CF reader could be:Connect a CF card reader to USB. ;)
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No doubt that this would be the best solution. I suppose not all of us thought the system could be booted from a USB device. The NatAmi seems to be a very flexible piece of hardware. :)
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