Hardware

Here is a list of the hardware projects that I have started (and sometimes even finished), but most of them suffer from a lack of firmware. I usually lose interest in these projects as soon as the hardware works. However, only the software (especially the ROM images) makes them usable.

If anyone of you is interested in helping me complete the software please contact me. I could provide a prototype for those of you who can make me believe they are seriously interested.

The finished projects could either be published as "Freeware" (instructions, diagrams + software) or sold as products (or even both).

Project Platform Status Hardware Status Software Price of components (DM) Difficulty Description
4-Slot Backplane A3XX, A4XX finished, untested not needed 20,- medium Double sided PCB, soldering the connectors is difficult
Sound Sampler Podule Archimedes, RiscPC finished, tested;
could be optimized		 Module started
Patch for !Armadeus		 50,- low/medium 8-Bit A/D-Converter, 100kHz
Simple double-sided PCB with only a few components
SCSI-Hostadapter Podule Archimedes, RiscPC finished, tested finished and tested on Archimedes,
but very poor performance		 80,- mittel Passive 8-Bit hostadapter built around an NCR 5380, double-sided PCB.
Drivers are finished and were in use for almost two years without any problems. Performance is very poor (around 100KB/s). New drivers could overcome this problem and give about 1.2MB/s
I/O Expansion Podule Archimedes, RiscPC finished, tested started 20,- low double sided PCB, 16 bit input, 16 bit output, TTL
Floating Point Coprozessor Podule Archimedes, RiscPC finished, tested started 150,- medium Floating point accelerator based on MC 68882
Two prototypes have been built and gice an estimated speed increase of factor 20 on Archimedes (ARM3) and factor 5 on RiscPC (StrongARM). However, the Acorn FPA is still faster. The 68882 is expensive (100,-/33MHz) and not very common.

17 Oct 1998