[rescue] Sick Dreamcast hacker

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Tue, Jun 18, 2002 at 04:45:30PM -0400, Dave McGuire wrote:
> On June 18, Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> > To satisfy 2), we would need to build custom CPUs.  Doing so is
> > expensive, and implementing the CPUs as FPGAs is supposed to be
> > relatively easy.
> 
>   Well...if you say "easy" to mean "easier than starting from sand in
> your backyard", sure.  FPGAs are complicated beasties.  I'm just
> getting into them myself, and I'm finding out just how much there is
> to it.  They're incredibly powerful.

Well, relative to designing a CPU to be fabbed, not relative to
writing a lisp interpreter in 68k assembly, or whatever.
 
>   Speaking of which...there are some very large Xilinx FPGA pulls on
> eBay right now.  My budget (and my lacking FPGA experience) doesn't
> currently support blowing $100 on a desoldered chip, but the point is
> the bigger ones are available.
> 
>   Ben Franchuk, I think, would be the guy to talk to about this.  Is
> he on this list?  He's done a lot of CPU implementations in FPGAs, and
> seems to be rather good at it.

Have you seen http://www.fpgacpu.org/index.html ?  I just came across
it.  No lisp designs, but they do have forth, java, etc.

I think I probably should look at getting a hang on those PLD thingies
before investing big bucks in FPGAs (sure $100 sounds cheap, but I've
seen the costs for all the other equipment needed to go with it).

Actually, a bit more work first at an easier level would probably be a
good idea.  Maybe start with building myself a new guitar effects rig
(well the part of the rig that goes before the amp.  I'd prefer to go
with a premade digital effects unit for post amp effects like reverb
and delay).  It appears that a lot of the old Ibanez, MXR, and Univox
gear is really simple.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd