re:Cat Box

On 21 Jul 1998, Mark Shostak wrote:

> Joe,
>
> Sounds kinda pricy. Once you add it all up (including the cost of
> the board and construction time), you may come out ahead to just pay
> the ~$300 for a real CAT.

        The point was more that CATs aren't available. I'd gladly pay
~$300 today for a real CAT. If you (or anybody else) knows where I can
get one, I'm all ears.

> Do you think multiple smaller (cheaper) devices might be more practical?
> (I just split the Cinematronics multigame into two PLDs for the very same
> reason, and being a purist, I thought it was going to kill me).

        The problem is IOs, more than anything else. It would probably
fit in a MACH3xx series part, but there aren't enough IOs. Off the top of
my head, the CAT box needs 48 IOs for the ADDR and Data busses, plus
another dozen or so miscellaneous signals.

        I figure I'd need a PLD with about 70 IOs.

        I can try to partition things, but I think I'd wind up with just
2 smaller PLDs each needing 70 IOs, which doesn't really help anything.
Schleping that many signals around a board to multiple chips will make the
board more complex.

        I guess I'm kind of spoiled by the Cinematronics Exorcisors, which
with one chip, led to a really nice, neat, one-sided PCB design (that fits
in the palm of your hand.)
 
> Cheers,
> Mark
>
> P.S. From the perspective of money being no object, I like the idea of
> an elegant, single chip solution. Unfortunately, the techies find
> out sooner or later that what looks good on paper, doesn't always
> translate into a practical solution. That's when you have to com-
> promise some elegance for what's most practical to manufacture.
>

        Manufacturing a board with 1 chip is certainly easier than
manufacturing a board with many chips, so I'm not sure what you're
getting at. Fitting something on 1 PLD trades off board complexity
for chip complexity, which is something that I'm very willing to do.
We'll see how it all pans out. I'm not concerned about the cost
as much as I am the utility of the final product, since I'm not
"manufacturing" anything on a mass scale, and I'm not doing it to
make money. If I can get away with not needing a 2-sided PCB, then
I've already "won" in my eyes, because, technically I could etch the
PCBs myself if I felt like it , and save lots of $.

Joe
Received on Tue Jul 21 10:54:45 1998