Re: [oc] New Spartan II Development Board Coming Out - The best IMHO

[John Dalton <john.dalton@bigfoot.com>]

I've used a previous version BurchEd board before.  Nothing
bad to say about it. Quite a neat little design and in
my personal opinion good value for money.  Whether it's
the best is always open to debate.


In an *opencores context*, my main objections to the
BurchEd board are:

1) It is not a free design (read http://www.gnu.org for the
   definition of free)
2) With careful design, my gut feeling is that the equivalent
   of a BED board could be built on a two layer board with an almost
   solid ground plane, allowing seriously fast applications
   to be addressed.  A two layer board would allow
   home fabricators to have a go (seen that neat stuff that
   allows you to print a PCB layout with an inkject and iron it onto the
   substrate?)  In a commercial context, cramming the design
   into two layers would not be economic.

If opencores could come up with a decent GPL'd FPGA card design,
perhaps there is an opportunity for people like Tony to build
it and sell it for a reasonable price?

Best wishes
John


Note: In the interests of full disclosure, it should be
noted that I used to work for Macquarie University,
Sydney, Australia in a collaboration with CSIRO.
I vaguely knew Tony Burch, who worked for CSIRO
at the time.  The only formal dealings I've had
with Tony are meeting at an FPGA seminar and buying
one of his boards on behalf of an employer.  The
main source of potential bias is in my admiration
for a fellow Sydneysider who is giving it a go
on the world stage.  I also liked the original slogan
he chose for his company, which he has since changed!  ;-)

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