3 ms·

"Commercial grade" was a terrible choice of words, I know. I guess I was looking for "currently on offer, and in a phase of lifecycle where you could design a

by hakfoo 4y ago

"Commercial grade" was a terrible choice of words, I know. I guess I was looking for "currently on offer, and in a phase of lifecycle where you could design a long-lifecycle product around it without a panicked mid-life crisis to replace the chip when supplies ran out." Not "15 year old parts that have deprecated to the point where they're hobbyist-priced". I suppose another big problem with a lot of more sophisticated offerings is, as you suggest, BGA may be hard to stomach. Anything more complex than through-hole packages, or socketable versions is going to dramatically raise the bar for "this can be shipped as a kit and home-assembled." The PLCC one might be viable from that context. Yeah, the "we'll drill your PCB" houses will also tack down your SMD parts, but it changes the proposition. Instead of selling a $10 blank PCB and saying "order what you need from Mouser" you suddenly have a lot more money sunk in partially or fully assembled inventory.

kragen 4y ago
Oh, I see! I don't know what Lattice's life cycle for its products is but given that they're evidently still making CPLDs from 30 years ago I wouldn't worry too much. I think these particular FPGAs are only about 7 years old, too; the datasheet (DS1050) lists two revisions, both from 02015, and I recall looking for such low-end FPGAs around that time and not being able to find any. The last time I went to an electronics hobbyist store I was amazed to find that everything was on breakout boards. They didn't sell chips, they sold boards, all with 2.54mm Molex pin headers on them, or sometimes rows of holes for you to solder the pin headers to. It was so extreme that they had a ULN2003 septa-darlington on a breakout board, by itself, with a pin header connected to each of its pins. A DIP ULN2003! Which has 2.54mm pins on the actual chip! So apparently electronics hobbyists now barely use breadboards or soldering irons. They wire together boards with jumper wires, using the pin headers that come pre-soldered to the board. In that vein, it looks like SparkFun sells a Lattice XO2-1200 breakout board with 2.54 mm pin headers for US$21.50 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14828 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14828 but they're out of stock, and a similar Lattice iCE40LP8K breakout board for US$41.95 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14829 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14829 which is also out of stock. And, holy crap, that chip has more logic cells than the iCE40UP5K chip I erroneously thought was Lattice's biggest. And also the US$7.95 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/17131 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/17131 in Adafruit's Feather wing footprint which is not out of stock and has an Intel MAX 10 FPGA along with an Atmel SAMD51 μC. Anyway I feel like, if you wanted to ship an FPGA thing as a kit and home-assemble it, you could solder the BGA FPGA onto a small PCB with 2.54mm pin headers along the edges so the kit assemblers can plug it into their breadboard or connect wires to it easily. Basically the PCB takes the place of an epoxy or ceramic DIP and leadframe. I'm not sure the traditional Heathkit-style "kit" market exists any more, though. 50 years ago you by buying the unassembled kit you were saving the salary of a lab technician in Benton Harbor who would have assembled, soldered, tested, and troubleshot your device by hand, at a cost of potentially over US$100. Now you're saving the cost of a pick-and-place machine at JLCPCB; they charge 0.15¢ per pin, last time I checked, with a minimum order quantity of 10 boards. The benefit now of getting parts unassembled is not that it's cheaper; it's that you can assemble them into something different, shortening the feedback time on your own designs.
- hakfoo 4y ago
  >I'm not sure the traditional Heathkit-style "kit" market exists any more, though. IDK, I've been gradually working my way through some of the solder-it-yourself "build an XT clone" projects; there the fact you're building it from parts IS a big part of the charm. Nobody would want a slightly quirky DOS machine with less performance than an off-brand graphing calculator without a healthy dose of the IKEA Effect. I suspect a lot of the "build your own amplifier" hobby groups are the same way. (Speakers, apparently there's still money to be saved there if you like DIY offerings) In a way, it's about turning "thing you buy" into "thing you do" -- you get more hours of entertainment out of a given dollar spent on kit products than a similarly priced finished item would provide. Yes, 50 years ago, building from kits was about saving on assembly (or for access to products not sold assembled), but there's no reason it can't be a hobby in and of itself and potentially a gateway into more sophisticated electronics experimentation. I figure a good kit is like the programs in an '80s computer magazine-- it will do what it said, but now you have something that you can grasp and pull apart more readily than commercial product. How many of us got into programming that way? The other drawback to getting things pre-assembled is that bodge issues are going to be harder. The last PCB I ordered (a custom-designed memory board for that XT clone) needed some, and if you're still looking at a bare PCB, maybe with through-hole sockets mounted, you can pretty easily do any cuts and tacked down wires you need. I'd be a lot warier if I had to try to pick apart pre-soldered SMD components.

by hakfoo 4y ago

kragen 4y ago

Oh, I see! I don't know what Lattice's life cycle for its products is but given that they're evidently still making CPLDs from 30 years ago I wouldn't worry too much. I think these particular FPGAs are only about 7 years old, too; the datasheet (DS1050) lists two revisions, both from 02015, and I recall looking for such low-end FPGAs around that time and not being able to find any. The last time I went to an electronics hobbyist store I was amazed to find that everything was on breakout boards. They didn't sell chips, they sold boards, all with 2.54mm Molex pin headers on them, or sometimes rows of holes for you to solder the pin headers to. It was so extreme that they had a ULN2003 septa-darlington on a breakout board, by itself, with a pin header connected to each of its pins. A DIP ULN2003! Which has 2.54mm pins on the actual chip! So apparently electronics hobbyists now barely use breadboards or soldering irons. They wire together boards with jumper wires, using the pin headers that come pre-soldered to the board. In that vein, it looks like SparkFun sells a Lattice XO2-1200 breakout board with 2.54 mm pin headers for US$21.50 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14828 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14828 but they're out of stock, and a similar Lattice iCE40LP8K breakout board for US$41.95 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14829 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14829 which is also out of stock. And, holy crap, that chip has more logic cells than the iCE40UP5K chip I erroneously thought was Lattice's biggest. And also the US$7.95 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/17131 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/17131 in Adafruit's Feather wing footprint which is not out of stock and has an Intel MAX 10 FPGA along with an Atmel SAMD51 μC. Anyway I feel like, if you wanted to ship an FPGA thing as a kit and home-assemble it, you could solder the BGA FPGA onto a small PCB with 2.54mm pin headers along the edges so the kit assemblers can plug it into their breadboard or connect wires to it easily. Basically the PCB takes the place of an epoxy or ceramic DIP and leadframe. I'm not sure the traditional Heathkit-style "kit" market exists any more, though. 50 years ago you by buying the unassembled kit you were saving the salary of a lab technician in Benton Harbor who would have assembled, soldered, tested, and troubleshot your device by hand, at a cost of potentially over US$100. Now you're saving the cost of a pick-and-place machine at JLCPCB; they charge 0.15¢ per pin, last time I checked, with a minimum order quantity of 10 boards. The benefit now of getting parts unassembled is not that it's cheaper; it's that you can assemble them into something different, shortening the feedback time on your own designs.

hakfoo 4y ago
>I'm not sure the traditional Heathkit-style "kit" market exists any more, though. IDK, I've been gradually working my way through some of the solder-it-yourself "build an XT clone" projects; there the fact you're building it from parts IS a big part of the charm. Nobody would want a slightly quirky DOS machine with less performance than an off-brand graphing calculator without a healthy dose of the IKEA Effect. I suspect a lot of the "build your own amplifier" hobby groups are the same way. (Speakers, apparently there's still money to be saved there if you like DIY offerings) In a way, it's about turning "thing you buy" into "thing you do" -- you get more hours of entertainment out of a given dollar spent on kit products than a similarly priced finished item would provide. Yes, 50 years ago, building from kits was about saving on assembly (or for access to products not sold assembled), but there's no reason it can't be a hobby in and of itself and potentially a gateway into more sophisticated electronics experimentation. I figure a good kit is like the programs in an '80s computer magazine-- it will do what it said, but now you have something that you can grasp and pull apart more readily than commercial product. How many of us got into programming that way? The other drawback to getting things pre-assembled is that bodge issues are going to be harder. The last PCB I ordered (a custom-designed memory board for that XT clone) needed some, and if you're still looking at a bare PCB, maybe with through-hole sockets mounted, you can pretty easily do any cuts and tacked down wires you need. I'd be a lot warier if I had to try to pick apart pre-soldered SMD components.