Does anyone have any other cool ideas before I put in new order? 😁
oh man, what a beauty is this new board going to be. Well done Eivind. I cannot wait to see what comes out of this.
Eivind wrote on 2024-07-24, 15:59:Does anyone have any other cool ideas before I put in new order? 😁
If you have some more free space to route on the board, it would be cool to have I2C exposed - if no space for connectors, just have some testpoints, with some clearance large enough to be able to hand solder some wires without frying nearby components. One could hook an extender to have more GPIOs for custom peripherals.
As I don't see a buzzer on the board, there also could be a pair of testpoints so a user could provide their own buzzer - as a PC speaker or to simulate a clicky HDD for aesthetic purposes.
kmeaw wrote on 2024-07-25, 12:29:Eivind wrote on 2024-07-24, 15:59:Does anyone have any other cool ideas before I put in new order? 😁
If you have some more free space to route on the board, it would be cool to have I2C exposed - if no space for connectors, just have some testpoints, with some clearance large enough to be able to hand solder some wires without frying nearby components. One could hook an extender to have more GPIOs for custom peripherals.
As I don't see a buzzer on the board, there also could be a pair of testpoints so a user could provide their own buzzer - as a PC speaker or to simulate a clicky HDD for aesthetic purposes.
There's already a JST SH 4-pin ("Qwiic"/"Stemma QT") connector on the board attached to the I2C bus on the CM4. The I2C bus on the Vortex86EX only goes to the EMC2301 fan controller, I thought there'd be way more utility in having external I2C with the Pi.
As for buzzer - there is one! A very small and not very loud one, but still. 😀
Wow, I'm impressed how you were able to pack all those features into a small board. Good job!
Spent many hours tightening up the design, fattening traces, etc. Reasonably happy now, will put in the order shortly.
Eivind, you are very kind. Thank you for the acknowledgment.
Eivind wrote on 2024-07-27, 14:15:Spent many hours tightening up the design, fattening traces, etc. Reasonably happy now, will put in the order shortly. […]
Spent many hours tightening up the design, fattening traces, etc. Reasonably happy now, will put in the order shortly.
Wow how did you get that trace at the top right to follow the contour of the board like that? It’s beautiful! I haven’t experimented with much outside of the normal traces that get drawn automatically. I tried doing to that were very diagonal, like more that 45 degrees. Probably close to maybe 65 but I chickened out. I was concerned it wouldn’t print properly. Ive said it before but this project is a work of art!
If you need any one to test things let me know.
snipe3687 wrote on 2024-07-28, 12:54:Wow how did you get that trace at the top right to follow the contour of the board like that? It’s beautiful! I haven’t experimented with much outside of the normal traces that get drawn automatically. I tried doing to that were very diagonal, like more that 45 degrees. Probably close to maybe 65 but I chickened out. I was concerned it wouldn’t print properly. Ive said it before but this project is a work of art!
If you need any one to test things let me know.
In Kicad, you can select two or more segments of a trace and then use the "Fillet tracks" action. There's also a Kicad plugin that'll do a best-effort run of rounding all the trace corners on the whole board.
It's really mostly an aesthetic thing - with todays PCB manufacturing process you can really have whatever angles and weird shapes you want, and it'll be manufactured exactly as you design it. As for functionality, I'm reasonably sure the track shapes don't matter unless we're talking very high speed signals and/or impedance-controlled or differential pairs.
Not sure if it is too late or you even like the idea. I was thinking to put back the stack of two USBs and use the second one instead of the micro USB connector.
That way for flashing the eMMC of the CM4 you use a USB-A to USB-A cable (not a big deal as you used the same cable to program the the HID chip in the past) and you have the ability to use the USB connector as OTG without a problem if you choose to connect something to the CM4. If interested let me know and then I need to figure out how to make the USB selector chip to work with this scenario. This is really not a big deal as all what it does is saving you the OTG cable plus puts the USB-A connector accessible to outside in case we like to make a nice 3D printed case for it.
ahmadexp wrote on 2024-07-29, 01:30:Not sure if it is too late or you even like the idea. I was thinking to put back the stack of two USBs and use the second one instead of the micro USB connector.
That way for flashing the eMMC of the CM4 you use a USB-A to USB-A cable (not a big deal as you used the same cable to program the the HID chip in the past) and you have the ability to use the USB connector as OTG without a problem if you choose to connect something to the CM4. If interested let me know and then I need to figure out how to make the USB selector chip to work with this scenario. This is really not a big deal as all what it does is saving you the OTG cable plus puts the USB-A connector accessible to outside in case we like to make a nice 3D printed case for it.
I agree that this solution would be even more flexible, but I'm not sure how useful it really would be. Maybe as added storage to the CM4? But then, you couldn't use the USB connection going to the SOM simultaneously. I guess there's the option of cramming a USB hub chip in there somewhere.
In any case, I put in the order yesterday, so for this revision it's a moot point, I'm afraid. 😀
Let's cross our fingers and hope everything else works the way it's supposed to, and we could revisit this idea at a later time, if needed!
Eivind wrote on 2024-07-29, 09:50:I agree that this solution would be even more flexible, but I'm not sure how useful it really would be. Maybe as added storage t […]
ahmadexp wrote on 2024-07-29, 01:30:Not sure if it is too late or you even like the idea. I was thinking to put back the stack of two USBs and use the second one instead of the micro USB connector.
That way for flashing the eMMC of the CM4 you use a USB-A to USB-A cable (not a big deal as you used the same cable to program the the HID chip in the past) and you have the ability to use the USB connector as OTG without a problem if you choose to connect something to the CM4. If interested let me know and then I need to figure out how to make the USB selector chip to work with this scenario. This is really not a big deal as all what it does is saving you the OTG cable plus puts the USB-A connector accessible to outside in case we like to make a nice 3D printed case for it.I agree that this solution would be even more flexible, but I'm not sure how useful it really would be. Maybe as added storage to the CM4? But then, you couldn't use the USB connection going to the SOM simultaneously. I guess there's the option of cramming a USB hub chip in there somewhere.
In any case, I put in the order yesterday, so for this revision it's a moot point, I'm afraid. 😀
Let's cross our fingers and hope everything else works the way it's supposed to, and we could revisit this idea at a later time, if needed!
Yeah, as I said, I am not so attached to the idea and just wanted to put it out there.
Perhaps once we see more use cases with this approach we can look into a good USB hub chip to be added there.
Eivind wrote on 2024-07-28, 13:02:snipe3687 wrote on 2024-07-28, 12:54:Wow how did you get that trace at the top right to follow the contour of the board like that? It’s beautiful! I haven’t experimented with much outside of the normal traces that get drawn automatically. I tried doing to that were very diagonal, like more that 45 degrees. Probably close to maybe 65 but I chickened out. I was concerned it wouldn’t print properly. Ive said it before but this project is a work of art!
If you need any one to test things let me know.In Kicad, you can select two or more segments of a trace and then use the "Fillet tracks" action. There's also a Kicad plugin that'll do a best-effort run of rounding all the trace corners on the whole board.
It's really mostly an aesthetic thing - with today's PCB manufacturing process you can really have whatever angles and weird shapes you want, and it'll be manufactured exactly as you design it. As for functionality, I'm reasonably sure the track shapes don't matter unless we're talking very high speed signals and/or impedance-controlled or differential pairs.
Ah interesting. I figured it probably didn't matter too much but sometimes I over think things! What is that plugin called?
snipe3687 wrote on 2024-07-29, 13:48:Ah interesting. I figured it probably didn't matter too much but sometimes I over think things! What is that plugin called?
In Kicad, open the Plugin and Content Manager, search for "round", and install the Round Tracks plugin by mitxela.
Then, a new icon should appear in the PCB Editor toolbar. Click it and choose net classes you want to run it on, and a default corner radius and let it do its magic! 😀
It does a decent job, but you might need to tweak quite a few tracks manually by using/modifying the fillet track action. Run the DRC first to check for any errors after running the plugin.
I quite like the aesthetic of using rounded corners, it reminds me of carefully laid out boards from the 80s and 90s. 😀
Or picomem, does emulate harddisks and floppydrives from image and faster than XTIDE Universal, however i wonder if it could be also hook up on pci 32bot or pcie to impove the data transfer even more
centurion2024 wrote on 2024-07-31, 11:50:Or picomem, does emulate harddisks and floppydrives from image and faster than XTIDE Universal, however i wonder if it could be also hook up on pci 32bot or pcie to impove the data transfer even more
PicoMEM operates over the ISA bus, and will never get anywhere near the speeds of either the built in SD card or an hdd image served over USB 2.0.
As for floppy images, using the XUB option rom and serial at 3Mbps is already insanely fast, as floppy drives go. Full-formatting a 1.44MB disk only takes a couple of seconds, as an example.
I have been playing around with 86duino One this weekend. How much 86duino implementation is similar to TinyLlama 3 board?
86duino do not have interactive build-in BIOS setup. From this I understood that you will be providing your own build.
Also 86duino implementation does not like standard EMM386 under DOS6.22. EMS very critical for DOS programs. Never mind it didn't like RAM parameter. EMS seems to be working just fine.
Also is there a good single "do's and dont's" guide/readup about running DOS or do I need to scavenge Vogons various Vortex86EX threads over years?
vutt wrote on 2024-08-04, 12:15:86duino do not have interactive build-in BIOS setup. From this I understood that you will be providing your own build.
I've added and changed quite a lot in the BIOS over the last few years for the TinyLlama 1 and 2, plus the ITX-Llama. The TL3 will also have its own customized BIOS of course.
vutt wrote on 2024-08-04, 12:15:Also is there a good single "do's and dont's" guide/readup about running DOS or do I need to scavenge Vogons various Vortex86EX threads over years?
I recommend using FreeDOS, it comes with several memory managers and configurations ready to use and play with. You won't get any sound with the 86Duino in DOS, though.
In case you missed Pi Pico 2 news - https://bitbang.social/@polpo/112927947421217276
How about TinyLlama 3.1 then 😀 I personally think for true DOS coverage on top of GUS support SB Pro/opl3 is must. Pico 2 might provide enough oomph for that.
vutt wrote on 2024-08-09, 09:56:In case you missed Pi Pico 2 news - https://bitbang.social/@polpo/112927947421217276
How about TinyLlama 3.1 then 😀 I personally think for true DOS coverage on top of GUS support SB Pro/opl3 is must. Pico 2 might provide enough oomph for that.
Looks very promising indeed, and I'm sure I'll make another revision with the RP2350 later when it becomes available. AFAIK, only sample Pico boards are out in the hands of reviewers and "friends" so far.
Speaking of SB Pro, I know Ian has been experimenting with that on the current RP2040 as well.... time will tell! 😉
The batch of 3.1 boards are scheduled to be delivered to me today, btw. Fingers crossed DHL won't mess it up!
