Open Graphics schematics posted

Posted Mar 8, 2006 21:40 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333)
In reply to: Open Graphics schematics posted by freeio
Parent article: Open Graphics schematics posted

Ah. Very good.

I think that if tools to create hardware become more ubiquitous then it could be possible.

Like if you could run down to the store and buy or maybe rent time on some sort of a inkjet printer that could print out layers of silicon and metal to build up a circuit board in a relatively inexpensive way based on designs you could download from the internet.

Of course then you'd have to figure out a sane way to sodier all the tiny things on that. And then if the tools to program FPGAs were relatively inexpensive and accessable..

Then maybe you'd start to see more interest.

The nice thing about software, I guess, is that the tools are cheap and acccessable. Also software is a community thing were you can take a existing code and apply it to lots of different purposes. Also software is modifiable and if you find bugs they can be fixed and then patches redistributed.

With hardware pretty much none of that is true.

Oh well. I would be 100% perfectly happy if hardware companies would simply release specs, for the software accessable portions, that would provide the nessicary documentation for writing drivers or whatnot.

Open Graphics schematics posted

Posted Mar 10, 2006 13:26 UTC (Fri) by gyles (guest, #1600) [Link]

The tools to program FPGAs are often free-as-in-beer for the smaller devices - which is all you'd ever be able to fill at a hobbyist level.

e.g.
http://www.altera.com/products/software/products/quartus2...
http://www.xilinx.com/ise/logic_design_prod/webpack.htm

There are also low priced development boards available:

http://www.xilinx.com/xlnx/xebiz/designResources/ip_produ...
http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-nios_ev...

The barriers to entry are low.