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What should the USB card have?
Grant Stockly wrote:
>> Well yeah, there's that. But why pay for a wellmade board made to my
>> specs when I can spend a lot more time making something of subpar
>> quality?
>
> I don't think any of the DIY PCB methods are going to be superior to
> Express PCB. They make very nice boards. The boards I got from
> ExpressPCB are equal in quality to all of the production boards I've
> bought.
I have no doubt that my boards will be vastly inferior to anything.
But it's like the equivalent of letting people loose in the show "Junkyard
Wars" in a Ferrari dealership.
Ie my board is destined to be mangled after I find painfully glaring errors
in my checked-thrice uber amazing perfect design /sarcasm
If/when I settle on a design that I am truly happy with I'd definitely use a
custom board maker.
In the mean time I plan on making a small daughterboard (although because
it's going to be a daughterboard of a daughterboard does that make it a
grand-daughter board?) with just the USB hardware on it and a 3.3v source
because it is a PITA to redo. Especially the PGA socket. I do the same
thing already with a small MAX232 board.
I know this is off in a branch of the thread, but whie I'm on the subject I
might as well do this:
Okay, I have seen many great ideas for what should and shouldn't be on the
USB card.
I want to make something that people will find useful.
For the plain USB card I don't want it to be overly complex. Ie no
programmable logic (GAL, CPLD, FPGA) etc. so the average hobbyist can build
it without breaking down in tears and/or needing to make/buy a lot of
equipment.
The main issues here seem to be:
1. Direct bus connection or via uC.
1a. If uC, how much should it do?
1b. Should it just be OS routine compatible or perform some level of
hardware emulation (Ie. SSC, mouse 2, Disk 2 etc. (Sounds difficult!))
2. What should be in the firmware?
3. Should it support just a single device at a time or multiple devices
(purely soft/firmware issue).
Remember this card isn't intended to be a super-serious device worth $$$.
It's more a toy that can be used semi-seriously.
Also later I may see if I can get some Cypress EZ-USB uCs out of them. Using
something so integrated has its +'s and -'s though. It'd probably better
for something like a USB storage card with builtin FS support. I know I'd
like one of them!
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