GA144 Devboard Pool?

Anyone interested in starting a pool to purchase the new GA
devboards?

-Mux

To what end?  Lower price?  Cornering the market on the early boards?
Creating all IP that will be needed for the peripherals?

Rick

rickman < XXXX@XXXXX.COM > writes:

I thought Mux's idea was for several people to contribute towards buying
a board that they could then all play with.  That only makes sense to me
if the people involved are nearby enough to share the board.  I guess
I'm sort of interested in the idea.  Or if Mux has some interesting
ideas about what to do with the board and will report the results here
on clf, I guess I'd toss a few dollars towards it just to see what
happens.

I notice there are some useful new docs on the GA web site, if anyone
hasn't seen them yet.

Purely from a price point of view. Get 10 or more people and shave $70
off of the board price. That might not sound like a lot, but still..

-Mux

Anyone? Bueller? Beuller?

Mux < XXXX@XXXXX.COM > writes:


I wouldn't buy a board of my own unless I could think of a definite
application and was convinced that I'd actually do something with it
instead of it turning into yet another piece of unused hardware in my
pile of such things.  But I know a few people who might be interested in
chipping in towards a shared board, and I could see doing that.  I'll
look into it.

How would a shared board work? Surely at some point people are going
to either want their share back or want the whole thing? Unlike the
plethora of FPGA dev-boards out there, I'd reason that GA's chip is
unique and different enough to warrent having your own devboard for.

-Mux

I don't really see the value of "sharing" a board except in one narrow
case-- a *local* Forth user group.

What "Mux" is talking about is a group purchase to get the per-board
price down to the 10 or 20 piece pricing.  And I'd be interested in
joining in except for two things:

1.  The information about the evaluation boards is preliminary.  And
unless people want to voluntarily help fund GreenArrays out of the
goodness of their hearts, it doesn't make any sense to speculatively
purchase an evaluation board until details are available.  People who
disagree may want to consider purchasing my car.  It has four wheels,
runs on gas, and absorbs light of specific frequencies.  What more do
you need to know?

2.  While I'm sure "Mux" is a fine fellow, I guess I feel a bit funny
sending $380 to someone I only know as a fellow participant in the
newsgroup.  What would probably make sense is to find one of those
cheap escrow services to manage the money (and to return the money in
case a minimum of 10 people aren't found).  Alternatively, send the
money to someone who those making the purchase trust.

John Passaniti < XXXX@XXXXX.COM > writes:

There's some logic to that, but the GA144 is similar enough to the Sea40
that it's a reasonable speculative bet that the board does something
sensible.  As for voluntarily funding GA, I could imagine buying
something like a printed doc set or a T-shirt for that purpose, but a
dev board is somewhat out of my price range unless I'm going to use it
in a real project.  Others here of course might make such a decision
differently.


There's a group of hackers who I hang around with in my town, who aren't
specifically Forth users but who have a bunch of shared resources
including Arduino stuff, test equipment, and so forth.  A shared GA144
board might fit that picture if enough people were interested.  Local
Forth user groups are of course another possibility.


Yes I understand that.


Maybe the money part could be handled by GA itself, if GA is willing to
deposit 10 separate checks.  There'd be some online coordination and if
10 people were found, everyone would send their check on the same day
with a suitable note saying it was part of the group.  GA presumably
would still want to ship out just one package, so there would still be
the matter of distributing the 10 boards.

I have a Sea40 evaluation kit with board, connectors and software that 
I'll never use again.  The concept and instruction set is at least very 
close to GA, if not identical, if you want to explore it.  Make me an 
offer; shipping from Hawaii.

Note, the software is the SwiftX-based system we developed for 
Intellasys, including a simulator.  It is not Colorforth.

Cheers,
Elizabeth

-- 
==================================================
Elizabeth D. Rather   (US & Canada)   800-55-FORTH
FORTH Inc.                         +1 310.999.6784
5959 West Century Blvd. Suite 700
Los Angeles, CA 90045
 http://www.**--****.com/ 

"Forth-based products and Services for real-time
applications since 1973."
==================================================

> Elizabeth D. Rather (US & Canada) 800-55-FORTH>
> FORTH Inc. +1 >10.999.6784
> 5959 West Century Blv>. Suite 700
> Los Angeles, CA 90045http://w>w.>orth.com
>
> "Forth-based products and Services f>r real-time
> applications >ince 1973."
> ==================================================

Message Sent! :-)

> > purchase an evaluation board until details are available. >>
>> There's some logic to that, but the GA144 is similar enough to the Sea40
>> that it's a reasonable speculative bet that the board does something
>> sensible. s for voluntarily funding GA, I could imagine buying
>> something like a printed doc set or a T-shirt for that purpose, but a
>> dev board is somewhat out of my price range unless I'm going to use it
>> in a real project. thers here of course might make such a decision
>> differently.
>>
>>>> I don't really see the value of "sharing" a board except in one narrow
>>>> case-- a *local* Forth user group.
>>
>> There's a group of hackers who I hang around with in my town, who aren't
>> specifically Forth users but who have a bunch of shared resources
>> including Arduino stuff, test equipment, and so forth.  shared GA144
>> board might fit that picture if enough people were interested. ocal
>> Forth user groups are of course another possibility.
>>
>>>> What "Mux" is talking about is a group purchase to get the per-board
>>>> price down to the 10 or 20 piece pricing. gt;
>>
> Yes I understand that.>
>>
> > What would probably make sense is to find one of those>
> > cheap escrow services to manage the money (and to return the money in>
> > case a minimum of 10 people aren't found).>
>>
> Maybe the money part could be handled by GA itself, if GA is willing to>
> deposit 10 separate checks. here'd be some online coordination and if>
> 10 people were found, everyone would send their check on the same day>
> with a suitable note saying it was part of the group. A presumably>
> would still want to ship out just one package, so there would still be>
> the matter of distributing the 10 boards.

Considering the somewhat low turn-out I don't think this is going to
matter :-) Either way, yes.. there would need to be some sort of
escrow account or an agreement would need to be struck with GA.

-Mux

> does something sensible. 

Huh?  You're talking about processors, and we're talking about
evaluation boards.  The similarity of the GA144 to the SeaForth chips
has nothing to do with what they decide to put on the evaluation
board.  And what is on the evaluation board (or in this case, how much
area is left over on the prototyping area) is what will determine if
people (like myself) would get it.  That's why I want to know more
details.

Not identical.  The differences are documented.


I never heard about this software before.  What is different
in that software than the software written by and provided
by IntellaSys ie. the VentureForth SEAforth compiler and
simulator?

cheers

I think the two boards in question use the same pinout for the
Forth chips.  The I/O and what else is on the board is different.
Green Array Chips has said that they will release more information
on what will be on their boards and how to connect things to them.

The old IntellaSys board I have has a zero insertion force socket
for the Forth chip and a USB interface chip with custom software
done by one of the companies purchased by TPL using patent royaltees.
So a PC is expected to talk to the USB chip and have it talk to
the Forth chip using a synchronous serial boot node.  The Green
Array Chips' board will not use the proprietary USB chip.

Among other things addressing, instruction, and ROM content
differences will demand modification of software tools by
people who wish to mix and match their chips, boards, and
software tools to properly account for the differences and
would not be the best way for most people to get started.
People who know enough to want to design their own boards
or write all their own software excepted.

Best Wishes