gEDA-user: Fwd: [Open-graphics] How to get more eyes on OGD1 schematic?

[Peter Brett <peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks,

If any of you fancy providing some help with the OpenGraphics project, this is 
your chance!

The OpenGraphics project (which you may have heard of on KernelTrap [1]) is a 
project to design a fully open-specification OpenGL accelerator card that 
will Just Work with Free operating systems (Linux, *BSD, etc).

The project has just released first draft schematics for a FPGA-based 
development board (OGD1) which will be used to design the RTL for the 
graphics core. The RTL will be used to design an ASIC, around which the final 
product will be built.

Unfortunately, most of the people involved are software or IC engineers, and 
so help's really needed to check over the schematics for any major bugs 
before work starts on the artwork.

Schematics (PDF): http://natsuki.kinali.ch/OGD1_Schematic_RevB.pdf
BOM (text): http://natsuki.kinali.ch/OGD1_RevA_BOM.txt
BOM (ODS): http://www.peter-b.co.uk/downloads/opengraphics/OGD1_RevA.2_BOM.ods

N.b. BOM is for Rev.A of the schematics, so it's not up-to-date at the moment.

Also, if anyone feels like it, help is also needed converting the schematics 
to gschem!

If you're interested in helping with any of this, please join the OpenGraphics 
mailing list: http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics ... 
don't send stuff through me, I'm going to be AFK for about the next 6 
weeks. :)

Peter


[1] http://kerneltrap.org/node/6262 (there are some other relevant articles on 
KernelTrap too)



----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: [Open-graphics] How to get more eyes on OGD1 schematic?
Date: Tuesday 14 March 2006 19:13
From: "Timothy Miller" <theosib@xxxxxxxxx>
To: ogml <open-graphics@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

There have been a number of you who have looked at the schematic,
found some bugs, and commented on it, and we're very grateful for the
help.

Howard has quite a lot more experience with PCB design, so it's no
surprise that he's managed to find a number of additional bugs on his
own since the release.  What concerns me is leaving him as a
bottleneck.  The great likelihood is that he, being one person,
working on this in his spare time, is going to miss a LOT of bugs, and
if we were to produce that board, it could be disasterous.

Does anyone here have any ideas as to how we might attract some more
experienced PCB designers to the project?

And I have another idea.  We have a great deal of highly intelligent
software people on this list.  Unfortunately, it's a huge learning
barrier for them to try to make sense of the schematic.  Maybe we
should try to break it down, page by page.  With enough people
discussing it and asking what the heck things mean and all that, it
could be a fun learning experience (not to mention valuable for your
resume).

In one sense, this project is going to take as long as it takes.
We're all contributing in our spare time, and it's difficult.  But on
the other hand, I'm anxious to have an open-architecture graphics card
in my computer, and anything we can do to enhance the rate of progress
will be a boon for the project.

Any suggestions?

I'm trying to figure out ways to make this project more fun and exciting.  :)




-- 
Quake II build tools: http://peter-b.co.uk/

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