An open source Xilinx Spartan 6 miniPCIe development board

[polysome]

https://github.com/polysome/aggregate-1

[Scrts]

What is the intention of the board? Coin mining assistance?

[marshallh]

Nice work

[Korken]

Nice!!

What made the decision to use the Spartan 6 and not the Artix 7?

[legacy]

is there anything similar but for PCI/miniPCI instead of miniPCIe ?
(commercial kits are also the welcome)

[chickenHeadKnob]

is there anything similar but for PCI/miniPCI instead of miniPCIe ?
(commercial kits are also the welcome)

@legacy: have a look at mesanet.com http://www.mesanet.com/

They make standard bus cards in pc-104, PCI and PCIe, with smaller spartan 6's. Haven't bought from them as I am restricting myself to Altera/Quartus toolchain at the moment, and I want to finish an Altera design first. They have about the cheapest that I have found. They target CNC and industrial controls and linuxCNC can recognize some of them. Note that for PCIe bus interface they don't appear to use a PCIe hardblock spartan LXT whatever, and instead use one of those PCI to PCIe bridge chips from PLX.

@polysome or whoever can confirm: Is the spartan XC6SLX100T still covered by Xilinx free tools?

[slateraptor]

@polysome or whoever can confirm: Is the spartan XC6SLX100T still covered by Xilinx free tools?

Nope[1]...I don't believe it ever was.

[1] ISE Design Suite Product Table

[legacy]

@legacy: have a look at mesanet.com http://www.mesanet.com/

excellent, it's exactly what I was looking for. I am also planning to buy one extra PCI card in order to develop a custom VDU for SGI Octane2/XIO_PCI, simply because I am tired to have to deal with their IOC3 chip (which makes the SGI XIO_PCI NOT fully compliant with intel's specifications). I will design a custom board, in order to provide a decent VDU to this machine. Under linux.

The second board is for more serious stuff (job stuff). Fully intel compliant, the target is a common PC.

Thank you for the tips.

[ale500]

It is a very nice and compact board, no question....

And the design files are what exactly... Altium Designer's files ?
- No free EDA for schematic/pcb... check
- No free fpga tools... check

Why and what is it "opensource" again ?

[chickenHeadKnob]

@polysome or whoever can confirm: Is the spartan XC6SLX100T still covered by Xilinx free tools?

Nope[1]...I don't believe it ever was.

[1] ISE Design Suite Product Table

Thanks, that is what I thought, but I don't trust my memory completely anymore. I made the mistake on another thread concerning support for the zync soc on the parallella and Frank Buss set me straight. Lack of free (as in cost) toolchain for this chip is kind of a showstopper for most of us hobby types.

[slateraptor]

Thanks, that is what I thought, but I don't trust my memory completely anymore. I made the mistake on another thread concerning support for the zync soc on the parallella and Frank Buss set me straight. Lack of free (as in cost) toolchain for this chip is kind of a showstopper for most of us hobby types.

Even if it were designed to be pin-wise compatible with the 75T, which is supported by WebPACK, a $120 USD price point for the FPGA + BGA-centric design + PCIe interface puts it well out of reach for all but the well equipped and dedicated, let alone casual hobbyist...although I suspect polysome's target audience isn't your average tinkerer.