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<wpwrak>
it can be painful enough to debug things where you don't have to worry so much about the contacts
<wpwrak>
let's see what ftg is ..
<kristianpaul>
same :)
<kristianpaul>
to me eyes
<wpwrak>
naw, don't try bga for your first project. use something simple. tqfp or such.
<wpwrak>
the next step is qfn / mlf. some are pretty friendly, i.e., the ones with inclined sides. others less so, i.e., the ones with vertical sides.
<kristianpaul>
and let said you got soldering all the balls, you still need more layers to route all chip...
<wpwrak>
depends on the pitch and on how many balls you actually need. but yes, in general, bga isn't suitable for diy pcbs. the best you can hope for is diy aoldering.
<xiangfu>
ftg256 is bga.
<wpwrak>
xiangfu: how do you plan to solder it ?
<wpwrak>
xiangfu: and do you expect to make your own pcb, or have the pcb made at a fab ?
<xiangfu>
direct use the hot air or an oven.
<kristianpaul>
oven oven !
<kristianpaul>
had you previous hot air esperience btw?
<kristianpaul>
be careful
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, about pcb, I want do that parallel, etching and send the file out to some fab.
<xiangfu>
100RMB give you 10cmX8cm. 10 pcs. it needs 4~5 days
<xiangfu>
kristianpaul, hot air. not much. I have a useless pcba for test. :)
<wpwrak>
fab sounds reasonable for the pcb. that may allow you to have vias under the fpga. in general, it's almost unavoidable to have vias there (with a bga). and diy can't do that.
<wpwrak>
still, i'd try to find a nice *qfp package if i was you :)
<wpwrak>
(or qfn, but i don't think they use that for fpgas. qfn is harder to solder than tqfp/lqfp but still manageable.)
<kristianpaul>
but xilinx..
<kristianpaul>
7 series seems have all from bga
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<kristianpaul>
:-/
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, my first plan even complicate. with all power ic and caps on pcb.
<xiangfu>
then I found I have problem on routing wires.
<kristianpaul>
tought csg is 0.8mm pitch..
<xiangfu>
so I remove again and again. then it only have the ftg256 chip and osc. :)
<kristianpaul>
ah ftg is .2 bigger
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, yes. since I have those qfp pin-out board. I direct jump to bga. for new xilinx chips.
<xiangfu>
kristianpaul, yes. that is 1mm pitch.
<wpwrak>
XC6SLX9-2TQG144C doesn't sound too evil. lqfp. 0.5 mm pitch is a bit tight, though.
<kristianpaul>
i like that
<xiangfu>
kristianpaul, most of xilinx chip is 1mm. only CSG and SBG is 0.8mm
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<wpwrak>
yeah, only bga for series 7
<wpwrak>
but ... if experimenting with series 6 now, AND it's your first pcb, there's little point in making your own life miserable
<kristianpaul>
tought you can follow azonenberg adventures on bga :)
<wpwrak>
i'm sure the wright brothers dreamed of flying to the moon, but they had the good sense of not trying their first flight with a supersonic rocket engine ;-)
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, the cable that for osc. it have GND wrap the singal around.
<wpwrak>
nice :) it's getting better
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, (not trying their first flight with a supersonic rocket engine ) :-)
<xiangfu>
kristianpaul, yes. I use azonenberg libs.
<wpwrak>
it'll still be a miracle if it works, but you're one step closer to something that might :)
<kristianpaul>
wrap?
<kristianpaul>
why?
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, I have a jtag-communication, can read the clock counter out. for 1000 time, it give 3 ~4 errors. still not stable enough.
<wpwrak>
why "why" ?
<kristianpaul>
why wrap things on a pcb with a fpga :)
<wpwrak>
xiangfu: yeah, that's roughly what i'd expect. circuits rarely fail 100%, but if you abuse them badly enough, they fail noticeably often.
<wpwrak>
kristianpaul: because he hasn't made his own pcb yet :)
<wpwrak>
alas, that adapter board is likely to do more harm than good
<wpwrak>
e.g., i doubt is has correct bypassing
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, I have to jump to BGA now. :) or it will take me too much time . good thing is I don't want all 256 pins out. I only need ~10 of them. so I want keep it 2 layer.
<wpwrak>
and the long cables probably act are excellent antennas. so maybe the board works at daytime, when the neighbour is away, but fails when he's back in the evening, downloading porn over wifi
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, 4 layer will totally not fit for me. I can read the 4 layer pcb. I can not create it now by kicad. :(
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, :-D
<wpwrak>
why do you think bga will help you save time ?
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, (, i doubt is has correct bypassing) what do you mean ?
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, skip qfp-pcb, direct go to bga-pcb. I think it will same me 50% time of qfp-pcb. :)
<wpwrak>
(bypassing) capacitors, placed very near (not more than a few mm) to the fpga's pins
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, oh. yes.
<wpwrak>
well ... in addition to the circuit problems you'll have to fight the soldering problems. and if you discover that you need to access some pin that's unconnected, you have to make another board
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, one of the 3 board have little improvement. the capacitors at the back of qfp144 pin-out board.
<wpwrak>
with *qfp, you just solder a little wire to that "new" pin
<wpwrak>
(caps) ah, that's good. that should help a lot.
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, I am using Brother HL-2140 laser printer.
<kristianpaul>
use foil paper at night :-)
<wpwrak>
that looks rather odd indeed
<wpwrak>
does the postscript look fine ?
<xiangfu>
(with *qfp, you just solder a little wire to that "new" pin) I think I have experience on pin-out board. so I direct jump to pcb. and I this one not working. I have to learn more knowledge on pcb (via etc)
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, too bad. I am still not read the book you advise me.
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, the postscript looks good.
<wpwrak>
looks like a printer driver problem then. maybe google around a bit. cups may also have more than one driver for your printer and selecting a different one may help
<wpwrak>
the pin-out board was a detour. if you make your own board, you can improve a lot of things even if still using *qfp.
<wpwrak>
e.g., you can have a nice big ground plane. and much shorter tracks for everything.
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, wait. I check the postscript agian.
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, it looks same as the result.
<wpwrak>
hah ! :)
<wpwrak>
in pcbnew, did you "plot" or "print" ?
<xiangfu>
"print"
<wpwrak>
i rest my case ;-)
<wpwrak>
"print" is broken. only use "plot"
<xiangfu>
(the pin-out board was a detour.... you can improve a lot...) yes. totally agree.
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, trying plot now..
<wpwrak>
you should find the "make front" and "make back" targets in my various projects useful. they invoke pcbnew with all the right settings for toner transfer
<wpwrak>
in particular, they select the right mirroring
<xiangfu>
plot looks much much better.
<wpwrak>
kewl :)
<xiangfu>
huge difference :)
* kristianpaul
take note about plot
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<kyak>
xiangfu: qt4 build is still failing on buildhost?
<kyak>
xiangfu: also, why mpg123 gets built? It depends on BUILD_PATENTED...
<kyak>
that's pretty damn strange, i see qt4 has built.. perhaps it's one of qt4's packages that fails to build
<xiangfu>
kyak, so we can just remove mpg123 instead of re-build. right?
<kyak>
xiangfu: just forget about mpg123, it won't get built
<kyak>
xiangfu: do you know which part of qt4 failed?
<kyak>
there are two dependent packages, which have failed due to qt4 - these are qball and qstardict. Makes we wonder, because qball has exactly the same deps as Tile, which built just fine
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<xiangfu>
kyak, qt-xml. and I know qt-demos also failed.
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<roh>
h
<roh>
re
<kyak>
xiangfu: strange, qt4-xml builds just fine here
<viric>
Has anyone ever connected two linuces by serial port, and then expect one side "echo hello > /dev/ttyS0" to emit hello at the other side, running "cat /dev/ttyS0"?
<viric>
what magic is there?
<xiangfu>
viric, I just do then on ben nanonoto and laptop. it works fine.
<viric>
maybe I have some broken hw in the middle
<viric>
I just can't tell what
<viric>
xiangfu: does 'cat' and 'echo' work for you?
<viric>
xiangfu: can you paste 'stty -F serialdevice -a' ?
<roh>
pin 5 straigh through (gnd) and 2 and 3 crossed
<roh>
+t
<viric>
2 and 3 are crossed
<roh>
some weird serials loose state as soon as you close them (baudrate, handshake etc)
<roh>
so simply cat may npt work
<viric>
it's a full featured null modem cable.
<viric>
with hw flow control even
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<viric>
I think I have a bad mainboard-to-db9 cable
<viric>
or a broken mainboard port
<viric>
the mainboard manual even does not include the pinout of the COM1 connector
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<viric>
crossing tx/rx doesn't give echo, in one end.
<viric>
on the other, yes.
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<pcercuei>
hi fellow neighbours
<pcercuei>
I want to introduce some change on GMenu2X, that might break things, I want your green light first
<pcercuei>
each app on gmenu2x can be given parameters
<pcercuei>
I want to drop that feature
<pcercuei>
that's unpractical, and redundant; if an app requires specific (and constant) parameters, then it's much more practical to wrap the binary using a script
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<mth>
is "exec=application --arg" equivalent to the parameters feature?
<pcercuei>
I think in the current code, the value given to "exec" must be a file without arguments, as there is a check on the existence of the binary: if the binary is not present the link won't display
<pcercuei>
but that's fixable very easily
<mth>
since in .desktop, "Exec" can include arguments, including things like %f for a file name
<mth>
gmenu2x doesn't use .desktop at the moment, but maybe could in the future (also outside of OPK support)
<whitequark>
pcercuei: why drop that feature? it isn't hard to implement/maintain by any means
<pcercuei>
whitequark: just like every other "feature" we dropped, because it's crappily implemented, we don't use it at all, and it's redundant
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