CT-6x goes PCI, or?

jorevall · August 4, 2005

This was released by Rodolpho the other day..

He is looking to produce a PCI board for the CT-6x expansion.

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07/31/2005

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I'm planning to design and produce a PCI adaptor for CT60/63...

For that I need at least 100 pre-orders... the list of pre-orders is open up to september, the 30th of 2005 !

At september 30th, if there is not 100 boards on my list, the project is definitively cancelled or I will check to increase the price of the board !

You can see what will be this adaptor here :

http://www.czuba-tech.com/ct60/CTPCI.GIF

- It is a small card that plugs on the CT60/63 bus and uses a PLX 9054 LOCAL-PCI bridge.

This modern bridge is the successor of the 9080 that was used in the Milan.

It is register backward compatible...

- Because some of you have ATX tower case, they will want to use the rear brackets of the tower or at least use a rear place. So the other part of the CTPCI is a board connected with two 40 wires ribbon cables (must be short) with 3 PCI slots (one for graphical card and 2 others for what people will be able to do & develop).

- The slots will be 32-bits with ajustable clock for PCI (default will be 33 MHz and you may tune it up to 66 MHz : the PLX is not able to run PCI 66 MHz !). Voltages will be 5V and 3.3V power (no 3.3V on Milan PCI slots !).

- The adaptor will be slave and master PCI : this means that the PCI cards will be able to initiate a PCI master transaction to local bus and so SDRAM of the CT60 without CPU (the eclipse board is just slave, no PCI mastering and the CPU does all transfers in the 2 senses !).

- There are several good PCI graphical cards available : one will be to be choosen by the developer(s). Several developers are ready to help and contribute, some of them have already contributed with fVDI by example !).

So I'm confidente for this technical point...

- I will try to design the PCI socket PCB to be cuttable between the first and second PCI slot (to have a single PCI slot card) to allow some of you to try to integrate a small graphical card into their falcon case...(why not).

- Yes, it will be possible to plug the EtherNAT board under it.

If I receive the 100 boards pre-orders, I will design the board...and will request you to pay by advance. The payment is my only assurance that I will not be with some unsold boards after : 10 to 25% of people do not honor their pre-order (do not pay and do not give sign of life !).

Do not send money until I give you my decision (after 30.09) !

Do not forget to give me your name (for those who send me anonymous emails !).

Price : 120 EUR, maybe a bit more (140).

Delays : 1 months to design + 1 month to produce prototype and try it with some software developers. After production may take 1 to 2 months according the delays to get the parts (here the only that may give problems is PLX).

If you have some questions to decide, do not hesitate...

Rodolphe