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Thread: bILDA experiences

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Location
    New York, USA
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    33

    Default bILDA experiences

    All,

    I'm going to upgrade from Popelscan to either HE-Laserscan or Mamba Black... In anticipation of this change, I think I will build the bILDA DAC since it will potentially work with all three. (Or, I may just wait for the rumored Pangolin Hobbyist package. We'll see...)

    Now a couple questions -
    Does anybody know an American source for the Cypress AN2135SC USB Microcontroller? Most places either say "call" or want you to buy large quantities. The part is now obsolete, so that makes it tough.

    How easy is the bILDA firmware download? That's the part I'm most wary of...

    Thanks,

    -Andy C.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    SoCal
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    Default

    Ooh, that's an old Anchor Networks chip from right before cypress bought them out. I did some research with our vendors and you can still buy them, but not in small quantities. If you could get a group of 20 or so interested parties, then USBid and other chip brokers would definitely find it for you.

    I would personally definitely migrate to newer Cypress FX lines as they have fixed a bunch of bugs in those chips (and added a couple new ones in all honesty), we did some initial dev using those AN21x chips about 5 years ago but abandoned it as a poor implementation of a good idea. The newer chips are much nicer...

    You'd be migrating to the 128 TQFP CY7C64713-128AXC

    It's not a drop in replacement as the pads and pinout are not strictly compatible.

    In physical hardware the only changes (besides rerouting the pad and pins)
    you need to make is the three below.
    You will replace the original crystal with a 24Mhz crystal.
    You can remove the termination resistors as they are not needed.
    You can remove the 1.5K pullup resistor

    But perhaps more importantly, the registers and addresses do not match up.
    If you are compiling the firmware yourself then it is mostly a matter of
    relinking to new libraries and updating the jump tables.

    A complete migration document is linked to below...

    http://download.cypress.com/publishe...fx1_tm__12.pdf

    I would ask the bIlda guys themselves if they are interested in undertaking it with you, you'll find that most developers are quite excited to do a lot of hard work and all it takes is the motivation that other enthusiasts provide. Of the open schematics I've seen, the bIlda output stage is very nice, I might even say even better some commercial units. If you do not get an acceptable response from them, I'd definitely be up to helping you map out the pinouts in my somewhat sparse free time... Be forewarned that it'll be quite some work if you are not accustomed to doing microcontroller development.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Melbourne, Australia
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    Default

    The lumax interface might be a better choice.

    A AVR and a FTDI chip to interface to usb

    http://www.lumax.de/eigenbau/index.html
    KVANT Australian projector sales
    https://www.facebook.com/kvantaus/

    Lasershowparts- Laser Parts at great prices
    https://www.facebook.com/lasershowparts/

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Location
    New York, USA
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    Default

    Thanks for the replies Yadda and Dave...

    @Yadda

    That's funny that you know the chip - sounds like you know them well I've done some PIC microcontroller stuff, but thats the extent of it... That would probably be a valuable upgrade to make for bILDA but I don't know if I'm up to it I've heard they're working on a new version maybe they'll use a new chip like that.

    @Dave

    Thanks - I had seen the Lumax before, but totally forgotten about it. I checked it out and while it is more complicated and probably a tad more expensive to make, all the parts are available from Mouser except one IC which you can get at Jameco. And, it also has a driver for HE-Laserscan and Mamba Black.

    Allrighty, now the question is - do I really wanna do this or should I just wait for Pangolin? We'll see...

    Thanks again,

    -Andy C.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Melbourne, Australia
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    and its 12bit too..

    If you don't want to wait for pangolin, you could always purchase a FB3USB card. I believe this will be 100% compatible with the new 'freak' software they will be releasing...
    KVANT Australian projector sales
    https://www.facebook.com/kvantaus/

    Lasershowparts- Laser Parts at great prices
    https://www.facebook.com/lasershowparts/

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