New batch of pdp8 OMNIBUS to USB interface! Please Read and react!

[Jay Jaeger]

On 2/17/2017 10:01 AM, Philipp Hachtmann wrote:
> 
> 
> On 02/17/2017 01:02 AM, Jay Jaeger wrote:
>> First of all THANKS. I hope this works out.
> ?!?
> 

The thanks was for your effort.  The hope that it works out was to say
that I hope that you decide to make some more and sell them, which seems
uncertain at this point.

> 
>> An area with place to mount, say, a 40 pin header (2x20) or the like, on
>> one edge of the board, with a set of places where one could jumper those
>> pins to a set of I/O pins of the CPLD/FPGA would be really cool.
> As far as I just remember, there are no substantial IO pins left.
> And there is no FPGA.

I knew you had used an CPLD in the first version, but I had no idea what
you intended to do for the next one.  That was why I wrote CPLD/FPGA.

> 
>> A spot where one could mount an Arduino compatible shield - again with
>> no actual connections, but a place where one could jumper them to some
>> I/O pins on the CPLD/FPGA might be really cool.  (e.g., using the CPLD
>> to run an SPI bus connection to a shield).
> No support for Arduino. Unter no circumstanced. I really don't like
> Arduino except for:
> 
> - I can get extremely cheap AVR boards ("nano") for arbitrary use.
> 

That was why I specifically wrote *shield*.  There are a lot of SPI
interface boards out there, and if there were a little room in the chip
to handle an Omnibus/SPI interface, a lot could conceivably be done with
it.  Examples:  SD Cards, Ethernet and so on.


>> In short, ways that folks could take your basic board and make it
>> possible to do other things with it could increase the value of the
>> board enormously.
> Probably. But I want to create/use/provide a simple tool that does
> exactly one thing perfectly.

I understand, and have no problem with that as a philosophy.

> 
>> You might consider KiCAD as an alternative to Eagle.  It works pretty
>> darned well.
> Why should I? If you look at the board's size you probably see that it
> cannot be made using the free version. I own a paid Eagle 7 license. Why
> should I throw that away? Started to use Eagle as a child. Have my own
> libraries and footprints. Got used to the odds. And I won't use that
> KiCAD thing. It smells too much like dumb Arduino folks. And I do not
> want to share to much with that community.

The why was that, before today, I had not realized that there might be
tools to convert from Eagle to KiCAD, which made Eagle files of no use
to me.

As others have since pointed out, KiCAD has nothing whatsoever to do
with Arduino.  Others have addressed its strengths and weaknesses.  In
my case, the comment stemmed from perhaps wanting to take you hardware
design, and adapt it for other purposes, without having to start from
scratch.

> 
> Kind regards
> 
> Philipp
> 

Thanks again.