Blitter stock status

Post by **exxos** » Tue Apr 03, 2018 1:27 pm

Blitters I have been having a hard time sourcing. Though I have found a supplier who seems to have a stock of new blitters... Franky amazed!

Only problem is these are costing a small fortune to buy

I have had to increase the cost to £28 per IC in my store as this is almost the price its costing to obtain them now

I'm re-thinking of copying the blitter (gate level diagram) over to a altera PLD as talked about before... viewtopic.php?f=29&t=79

While the PLD is expensive, a PLCC adapter could be done to fit in the STF/M machines.. as I think that is the main use of people buying them..

Though there is the VHDL cores from suska which I know nothing about.. Likely still expensive route (I have no idea bout VHDL and really don't have time/interest to learn it all) though "code" version of the blitter may not be 100% compatible. But a gate level version would be. It would be a lot of work to copy the diagram and test.. but not 100% it will fit in the PLD.. assume so, but need to create the schematic to see what LA count it really ends up being..

For now I will try and keep a few blitters in stock. Though I don't really want to invest around £3,000 in buying 100 of them!

: blitter.jpg (67.66 KiB) Viewed 352 times

EDIT:

So I only managed to obtain 9 of them. Supplier says no more stock of them

So I guess this marks the end of the supply of blitters. I guess best-elect still sells them...

Post by **DrF** » Wed Apr 04, 2018 10:13 am

exxos wrote: ↑
Tue Apr 03, 2018 1:27 pm
EDIT:

So I only managed to obtain 9 of them. Supplier says no more stock of them So I guess this marks the end of the supply of blitters. I guess best-elect still sells them...

That's really bad news

This a off the shelf part then?
I'm assuming there's no alternative/replacement out there 100% compatible?

Post by **exxos** » Wed Apr 04, 2018 10:16 am

DrF wrote: ↑
Wed Apr 04, 2018 10:13 am
That's really bad news
This a off the shelf part then?
I'm assuming there's no alternative/replacement out there 100% compatible?

Its a custom chip, Atari designs, SGS made them.. no stock anymore. Its why I am looking at the suska core for FPGA replacements of the chips.. if they can be proven 100% compatible then they can be used and even used in the STF remake project.

Also I want to revamp the MMU to use faster RAM etc, so FPGA is the only way to go..