exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

The Xilinx product range i've been using has been immense. Its been ultra easy to get going and its 5V tolerant.

That said all the Xilinx XC9500XL range are now discontinued and stocks are starting to twindle. I suspect there will be enough supply for the current TF projects but at some point I will need to switch.

I have always found it very hard to get hold of 3.3v logic that is 5V tolerant. I think this was the killer feature of the XC9500XL range. Its what let the TF series happen. That and DiagROM.

So suggestions are welcome. Buffering everything is a PITA. Why? because the more components you need to put on a board the more likely one of them will go out of stock and render the board useless...

Discuss.

I have the same problem 5V stuff almost doesn't exist now. Moving to FPGA for me means IO buffers which are a PITA. I think the 3.3V stuff is heading more towards 1.8V now. I mean that's what we have to put up with when using tech which is 30+ years old

I've been spending thousands on buying 5V stuff to keep a stock of them. Prices are always going up and always getting harder to find. So to keep my stuff on sale, I haven't got much choice but to bulk buy stuff. When that stock goes, that's it, game over for everyone.

Also I don't plan on doing this stuff in like 10 years time, so it can be someone else's problem

Not sure if this would suffice, but how about the Atmel ATF15xx series? Ie - https://www.digikey.com/products/en?mpa ... U100&v=150

1 I/O line less than the XC95144XL though, and short by

Kai Robinson wrote: ↑Thu Mar 21, 2019 12:52 pm Not sure if this would suffice, but how about the Atmel ATF15xx series? Ie - https://www.digikey.com/products/en?mpa ... U100&v=150

Those are the ones I use

The Atmel are not bad devices.. but the free tool(s) are absolute crap.
Xilinx has a big advantage there and that's why I moved from the Atmel to the Xilinx XC9500XL series as there is no free VHDL tool for the Atmel ATF15xx and WinCUPL only supports GAL level instructions (no VHDL either) and is not super stable and as far as I know no longer supported and maintained.
With the XC9500XL series going away this will become a real problem for some of us working on different cards (CPU, ....).

There are Altera 5V devices, but they are wayyyy expensive

As a beginner I am not so involved into the requirements for CPLDs in your projects. So I have to ask:
- how many IO pins are needed
- what does it means? Altera Max V is too expensive?
- how many logic elements are needed (or FlipFlops)?
Modern parts are called CPLDs, but most of times FPGAs with internal Flash device for content.
Examples are Lattice MachXO2, with some drawbacks MachXO3 and afak Altera Max V, which is the only one, with limited 5V Support ( data sheet says serial resistor is necessary), I know.
I spend some time with MachXO at work ( first one) and I like some features, like having access to internal flash areas for user data (ufm)...
Hth

Aliexpress seem to have companies with tens of thousands of stock of the the Xilinx XC9500XL range. I'm not sure it's going to be a huge issue.
I've just purchased 10 for £11 delivered. I will check over the quality and report back.

terriblefire wrote: ↑Sat Feb 16, 2019 9:39 am That said all the Xilinx XC9500XL range are now discontinued

Do you have the source (PDN) for that information? In fact, end of last year there was a PCN that they will change something in the packaging process of the XC9500XL starting in 2020, implying that Xilinx would still produce these CPLDs, then.

Ok well the £1 each CPLD's turned up this morning, I put it onto my 534 and it programmed up and verified fine.
It looks decent enough with the logo etched in and all markings seem legit. Either it is oem or a damn fine working fake.

JTAG chainpos: 1 Device IDCODE = 0x59608093 Desc: XC95144XL
Device is blank
Programming Sector 107.
Programming time 18696.6 ms
Verify Sector 107
Success! Verify time 3899.4 ms