Interesting RF FPGA board on ebay - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: tinhead
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2013, 12:49:42 pm
content: while doing my weekly "ebay check" i found this herehttp://www.ebay.de/itm/231019705474these two Virtex 5 are for sure already interessting, but there are as well 2 dual 1.2GSPS 16bit DACs, PLLs and lot of other RF parts.

author: poorchava
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2013, 01:15:47 pm
content: Lol, each of those FPGAs is over 1300 bucks on digikey

author: tinhead
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2013, 01:28:02 pm
content: oh well, SXT version is expensive than LXT versions like in the other board i found some time ago on ebayhttps://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/cheap-virtex-5-board-(actually-it-is-primesense-devkit-better-known-as-kinect)/but more interessting (for me at least) is the DAC and RF part of the PCB. However i will not buy it, i'm sort with money :\ but i thought "why not tell others".

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2013, 01:39:31 pm
content: Bear in mind that the free version of FPGA software often doesn't support larger devices, so always check before going after stuff like this, as if the software support isn't there the chips are useless unless you want pay a few $K for devtools

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2013, 02:41:38 pm
content: Good luck figuring out which ball is connected where. You are looking at a 10 to 16 layer board. Those beasts have 1500+ pins... Ad that matrix underneath os fully populated... Not a single missing ball..Desoldering them , reballing and making your own board is your only option.And then there is the softwarelicence (what mike said)

author: AlfBaz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2013, 03:06:13 pm
content: Cant remember if it was Dave, Mike or maybe both that did a video dismantling an RF section with a machined shield over a PCB similarly laid out like this one. Wouldn't that mean that even if you had all the documentation for that board it wouldn't work without the shield?

author: PA0PBZ
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2013, 03:09:39 pm
content: Quote from: AlfBaz on July 22, 2013, 03:06:13 pmI think both did, and yes, using the board for what it was made for is going to be a no without the shielding.

author: marshallh
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 22, 2013, 10:08:14 pm
content: Boards like this pop up on ebay all the time.Recently there was one from a major AOI manufacturer, with dual Stratix III and tons of ram.I almost got it, but remembered without the ballout and schematics it's nothing more than a paperweight.You could pull off the FPGAs and throw them on your own PCB, but designing such a pcb is... nontrivialIf you want to play around though, and have $$$ for a 8layer panel you could have some fun.

author: joelby
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 23, 2013, 01:20:21 am
content: If JTAG is accessible, one of the few things random FPGA boards might be useful for is Bitcoin mining, since this can be done completely over JTAG.It's probably not really worth the money and effort though, unless perhaps someone's already built a bitfile for this particular FPGA or you own a license for the Xilinx tools and have plenty of free time.

author: neslekkim
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 23, 2013, 05:31:52 am
content: Quote from: joelby on July 23, 2013, 01:20:21 amWonder if anyone have done that for the Pano Logic G2 units, I have one of those, and it's an Spartan6 LX150 inside it...

author: tinhead
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 24, 2013, 06:53:47 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on July 22, 2013, 02:41:38 pmnothing what can't be done, did it with lot of other boards already, here in forum e.g. Tekway/Hantek DSOs or this FPGA board:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/cheap-virtex-5-board-(actually-it-is-primesense-devkit-better-known-as-kinect)/My postings was actually more DAC/RF focused, these two FPGAs were only on top and only useful on own PCB (the amount of other components was too high to do any other useful implementation than the original one, maybe except non i/o related things).