Part of it is form factor. Earlier FPGAs used such as the Altera and Xillinx FPGAs were simply two big to be used to sit on a module that can sit on top of a DIP IC footprint. Newer FPGAs exists that are physically small enough that it might be possible to do such a thing. In a matter of years, there will be enough logic gates / logic elements in those size FPGAs to do handle chips as complex as a FAT Agnus or a TED chip or others in a very small form factor that you can sit on a small PCB the size of a DIP IC used including any additional (flash memory needed to store the FPGA memory and any needed JTAG or USB to provide a firmware update to those FPGAs. We already seeing this recently with FPGAs capable to replace the PLA as well as video chip in the TI-99/4A. It's getting there. It's what the next 5 to 10 years that I'll find exciting years for being able to get drop-in FPGA replacements for individual chips in the original C64. Yes, a single FPGA that can replace the whole C64 ma ybe cheaper than the cumulative cost but some people want to continue using their C64 motherboards for another 20-30 years and replacement ICs in FPGA would be needed. None of the FPGA's are going to be natively 5v tolerant at that size form factor but that can be addressed adequately with really small parts these days compared to 20 years ago. There is a small market demand for such but one that a niche developer could make doable products for this market. No one makes it rich with the Commodore 8-bit. That's just the reality we live in. The Jens S. and others of this community will be able to continue to make small volume of these products for those the demand. > On July 25, 2020 4:06 PM tokafondo <tokafondo_at_gmail.com> wrote: > > > Well. First of all, I wanted this to be a separate thread and even created it > manually... after sending an email with it to cbm-hackers_at_musoftware.de . > But the system (or better, me that did it wrong) believed that I actually > wanted to reply to this thread instead of creating a new one. > > Back on topic: > > I've searched and found people implementing the VIC-II as a FPGA... inside a > FPGA'ed C64, instead of a VIC-II replacement to be put in a real C64. > > Also found the several video output enhancers, fixers or converters. > > But not an actual replacement like the SwinSID. > > Or did I not searched enough? > > > > -- > Sent from: http://cbm-hackers.2304266.n4.nabble.com/Received on 2020-07-26 11:00:03
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