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Altera_Forum
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18 years ago

PCB Design

Has anyone completed a PCB design with free online software for a Cyclone II based design?? Ive tried Eagle and PCB123, and it seems to gotta reinvent the wheel to design a board for an FPGA. Can I use someone elses design as a reference?

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  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    18 years ago

    Yes, so I have learned, you have to make the footprints yourself, but my I shall continue my evil plans. Thanks for your response.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    18 years ago

    you can check my nios forum topic where i was designing my EP2C8 PQFP208 bord

    topic name "My PCB design for Cyclone II ep2c20F484;ep2c35F484"

    last post 25th January 2007 - 12:58 PM you can find it by serching "PCB" keyword :)

    or if this link will work then here it is:

    http://www.niosforum.com/pages/forum.php?cat_id=5

    after I soldered this board i found few mistakes and now when I was testing LVDS differential pins for ADC converter I also found few mistakes and other prototyping board design unimplemented features that would be weary useful now, like more DC-DC converters for different power supply options. I think for each 2 banks one power supply would be enough, because now I wanted to evaluate LVDS pins ( see Lvds pin topic) that need 2.5V supply and I needed to change all board VCCIO supply to 2.5V and that made some problems with Download cable (had to add additional 5V power supply because Parallel port can't detect 2.5V logic high, but with 3.3V all was OK) so extra voltage level for VCCIO pins is really necessary thing.

    Same power supply poor design problems has my cyclone II dev.kit for 150$ all VCCIO pins are conected to one Voltage level 3.3 and there is no chance to switch it to 2.5V (and voltage regulators on dev.kit are fixed 3.3V (if they would be adjustable I could at least try to switch all VCCIO pins to 2.5V but They aren't adjustable so last chance was use my self made PCB.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    18 years ago

    So Epis, what did you board do? My first design is going to be a game, a sort of primitive laser-tag sender-receiver.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    18 years ago

    --- Quote Start ---

    So Epis, what did you board do?

    --- Quote End ---

    nothing useful, because it has just all necessary things to make fpga work and of course access to ALL IO pins (more than 130 IO's). I have access to all pins and working fpga with configuration memory :)

    I was making this board because all dev.kits cost more than 150$ with cyclone II ep2c8 and my self made board was about 60-70$ in parts and PCB. I made 3 boards 2 for me and one for friend.