Hi Eger,
you got me wrong. My point was not designing a usb to HPIB alias IEE488 bridge.
My point was to do the vintage IEE488 controller used in ISA bus cards and old measurement equipment.
So if the chip is gone the instrument cant be used with IEE488. So people pay lets say $100 to get a replacement chip that exactly behaves like the old.
So chip brokers trading old stock get rich.
Rebuilding old chips has the advantage that they are quite simple and on the other side valuable as nobody builds them. The Signetics NE555 is such an old chip but there is a big market so many fabs build replicas.
So having a chip that has people with budhet asking for it but no fab to build it is a good source of money especially if one can sell small quantities at a high price.
Lets look for such a candidate.
Cheers
Ludwig
On Monday, April 29, 2019, Éger Ferenc <eegerferenc@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> "Hi, are there chips that can be done quite quickly that have a market?": I feel that the problem here is not the possible market: we are now in a very preliminarier-than-preliminary stage of chip-making and chip-design. The 555 was chosen as a target not only because of its symbolic perspective, but because this is what can be now done quickly with the knowledge, tooling and resources we have right now, and still can "blink and beep". For example, USBtoIEEE488 would require a USB device controller with significant complexity (data buffers, state machines, endpoint management), and implementing the USB stack needs at least a small MCU (that is complex in itself), not to mention the clock generation, clock-recovery PLLs, high-speeed transcievers etc. needed for USB PHY. Developing this would take at least months of simulation only for the logic (and maybe much more when we consider the analog and mixed-signal part, not to mention the validation...). And I'm pretty sure that implementing an USB device core on silicon will bring in the patent lawyers from USB-IF
> and virtually all IP core vendors...
> Regards,
> Ferenc
>
> On Sun, Apr 28, 2019 at 9:54 PM ludwig jaffe <ludwig.jaffe@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi, are there chips that can be done quite quickly that have a market?
>> So a 555 has no market as there are cheaper options. Chips need
>> to be tested and packaged.
>> But maybe there is an expensive chip that is not longer manufactured
>> while there is a demand.
>> I can only think of some IEEE488 controllers made by National Instruments
>> for ISA bus, but there are USBtoIEEE488 adapters around based on
>> micro controllers which seem to be good enough.
>>
>> We need a chip that is lacking if it is missing it is a show stopper for
>> some business / manufacturing machine.
>>
>> Any ideas?
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Ludwig
>>
>> On Sun, Apr 28, 2019 at 3:25 PM Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@lkcl.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Sun, Apr 28, 2019 at 3:47 PM David Lanzendörfer
>>> <david.lanzendoerfer@o2s.ch> wrote:
>>>
>>> > Even if lots of you folks are too busy to actively participate on the mailing
>>> > list, this is a chance to contribute something to the project.
>>> > And it's only a few minutes of your time.
>>>
>>> i can emphasise that getting the word out to as many people as you
>>> can, and asking those friends to also pass on the link to their
>>> friends, reminding them as much as possible with as much "new stuff"
>>> as possible, on as many possible channels as possible, is the way to
>>> get a campaign to succeed.
>>>
>>> david if you and the team can think of "new things to announce every
>>> few days", that gives you a reasonable (and non-repetitive) excuse to
>>> hit the communications network again and again, without irritating
>>> people immensely (and successfully getting through the
>>> social-media-overload phenomenon).
>>>
>>> l.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Libre-silicon-devel mailing list
>>> Libre-silicon-devel@list.libresilicon.com
>>> http://list.libresilicon.com/mailman/listinfo/libre-silicon-devel
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Libre-silicon-devel mailing list
>> Libre-silicon-devel@list.o2s.ch
>> http://list.libresilicon.com/mailman/listinfo/libre-silicon-devel
>
--
Send from mobile phone with autocorrection / autofill. Blame my phone for typos.