DanB wrote:
Do you still think that a Slice is required to breakout the IO, or would the headers on the Core Board be sufficient? I'd have thought the latter, though I can understand that perhaps a user may develop something based on the headers that they'd like to conveniently be able to remove and reattach at a later date (e.g., they may use a 'Breakout Slice' per project they are working on).
Thanks, sorry i missed that part of it, but i think there should still be a few of these adapter boards so you can plug them in and out as you go between projects and it leaves those test points empty so you can poke your scope at those signals easily Those test points also have lots of room around them for nice individual pin markings for quick identification of the pin out (I recently designed a test board and im kicking my self cause i didn't label individual pins on silkscreen even tho i had room as there is a lot of counting to find the right pin when the whole IO of core 0 of an L2 is brought to a single header)
Altho because cost of this system can only be brought down so far its still a good idea to make a 40 pin DIP module for an L1 since you can drive the cost of that really down, also its possible to go back to the old XTAG that uses the FTDI chip since that could possibly be fit on to the DIP module it self and can reduce cost even further. Cheep entry points don't just make it nice for hobbyists also companys that might use XMOS chips certainly like it if they can get a kit really cheep and risk free to see how the thing works in practice and decide if they want to use it in there mass produced product.
Another important thing that should be kept in mind is the software that comes with the kit.Its well worth the effort to make a series of tutorials that use the hadrware from the kit to do things, also provide librarys for all the hardware on it and explaining in detail how to connect multiple boards together in the XDE as its not that simple.
