[sdiy] New cheap FPGA development system

[Joe Grisso]

There were Two FPGAs in the E-Mu RFX32 setup - one on the main E4 Ultra
board, and one on the actual RFX daughtercard. They handled a LOT more than
IIS audio, that's for sure. E-Mu has a proprietary format called EMU32 that
they use for data interchange between their ASICS - so the EMU32 streams
would get routed in different ways through these two FPGAs depending on
whether or not the RFX card was installed.

There was also some other functionality in the FPGAs - format conversion was
one, and the actual sampling of audio was done in the FPGA on the main
board.

Ahh.... memories. The Ultra was such a gorgeous piece of hardware. *waxes
nostalgic*

Joe Grisso
Detachment 3 Engineering

On 5/25/06, Nicholas Gregorich <nicksdsu at mac.com> wrote:
>
> As far as I remember, the late RFX expansions for Emu E4 Ultra were based
> on an FPGA.  I think it basically handled routing of digital audio
> signals.  My guess is an FPGA is easily fast enough and powerful enough to
> drive a handful of DACs and ADCs.  Even slow (8MHz) AVRs can reproduce low
> fidelity audio using their onboard PWM or (I believe) higher quality sound
> with a DAC interfaced via SPI.
>
> I too have Spartan 3 board waiting for my experimentation at
> work.  Unfortunately, there's no time for such research at the moment.
>
> Nick.
>
>
>
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