ComputerVoltageSources

jason--

welcome... yeah, we had a number of folks join in the last couple 
days.   probably worth plowing thru th messages so far to get up to 
speed.  

your second question first: the general concept is to produce a PCB 
board design that maximizes core functionality while keeping cost & 
complexity low... folks can then implement as much of that 
functionality as they want/need.  not everyone will want everything. 
as you say, 5u is pretty big, but that's based on implementing all 
functions.  i mentioned in another post an alternate implementation 
of, say, a dedicated 4channel quantizer; in MOTM format that could 
easily fit in 1u.  i think the vision (or at least my version) is to 
have a flexible core "brain", that could be used as the base for all 
kinds of modules.

on the port thang: AFAIK the serial interface is the one supported 
by the atompro chip (there was a long discussion that finally 
settled on that as the core for this project); usb/firewire are 
_considerably_ more difficult to implement.  since there's an strong 
interest in getting _something_ committed to copper in the short 
term, there are some tradeoffs. 

howerver, this is an open source project, and everyone's a volunteer 
contributor--if you'd like to tackle an add-on that could convert 
usb to serial, you're more than welcome (the display panel is going 
to be an add-on, too).  in the longer term, if this model of 
community development seems to work, i can imagine additional 
projects being undertaken in the same way... which kind of frees up 
this one from being the be-all-end-all, in terms of features.  

b

--- In ComputerVoltageSources@yahoogroups.com, Jason Proctor 
<jason@...> wrote:
>
> i'm not really up on what's going on with the concept, having 
caught 
> the beginning of this thread on sdiy and then lost it until a day 
or 
> two ago when i learned it had moved here. i have what may be 
regarded 
> as a few dumb questions.
> 
> - does it have to be rs232 for the computer interface?
> 
> i've not seen a serial interface other than usb or firewire on a 
Mac 
> in living memory, and i'd be surprised if it survives on PCs for 
much 
> longer. however, MIDI's going to be around for a while yet, and 
> presumably USB for a while longer. can we have one of those 
instead?
> 
> - larry's PSIM layouts look pretty good. are all 8 inputs etc that 
> people are talking about necessary or even supportable by the 
> hardware platform? 5U MOTM is pretty damn big!
> 
> as a software tweak and hardware klutz i'm kinda looking forward 
to a 
> module i can tweak...
> 
> thanks,
> j
>