DE1 board : SD-RAM expansion possible ?

Altera_Forum · ‎06-08-2011

Hello,

for my project , simulating a vintage disk drive ( DEC RL02 ), I have not enough memory ( 8 Mbyte SD-RAM ) available on the DE1 board. The SD card can't be used in my case, because a SD card can only be written a limmited number of times. It would be very helpful if I can expand (doubling or tripling) the 8 Mbyte SD RAM.

Does somebody has an idea or note ?

( Replacing via soldering the SD-RAM chips is not possible for me )

Is there a memory extension available via expansion header connector ?

Or, a hard-Disk adapter for the SD-Card connector.

At least, has somebody a recommendation for another development board ?

Thanks an regards, Reinhard

Altera_Forum · ‎06-09-2011

I don't see why you couldn't put another RAM onto one of the 40-pin connectors, but it would have to be either SRAM or (non-DDR) SDRAM because you're stuck with 3.3v i/o. As far as I know, only SRAM & SDRAM have 3.3v i/io - all the good stuff (DDR, DDR2, DDR3) is < 3.3v.

This was what was so frustrating about the BEMicro SDK - it has the nice 64MB of DDR SDRAM, but uses Mobile DDR SDRAM with little-to-no documentation, so you have to fork out for the ip before you can use it for more than 30 days... Great cheap board, cr@ppy licensing.

In terms of other boards, the next-step-up (DE2-115, $299 academic, $595 for hobbyists like me) has 128MB of SDRAM and 2MB of SRAM. If it had a PCIe connector, I'd have bought one by now :)

Simon

Altera_Forum · ‎06-09-2011

Not sure if you need any other peripherals on the DE1, but you can also check out the DE0-Nano. It has 32MB SD-RAM. You can check it out at www.de0-nano.terasic.com.

Altera_Forum · ‎06-09-2011

Many thanks for the upgrade infos !

The DE0-Nano will be my new favourit. This board is very reasonably priced

and it schould not be a problem to add a SD-Card connector ( in my case, to be able to load the entire vintage-disk contens from SD card to SD Memory ) ?

Regards, Reinhard