Hi Mac and Peg -
Mac, I'll show my age also and share your gripe about the multi-page schematics. After sorting my way through our demo/eval schematics and customer, I agree with everything you said about having to find all the instances of a signal on multiple pages. I'm guilty though of going with the flow on these.
Following Mac's numbering...
1-4: Peg has already has the right answers for these. We did hack the TBDML and what eventually became the EValue8 board. We used the TBDML I/O structure to be able to use Daniel's firmware to start and adapted the proto-EValue8's I/O circuitry. The TBDML used HC(T)126 for level shifters and it dictated the separate BDM_IN and BDM_OUT pins. With the LCT1T45 part, we ended up with a common in/out signal. The timer in is doing the timing of the SYNC pulse.
I missed taking off the RSTxxx labels when we dropped the reset control. As Peg says, we can't reset all the parts, so we just dropped it altogether. It saves some parts including one of the notorious LCT1T45's.
5. You're getting a peek at the RS08 roadmap. There is another NVM technology that we are considering using for future derivatives that has 6.7V as the Vpp voltage.
6. Mac, good input on the way to turn off the converter, however, I think the current firmware just leaves it on. You do have to adjust it to 12V with the trim pot.
7. I'm guilty again of just going along with the design that we took the MON08 connections from and never changing it. I'm glad to see that Joerg has corrected this and lets the tool control the mode. The MON08 was really only there for our development and debugging. I've considered dropping it from the final board since, as Peg pointed out, we have ICP via USB available. And it does complicate the pc board layout. Also note that with a Cyclone, I've had to set it for MCU self-clocked and not try to drive the clock from the Cyclone.
8. As I've said someplace else, we stuck with the LCT1T45 because it was there in the proto-EValue8 design and it was the only level shifter that I've found that by spec covers the 1.8V to 5.5V range. I've never liked the small form factor. As for availability, DigiKey carries it in single quantities (as does apparently Farnell). In fact, small quantity availablity from DigiKey was one of the design constraints.
Thanks everyone for the comments,
- Mike (aka Rocky)
Message Edited by Alban on 2006-12-12 10:04 PM