On 8/22/05, Jack Carroll <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sun, Aug 21, 2005 at 02:55:00PM -0400, Timothy Miller wrote: > > > > It's hard work to keep my mind from wanderng away from the practical > > into all sorts of "neat ideas" that could come up. But, alas, I have > > a mission here. :) > > I have exactly the same tendency. I have to remind myself sometimes > to keep the end purpose in mind when deciding whether to act on cool ideas. > But I think it's good to write down all the cool thoughts, and > accumulate plenty of them in the tool box. It's much better to have more > ideas than we can use, than not enough. That way, we can pick out the best > ones, or the most suitable ones for the job at hand. > Stated another way, I don't get out the power saw and a hundred feet > of extension cords if I only need to cut one 2x4 -- it's quicker to use a > hand saw. > > > Going off on a tangent, here's one more idea to throw in the pile. > _If_ it's decided to give the FPGA development board enough EEPROM > space for multiple FPGA images, it would be a real time-saver to have a > quick way to select which image comes up at boot time, without having to > boot the machine (most likely with a different video board) just to set the > selection. A DIP switch or a jumper header would be a quick way to set the > origin in EEPROM space to start the load. It would be even better to have a > way to change the origin and reload without shutting down and rebooting -- > maybe one position in the DIPswitch or pin header that tells the CPLD to > read the new origin and reload the FPGA.
I think this is a fine idea, and if the compression helps, it can be put in. But as a way to help us keep focus, we should have a dividing line between the product we sell and the other things that can be done with it. I'm going to focus on what is neccessary to make this a useful product and dev platform for OGP. If someone else wants to add compression, I'm all for it, and we can host it in our SVN tree. But if they have the time and energy for that, I'd politely ask that they put the product at a slightly higher point in their priority list. We need to not forget to make a header available for the Lattice chip so that that jumper can be put in later. That's the good thing about discussing these tangent ideas right now -- it reminds us to put in generic features that make the product more useful in general. _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
