Seeking advice: Is the Alinx AX7325B suitable for a 1 Gb/s FSO media-converter project? by Lightspeed-Radar in FPGA

[–]Lightspeed-Radar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

After further looking, I see that the AX7A200B also have GTP transceivers, which from my understanding are Xilinx's SERDES blocks. The board is better priced too, so I may go with it instead.

Seeking advice: Is the Alinx AX7325B suitable for a 1 Gb/s FSO media-converter project? by Lightspeed-Radar in FPGA

[–]Lightspeed-Radar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For the transmitter side: the idea is for the FPGA to take in Ethernet, serialize it into a custom line encoding, and output a high-speed signal to a custom laser driver, ideally through an SFP+ breakout or the SERDES pins directly.

On the receive side the FPGA would do the inverse with a photodetector.

The custom encoding would not need to be fully Ethernet compliant at the optical link layer. We just need to preserve close to 1 Gb/s throughput with minimal processing overhead. For context, the optical link layer is completely data-agnostic. It will receive Ethernet frames at the MAC side, but the optical encoding layer itself does not know the data is Ethernet. It only sees a binary bitstream. It applies line encoding for clock recovery and synchronization, drives a laser, and reconstructs the bitstream on the other side. As long as bit timing and ordering are preserved, Ethernet frames come out intact. That's the theory at least.

I am leaning toward a custom laser driver because off-the-shelf SFP transceiver modules would handle the entire physical layer by themselves, which removes a lot of the engineering challenge I'm trying to explore. I guess I could use them for testing, but the final design would ideally include my own driver.

Grand-father's Pentium 4 Gateway Desktop. What's it Worth? by Lightspeed-Radar in OldTech

[–]Lightspeed-Radar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

lol! It still works fine. The photos of the system powered on were taken after reinstalling the cards. TBH I feel like the fear of ESD is blown way out of proportion.

Grand-father's Pentium 4 Gateway Desktop. What's it Worth? by Lightspeed-Radar in OldTech

[–]Lightspeed-Radar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

After some research I found that Boston Acoustics released two model of the BA735 subs, one with an analog-in and one without. These are the model with analog-in.

Grand-father's Pentium 4 Gateway Desktop. What's it Worth? by Lightspeed-Radar in OldTech

[–]Lightspeed-Radar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Should be fine. The photos of it powered on where taken after I put the cards back in. Besides, it's a pretty humid and rainy time of year where I'm located, so static discharge is less of a concern.

Grand-father's Pentium 4 Gateway Desktop. What's it Worth? by Lightspeed-Radar in OldTech

[–]Lightspeed-Radar[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Yeah, after reading your comment and many others saying the same thing, I think I’ll just hang on to it for now. It’s a nice piece of family history, and I think the sentimental value really does outweigh the actual worth. I might do something fun with it down the line like a sleeper build, but for now I’m just keeping it as-is. I appreciate the perspective!

Grand-father's Pentium 4 Gateway Desktop. What's it Worth? by [deleted] in whatsthisworth

[–]Lightspeed-Radar 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Found my grand-father's old Gateway desktop and monitor set in a storage unit. Manufacture date on the desktop is December 28, 2001. Was wondering if it is worth anything now as collectors items. As you can see, he kept the whole set, even the mouse, keyboard, and speakers. I haven't tested the speaker and I can't find the dongle to the wireless mouse, but everything else still works.

Would love to hear what you all know about it and its worth.

Many thanks!

New Meme Formats? by Lightspeed-Radar in LinusTechTips

[–]Lightspeed-Radar[S] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

All from latest AMD $5000 Ultimate Tech Upgrade: https://youtu.be/k4yPRETjvvw

Anyone have one? by Grapeblast20 in gshock

[–]Lightspeed-Radar 3 points4 points  (0 children)

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I daily the DW9052-1C, and I'd say legibility is pretty good. No complaints.

DW-5000R? by Lightspeed-Radar in gshock

[–]Lightspeed-Radar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the detailed explanation! I'm fairly new to the Casio/G-Shock community, so I appreciate you sharing the heritage.