[hpsdr] Mercury with USB? Cost? & Dev wannabe

[ceriel at gmail.com]

On 2/28/07, Philip Covington <p.covington at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> See answers below:
>
> On 2/27/07, ceriel at gmail.com <ceriel at gmail.com> wrote:
> > ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
> >
> > Lyle Johnson mentioned in passing in his Deyton presentation that
> > Mercury had been considered with an USB port of its own, which I
> > interpreted as the possibility of using the card without Ozy and
> > Atlas. Being on a limited budget this struck me as a wonderful idea,
> > but I've seen no talk about it at all anywhere else. Is it still being
> > considered, or has the idea been dumped?
>
> Mercury will depend on OZY for connection to USB.  My original idea of
> including the FX2 interface on Mercury instead got incorporated in my
> stand-alone QuickSilver QS1R prototype receiver (of which Mercury will
> draw on for certain aspects of its design).  Adding those parts to
> Mercury would be a duplication of many parts already existing on OZY.
>
> > Would it still be possible to
> > leave a few connection points on the PCB where one could add such a
> > device anyway if it indeed has been dumped?
>
> No, probably not.  Space is at a premium as it is and including the
> possibility of adding a FX2 chip with associated components would take
> up too much space.

Ah, I see. Do you think it would be reasonably easy to build an USB
device with a DIN41612 connector for Mercury to replace Atlas and Ozy
then? Or in general, how much hardware could be trimmed away between
the LT2208 and the various high-speed ports of my computer, which even
includes a spare PCI-E 16x slot? If my calculation is correct the ADC
should top out at 260MBps. With a PCIE 1.1 weighting in at 250MBps,
just a slightly slower sampling rate than the maximum sounds like a
rather nice theoretical solution.
Does any of this at all sound doable to you? I've never done any
hardware design myself, but I'm more than willing to learn. :o)

> > Further, is there any rough, unrefined guesstimate on how many of my
> > hard-earned Euros I'll have to part with to get a Mercury of my own?
> > Are we talking less than Ozy, more, or a lot more?
>
> It will cost more than OZY and more than JANUS - probably close to (or
> a little more) than the cost of OZY and JANUS combined.

Oooh, ouch. Would mean a final price tag quite beyond what I can afford...

<snip>

> > And finally, I'm very much interested in helping with developing
> > things for this project. While I have a good understanding of all
> > things technology and know the basics of many of the most relevant
> > things, I do lack specific knowledge and experience of them.
> > How would you recommend I got started learning the specific things I
> > need to contribute to this project? What manuals should I read?
> >
> > --
> > Nos
>
> The best bet is to look over the individual projects and try to see if
> there is anything you think you could help with based on your current
> experience and knowledge.

I'm equally bad at everything... Though I did see you have a copy of
Howitz & Hill's The Art of Electronics in the background of a picture
in thw Mercury Wiki. Would that book help me design digital devices?


Thank you very much for your reply.

Sincerely,
-- 
Nos

 1172687026.0