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Hi Joe,<br>
<br>
I indeed sent it to you privately first, but then I saw my mistake
and forwarded it to the reflector too.<br>
<br>
Thank you for the explanation, I got the picture now and understand
that it would not be a simple hardware mod.<br>
I was not suggesting to make a completely new -EU board of course,
but only to do a "field-change" of the existing EU-boards.<br>
<br>
Thanks again and good luck with your good work, its very much
appreciated!<br>
<br>
73's,<br>
<br>
Henry - PA0HJA<br>
<br>
<blockquote>On 10/25/2011 4:37 PM, Joe Martin K5SO wrote: Hi Henry,
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I think you sent the message only to me, and not to the list,
but no matter. The answer to your questions are: </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>1) There are a dozen or so pins that differ between the -EU
and -TAPR Mercury boards, due to the different physical
locations of parts on the -EU relative to the location of parts
on the -TAPR board. Further, the -EU board doesn't have some of
the supporting chips, modules, jumpers, and headers that the
-TAPR board has. Most of these physical differences aren't
terribly important except that the bus lines and lines to the
ADC and other chips are connected to the FPGA using different
physical pins on the FPGA than in the -TAPR case. The result is
that the firmware needs to be compiled with the different
physical FPGA pin assignments mapped to the various Verilog
variables in the code. When you do that mapping the code will
generally run successfully in the -EU arrangement. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>2) No, producing a new "-EU" board doesn't make fiscal sense
and it isn't possible to "modify" an existing -EU board to
somehow re-route the pin connections on it to match the -TAPR
board unless you cut traces and run external wires all over the
board (argh!!! ugly...and it wouldn't operate the same anyway
since the circuit board layout is designed to minimize spurs,
etc and jumpers would destroy those design features). Besides,
iQuadLabs has already invested in building and stocking actual
Mercury-TAPR boards so it would not make sense for Gerd or
anyone else to "re-do" the -EU board that users would need to
purchase in any case. They should simply buy the -TAPR board
from iQuadLabs instead and have an actual HPSDR rig. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Of course, there are a number of -EU boards out there already
and rather than leaving those folks out in the cold and forcing
them to buy new Mercury-TAPR boards there is a desire within the
HPSDR group to keep them supported even though the -EU board is
not an official HPSDR product. Gerd produced his Mercury-EU
board outside of the official HPSDR project, you know. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Hope that helps.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>73, Joe K5SO</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</blockquote>
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