How to Reverse Engineer a 12 EUR Intel PCIe FPGA Card IBM 98Y2610

[@spacewolfjr]

Excellent video! I appreciate you left some of the dead ends (like probing the JTAG pins) as it really helps troubleshoot when things go wrong.

[@circuitvalley]

Thank you

[@thomasguilder9288]

Really cool idea using a fpga configuration outputting the pin number on each pin… have to remember this one!

[@circuitvalley]

Thank you.

[@terrygould3230]

This is a very underrated channel! Loving your content

[@circuitvalley]

I appreciate that!

[@muhdiversity7409]

This is pretty cool, thanks. Will you be working on simple stack that will allow a PC to communicate with the FPGA over the PCI bus ? That would be awesome.

[@circuitvalley]

Yes There is a Design Example Available from Intel, Source Binary are already available in my Github Repo.

[@muhdiversity7409]

@@circuitvalley Great! Thank you. I will check it out,

[@SatyajitRoy2048]

This kind of video makes the day brighter.

[@circuitvalley]

Thank you for your Kind words.

[@PicaDelphon]

IBM 98Y2610 - CEC enclosure RS-485 serial interface card

[@circuitvalley]

Thank you for pointing it out, Do you happen to know what is a CEC?

[@oplik0]

@@circuitvalley Central Electronic Complex, also called the Central Processing Complex - a name for the general-purpose hardware running a mainframe system (so basically the actual computers and not things like JBODs or networking). Reading some listings, I think this card was made for DS8870 which went EoSL in 2020 (so no more support from IBM; it stopped being sold or receiving updates in 2016) which is probably why it can be found this cheap.

[@circuitvalley]

@@oplik0 That is some different world terminology. Thank you for your time and efforts.

[@KieranFoot]

Trans receiver??? Is that a receiver that identifies as a transmitter? I think you meant transceiver. In all seriousness, nice video :)

[@circuitvalley]

Thank you.

[@EmbeddedEnigma]

always an impressive video from you

[@circuitvalley]

Thank you.

[@MRooodddvvv]

Just checked on ebay and they all crazy expensive

[@circuitvalley]

Price shot up after Video, There were few sites other than ebay selling for around 30 EURbut now they are all out of stock.

[@galileo_rs]

Hackaday effect, everyone jumped on it and the sellers jacked up the price.

[@kopaka647]

When you JTAG in and program the FPGA, you're not storing that onto the tiny 8-pin configuration memory, I'm guessing? Are there any pins like the JTAG pins that would let you rewrite the config memory?

[@circuitvalley]

Almost always Config Memory is programmed using FPGA itself a Bridge Between JTAG and Flash. All programs Vivado, Lattice, Intel . First load a small program to FPGA to provide access to Flash and then Program flash over same JTAG. You don't need Direct connection to Flash memory.

[@stevetodd7383]

JTAG allows for the concept of multiple devices connected in a ring. While testing you write to the internal config RAM of the FPGA, once complete you write to the flash memory.

[@circuitvalley]

@@stevetodd7383 Thank you

[@MyGeekyHobby]

Good job, thx for sharing,

[@circuitvalley]

Thanks for watching!

[@daybyter]

If you just open Quartus 2, create a project, select this fpga as your target, and then open the pin planner, you might get some Info?

[@circuitvalley]

Yeah that is also one even better way to do it. Thank you for your comment and Time.

[@exithe]

I am a nub at FPGA and analog stuff but I do know computers, but I am confused at why this would be a good idea? I found some dev boards with the same FPGA chip for 50 bucks. Is this board alot more powerful?

[@CallistoPili]

nice board but it is not really cheap, i noted cost over 60 bucks on ebay. I wonder how it is possible to find out the correct pins for the uart receivers. Just pointing with the probes around the TX anf the BGA??

[@exithe]

@@CallistoPili Yes thats what he did, just used the scope...

[@CallistoPili]

@@exithe I love the idea to launch for every pin a serial packet with the pin number.!!!!

[@circuitvalley]

I am glad you liked it.

[@Cat-gd8ju]

Great work

[@circuitvalley]

Thank you.

[@mikehibbett3301]

Nice work!

[@circuitvalley]

Thank you! Cheers!

[@qwaqwa1960]

Why do u prefer xilinx?

[@circuitvalley]

Xilinx has better tool "Vivado" Has better documentation. Better support. Better community Support as well.

[@qwaqwa1960]

@@circuitvalley Ah. It's been years since I've used either brand, but was not impressed with Quartus, and not really with X's pre-Viv toolsuite. Viv did look promising.

[@مقاطعمترجمة-ش8ث]

Damn it's ~$50 on eBay now.

[@circuitvalley]

Yes They jacked up the price after the video.

[@مقاطعمترجمة-ش8ث]

@@circuitvalley unfortunately same thing with AliExpress deals, many KZbinrs made videos about it after couple days it prices tripled, Anyway I come across cards call compression cards, used on IBM DB performance chases