I often obsess over little details of my circuit designs, and the daisy-chain adapter for Floppy Emu is no exception. The design needs a small CPLD for the daisy-chaining logic, and for various reasons I have narrowed the choices to the Lattice ispMACH LC4032ZE and LC4032V. These are both 32 macrocell CPLDs, and are very similar except for a few details:
LC4032ZE – 48 pins, 0.5 mm pin pitch, 1.8V core, built-in oscillator
LC4032V – 44 pins, 0.8 mm pin pitch, 3.3V core
The 4032ZE is the newer of the two options, and the 4032ZE supply at distributors is a bit more plentiful. It also has a built-in 5 MHz RC oscillator with +/- 30% accuracy, which can be divided down to the kHz range or lower frequencies without using any macrocells. As it happens, the daisy chain adapter needs a clock source in the kHz range for periodic tasks, but the exact frequency isn’t too important, so this is perfect.
The drawbacks of the 4032ZE are its core voltage and its pin pitch. With a 1.8V core serving 3.3V I/O to and from 5V disk drives, I’d need to design a three-voltage system. In practice that means an additional voltage regulator, some extra decoupling capacitors, and a bit more headache with the board layout. 0.5 mm pin pitch means the pins are very tightly spaced. It creates a greater likelihood of soldering errors and hard-to-see solder shorts during assembly. Basically it will make assembly and testing of boards more challenging.
The 4032V looks like a good alternative, with a 3.3V core and a much wider pin pitch. But it lacks any built-in oscillator. If I want a clock source, even an inaccurate one, I’ll have to provide one externally. That will add a bit to the board cost and complexity. The 4032V itself is also slightly more expensive than its twin. In the end, it’s not obvious to me whether the 4032V or 4032ZE is the better choice overall.
Which one would you choose?
Schmitt Trigger Oscillator
If I choose the 4032V, then I’ll be looking for a simple and inexpensive way to provide an external clock signal to it. Something around 10 kHz would be preferred. I can probably tolerate inaccuracies in the frequency of 50% or more, over time on the same board or between different boards.
I could use a single chip oscillator like a MEMS oscillator, but I’m drawn instead to the idea of a Schmitt Trigger RC oscillator. It’s cheaper, and it also has a nice old-school vibe. The circuit is simply a single inverter with its output fed back to its input through a resistor, and with its input also connected through a capacitor to ground.
The frequency of the Schmitt Trigger RC oscillator depends on the values of the capacitor and resistor, the hysteresis of the inverter, and the supply voltage. Calculators exist to help predict the frequency, but in practice I’d probably need to tune it experimentally.
I’m fine with some variation in the frequency, as long as it doesn’t vary wildly. A variance of 2x or more could become problematic. Given the tolerance of the capacitor and resistor values, temperature-dependent capacitance changes, process variations between inverters, and possible supply voltage fluctuations, what range of frequency variation is a Schmitt Trigger RC oscillator likely to experience?
Would I be better off paying more for a standard oscillator, even though I don’t need the high accuracy? Or would I be better off using the 4032ZE with its built-in oscillator, and not stressing about the core voltage and pin pitch?