System K8

After about 2 months of waiting the FPGA finally arrived!

One thing I noticed - this is surely the most ridiculous waste of packaging I've seen in my life. A box the size of a microwave oven filled with bubble wrap holding another box filled with bubble wrap holding a vacuumed foil holding a plastic tray. 

All that for 10x TQFP ICs samples :)

Purchasing samples from Gowin turned out a long journey. Initially they were supposed to be here by Oct 10, chasing them now and their current status is still unknown. All other parts in the system have been sitting in a box and waiting for that most important one to be put on the board first.

Anyway, I just published the early version of the schematic in the open. Keeping fingers crossed there won't be any mistakes there. 

As always, feedback and suggestions are welcome!

Arrived today and look beautiful. Now expecting parts.

JLC. A six-layer PCB is pretty expensive with its one-off setup costs, but hopefully it will be worth it. I have assembled two separate BOMs - one "default" with through-hole components, and a second with SMT parts. All links but one are from Digikey; the FPGA itself is unfortunately not available there, but Mouser have it, so there you go...