Software-defined radio board: Stalled, for now

Periodically people email me and ask how things are going with my SDR board. Things are quite thoroughly stalled. I can program the FX2 over the USB cable, and I can wiggle the I/O pins, and I've connected the I/O pins to the FPGA's JTAG programming pins. Theoretically it should be pretty easy to program the FPGA after that. But that's where it is stalled; for some reason the FPGA won't program correctly. Go figure.

One thought is to make up a board with a lot more testpoints, like this.

I had a picture of a board design here before, but I think I've since misplaced that file. I'll try to remember to check around for it.

This design is for a temporary two-layer board that I would use only to get the design and development effort back on track. Once I'd resolved the FPGA programming issues, I'd go back to a four-layer design with a lot fewer testpoints.

But if you're one of those impatient folks who wants to play with a software-defined radio RIGHT NOW then you should check out these links, many of which describe projects that are much further along than my board.

• http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/sdr.html
• http://www.dxzone.com/catalog/Technical_Reference/Software_Defined_Radio/
• http://hpsdr.org/index.html
• http://www.philcovington.com/SDR.html
• http://amqrp.org/kits/softrock40/index.html
• http://www.ettus.com/
• http://www.hamsdr.com/Home.aspx