Hacking Actel Chips

[Ballistic]

I've upgraded from R4 to Acekard 2i for a few months now (loving it). Curiosity striked me when I noticed that a lot of the newer flashcarts are using those Actel chips which seems to protrude a bit under their stickers. What do these chips actually do? I'll try my best to understand from a "less tech-headed" point of view.

 

[Vague Rant]

This is entirely speculation on my part, but my guess is that their main feature is being cheaper. Now, I've never manufactured any flash cards, so I have no idea what kind of costs go into them, but I can't think of any other advantage to using the larger chips.

 

[camintmier]

Here's more info about the Actel FPGA chip used in the CycloDS. At least, that's what's used in the CycloDS I have...

 

[UltraMagnus]

so, flashcards use FPGAs then hmm... I always thought they must use something like a CPLD or microcontroller.