Posted in Components, MiSTer

SDRAM Upgrades

Published Date: February 1, 2020

SDRAM Daughter Boards

Things you should consider before buying an SDRAM upgrade prematurely:

  • While MiSTer started out supporting smaller vintage clones that had a small amount of native RAM, bigger and more complex computers and game systems are now being considered.  In fact, some cores could (if they wanted to) use the 512KB of Cyclone V SRAM and not require any SDRAM at all.
  • If you’re a core developer and want to make sure you aren’t affected by the latest project shake-and-bake, consider that if your vintage clone only uses 64K or 128K of RAM you can easily get by with using the much-faster built-in 512KB of free FPGA block memory.  Why make things more complicated than they need to be?
  • Will you require a new MiSTer case with this memory upgrade?  If you have a Universal MiSTer case or would like to use a compact case, make sure you buy the smallest/shortest SDRAM daughter board possible, or else just use a Universal MiSTer case which is oversized intentionally to keep up with the latest “shake and bake standards”.
  • Please note that MiSTer is an open project and therefore there are no “official” MiSTer products.  Choose from any vendor offering high quality for a decent price and you’ll be fine.
Anyone claiming to sell “official” MiSTer items yet cannot be reached after a week through their web site, e-mail, or facebook will be removed from the seller links and replaced with ebay sellers soon.  Any seller who has a constant “backorder” or “we’re away” status will be removed.

SDRAM Board Sellers

32MB MiSTer SDRAM sellers

128MB MiSTer SDRAM sellers

256MB MiSTer SDRAM sellers

  • not required yet

512MB MiSTer SDRAM sellers

  • not required yet

SDRAM Daughter Board Styles

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Advantages Disadvantages
Vertical Doesn’t increase horizontal dimensions. Doesn’t cover and allows better cooling for FPGA chip. Doesn’t block Arduino GPIO – compatible with future or custom expansions. Easy to attach/detach. Slightly less maximum working frequency.
Horizontal Outward Doesn’t cover and allows better cooling for FPGA chip. Doesn’t block Arduino GPIO – compatible with future or custom expansions. Higher maximum working frequency. Increases horizontal dimensions.
Horizontal Inward Doesn’t increase neither horizontal nor vertical dimensions. Higher maximum working frequency. Blocks Arduino GPIOs – incompatible with future or custom expansions (PCB v3.2 solves this issue). Covers FPGA chip and makes cooling harder. Temperature condition is quite bad. Not compatible with I/O board v4 and newer.

Installing an SDRAM Daughter Board

The SDRAM Board will be inserted into the GPIO 0 Header of the DE10-Nano Board. Three additional pins will be inserted into the Arduino header JP3

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Author: Admin