XTRX, getting some use out of a thing I paid good money for

[rthorntn]

Hi,

Got this XTRX SDR FPGA MiniPCIe card, the company that makes them has gone quiet, they never open-sourced the FPGA firmware like they said they would on the Crowd Supply campaign and won't respond to my requests for a schematic.

Is there a way to reverse engineer a schematic without destroying it?

It's all BGA so no doubt sticking it under a microscope isn't going to uncover much.

I want to work out what the FPGA pins connect to, I don't want to use the firmware that's on there.

Any thoughts?

Thanks for looking.

Cheers
Richard

[OwO]

Should have known better before buying that overpriced POS; there are far better FPGA + SDR boards out there and it's not hard to roll your own. That thing does not even have onboard DRAM, and the pci-e x2 bandwidth is pitiful compared to what some cheap DDR3 can get you.

[Fred27]

It sounds like you're in a similar situation as with the SQRL Acorn board I was asking about a while ago, although luckily someone stumbled across what seems to be a faithful schematic for that one.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/fpga/sqrl-acorn-as-an-interesting-artix-7-board/

Luckily you have JTAG nicely labelled so you can at least get a bitstream on there easily. The approach I was planning to take was to either:

• Use the boundary scan feature of JTAG to locate what balls on the Artix-7 go to various points. I know this is possible as that's what JTAG was originally for, but I've never tried it.
• Write some simple Verilog that toggles output and see what appears where.

Sorry to hear you were let down. I was burned once on Kickstarter and now have no time for anything crowd funded. You  think that at least the company could throw you a bone and release the schematic.

[black.crow]

Sorry for waking this topic, but I was kinda in the same situation but different details. I still remember it clearly. I was looking for a lens for my canon camera on eBay and there was no sign of trouble. Furthermore, I spent quite a lot of time to find the lens I need. Actually, it is not this rare to look for it this much. So when I finally found the lens I contacted with the seller. Later, it turned out that he is not even a photographer and someone asked him to sell the lens. Sounds not really believable, but fine. Let's imagine I didn't suspect anything. I told him that I will buy the lens, but I need to wait for the salary which should have come in a few days. He agreed. In the end, when I checked the post after three days it was deleted. After some time my colleague advised me to choose between offerup vs letgo because both of these apps are good.


Edit by moderator: Removed URL link from post. Seems kind of spammy for a brand new user.

[markterry2]

If anyone has an XTRX they want to sell, I am interested.

[Faranight]

Hmm, two random first posters in this thread just to wake it up? What's going on here?

Although, on-topic, the company that the OP was referring to is called Fairwaves, and they made the first XTRX module. It's a shame to see such things happening though. I got the same module, but never got to use it. Although, there has been some new development at LimeSDR because they now have their own and improved version of XTRX, which unfortunately costs a fortune compared to the first board. I paid like 200 bucks or the first, but the new one is like 800 bucks. Anyway, I recall there has been some discussion that the LimeSDR guys would finish the firmware for the first XTRX board. No idea, if anything came out of it though.

[markterry2]

If you still have your XTRX I'll buy it off of you

[Halcyon]

If you still have your XTRX I'll buy it off of you

We heard you the first time.