Not sure how reliable a DIY oven can solder a 300 balls BGA stored for years.
Bake?
For sure I would need leaded solderpaste....
The problem with a part like this is that it is well beyond the typical DIY level.
Wind/U Error (193): X-Resource: DefaultGUIFontSpec (-*-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-14-*) does not fully specify a font set for this locale
Cannot register service: RPC: Unable to receive; errno = Connection refused
unable to register (registryProg, registryVers, tcp)
Wind/U Error (248): Failed to connect to the registry on server arch64-fpga2
Warning!!: XKEYSYMDB environment variable is set to a wrong location
Cannot register service: RPC: Unable to receive; errno = Connection refused
What I did to proceed to Wind/U error:Not sure how reliable a DIY oven can solder a 300 balls BGA stored for years.
Well already tried to sell them...no luck...not sure sure anyone wants to design something with an obsolete and unsupported IDE.
There's more to it than just soldering, laying out a part like that requires quite a complex PCB, and I think that while there certainly are hobbyists who are soldering large BGA packages, I think it is far from typical.
if you don't want some kind of high-speed stuff (DDRx, PCIE, whatever), you don't need a complex PCB. FT256 can be fully routed out on a cheap-ass 4 layer process offered by JLCPCB. These boards are within the reach of just about any hobbyist, unless by a "typical" hobbyist you mean somebody stuck in the past millennium with through-hole parts and other obsolete crap like that.
So probably 80% of the hobbyists out there? Vast numbers of people still work mostly with through hole parts
I mostly abandoned through-hole years ago and have built plenty of things around 0.5mm pitch ICs, but 4 layer boards only recently became affordable and I have not yet tried having one made personally. I have little doubt that I could succeed in doing so, but I have not yet had an opportunity to try and thinking of the hobbyists I know, I don't think any of them have built anything with a BGA part. I think you are exhibiting a bit of the Dunning-Kruger effect and grossly overestimating the average skill level of electronics hobbyists. There are of course some that would have no problem working with these parts, but those who could design, lay out and assemble a suitable PCB are probably in the 1 percentile. A handful more could probably succeed in assembling a PCB that someone else designed with a reasonable yield if given access to suitable tools. It would be interesting to see some actual data on this.
So probably 80% of the hobbyists out there? Vast numbers of people still work mostly with through hole partsI doubt that, and suspect that you are projecting here. But I would love to see some real numbers.I mostly abandoned through-hole years ago and have built plenty of things around 0.5mm pitch ICs, but 4 layer boards only recently became affordable and I have not yet tried having one made personally. I have little doubt that I could succeed in doing so, but I have not yet had an opportunity to try and thinking of the hobbyists I know, I don't think any of them have built anything with a BGA part. I think you are exhibiting a bit of the Dunning-Kruger effect and grossly overestimating the average skill level of electronics hobbyists. There are of course some that would have no problem working with these parts, but those who could design, lay out and assemble a suitable PCB are probably in the 1 percentile. A handful more could probably succeed in assembling a PCB that someone else designed with a reasonable yield if given access to suitable tools. It would be interesting to see some actual data on this.I was just a hobbyist mere 7 years ago working with TH parts only. About a year into the hobby I assembled my very first SMT board, ~a year later I built my first FPGA board (ice40 ultra in QFN48 package), few months later I designed and built my first FPGA board with Xilinx 7 series FPGA and BGA parts (there were 4 of them on that board - main FPGA, 2 64Mb HyperRAM chips and a QSPI flash chip), about half a year since that I made my first FPGA board with DDR3L device on a board and some 5Gbps differential transmission lines.
All of the above does not require massive financial investments nowadays (current chipnageddon notwithstanding, but that will hopefully pass soon-ish), but rather commitment, dedication and willingness to learn. I needed to commit some more significant financial resources because PCB tech wasn't there at the hobbyist's price point, but now it's there and is super cheap. So I fully expect that there are quite a bit of people who can follow the path similar to mine. They are the target audience for my beginner's Spartan-7 devboard which I posted on Github for anyone to grab and modify for their needs.
4 layer boards are actually easier to route than 2 layer ones because you don't have to worry about routing power and ground connections - you just drop a via and that's it! This allows for a more dense layout too, meaning you can place your components closer, which helps with miniaturization (and saving on PCB cost).
Well already tried to sell them...no luck...not sure sure anyone wants to design something with an obsolete and unsupported IDE.
JTAG port that is always available any time the FPGA is powered and regardless of the mode pin settings.