Guru
Joined: 05/10/2019
Location: United KingdomPosts: 8837
| Posted: 10:27am 13 Sep 2024 |
It's all personal preference. :)
1. I wanted some horizontal USBs for things like dongles. Normally, I envisaged, they would have dongles for mouse & keyboard. They also take up less PCB area as all connections come straight back relatively easily. Vertical sockets are much more difficult IMHO and you don't gain that much. I have to work round the PCB fixing holes too.
2. The vertical USBs are intended for game controllers. One easy to get to on the front and a secondary one on the back.
3. No. The Pico 2 hasn't got a lot of spare IO (5, to be exact, and they are all along the back). Having System I2C on the front is very useful. Being able to bring out the additional I2C or a COM port is also useful. If I could gain enough rear panel space on Gamma I'd bring out the GPIO there but I don't think I can.
I've envisaged these as little game machines from the start. I wouldn't expect GPIO pins on the front so there aren't any. :)
The Beta is far more expandable than the Gamma, but it costs more to build. The PGA2350 is more expensive as is the PCB. I'm determined to keep Gamma on a 100mm wide PCB max. I want it to be cheap to build. That's restricted what I can fit along the back.
I always use headphones. Getting a quick change in volume is important to me, hence a manual volume control and a decent headphone amp. I've no interest in feeding speakers as they simply don't work well for games. Software volume control is a gimmick on something like this and absolutely useless if you just want to turn the volume down a bit while someone is talking to you.
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Edited 2024-09-13 20:41 by Mixtel90