found some originals at conrad.nl. I got a good deal: two pieces for €41 including shipping. they give some kwantumkorting aka mengenrabatt aka volume discount for 2 pieces, at least on their .nl and .de
As mentioned by Hawkeye, the predecessor STM32F4DISCOVERY has exactly the same chip (with 1 MB flash) like the new STM32F407G-DISC1 development board.
My assumption (not confirmed) is, that ST just initiated a new batch production run of the board and changed the name to differentiate from other variants with similar names, but different feature set.
I think for now we are safe with the G option of the STM32F4. Getting a lot of spam though from ST about the STM32F7. So maybe in time this is something to consider. But i think for the next year at least we can still cope with the first option. Until Thorsten thinks of some new uber cool (and cpu hungry) use case ofcourse
The STM32F7 really needs to be evaluated carefully, it’s an interesting chip but it is a much more complicated, dual-issue and caches. I am not however sure the added features (DDR controller, QSPI flash) are so relevant to MIDIBox, unless of course a simple board shows up with a few megabytes of RAM… the dev board I have is very feature-rich, touch screen display and such.
I’m sure the F4 is going to be here for a very long time, though.
A DDR controller would make it easier to make a DIY sampler or wavetable synth so it has its uses
Also, there are all kinds of small CPUs with DSP or FP acceleration so if one can wait a little there will be something new that will cost as little as the F4 with vast new capabilities.
Easy programmer access to some more RAM would also be high on my personal wishlist, if a new core is considered, for such things as the loopa or nicer graphical visualizations!
Cortex M3 or M4 compatibility is a must, I don’t plan to introduce a new CPU which wouldn’t allow to run existing applications.
Of course, external memory would open new possibilities.
On the other hand (and contrary to this): wouldn’t it be nice to have a much smaller form factor?
Something like Teensy, but with a more powerful microcontroller which is (or meets the specs) of a STM32F407, and gives access to at least 3 SPI, 2 UARTs and 1 I2C port?
