How to Reverse Engineer a 12 EUR Intel PCIe FPGA Card IBM 98Y2610

He doesn't mention it's a RS485 I/O card meant to fit into an CEC expansion box in a Z14 mainframe. Might be helpful terms to search if you're looking to find very similar parts...since there might be run on this one specifically. Found part number 98Y6848 looking this way, which seems like an updated (or maybe just renumbered) version of this.

If you want to tinker with PCIe FPGAs I would rather look into DMA Cards developed for PCIleech, Nitefury/Litefury boards or Alinx boards.

All of these options can be had for ~100$.

It sells on taobao for 300 CNY

The updated board: 98Y6848 sells for about 240 CNY

It’s not that hard to reverse engineer anything you know about. You know, there is FPGA, there is PCIe, FPGA model is also known. All externals interfaces are also known. High probability, that the board is not broken.

Imagine obscure motherboard, produced 25-30 years ago. No current colleague has seen it before. Half designed internally, other half circuits licensed. All the ICs met very aggressive thermal glue and their names are gone. The client is to ready to pay anything for the repair. They sent you crate full of broken boards. That’s where real reverse engineering starts.