Altera starter kits

I'm looking into buying the fpga and/or cpld starter kits. I was wondering if the logic chips can be taken out of the development board after they are programmed.

Thanks

Reply to
wanwan
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Sure, but they are unlikely to be usable afterwards :-) Besides, only CPLDs are non-volatile. It would be rather pointless for an FPGA.

Your question suggest that you don't really understand CPLDs and FPGAs. Both are really meant to be programmed in-system. The FPGA is usually programmed on each power on, typically from a serial programming flash or a microcontroller. If you do need them in a different application, you're better of laying out a board and populate it with fresh chips. Be warned though, it's a lot more complicated than with a microcontroller.

Get a Spartan 3E starter kit or the Cyclone II Starter Development Kit, read the documentation and play with it.

Cheers, Tommy

Reply to
Tommy Thorn

If you look at the DigiLab Picomax from El Camino (see

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dpicomaxe.html) you will see that it uses a PLCC socket. Thus, with the right tool (a small teaspoon or a horribly expensive PLCC removal thingie) you should be able to remove the CPLD from the board.

I don't know of any other eval boards where the device can then be taken off the board.

Best regards,

Ben

Reply to
Ben Twijnstra

The Atmel ATF15xx-DK3 has daughter cards, with ZIF sockets [ so you can leave the teaspoon in your coffee :) ]

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The different ZIF's support PLCC44, TQFP44, TQFP100 etc

Kits are on Digikey for $112, and IIRC that gives

1 x TQFP44 Zif, and the Parallel Port - 10W ISP cable + SW. ( these support the new ATF1502BE / ATF1504ASL )

These starter kits do not support vector Testing, for that you need a device programmer.

The Zif sockets are $$$ and rare, so we are making an adaptor PCB that morphs a -DK3 ZIF into a Programmer ZIF.

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

Apart from the fact, that Xilinx-based starterkits appear to be cheaper, I recommend to go with a e.g. S3D kit which is here around

134,- and has really more than necessary to start with FPGA. There is also no need to "take out" the FPGA to place in another system. ou can drop the entire EVAL-board into a prototype system :-) (not really kidding, I am doing this currently)

But If you intend to stay with Altera, you should have a look at the cycloneII board named "HPE AC II mini" from "Gleichmann Research" in Austria. It starts from =80299,- (avnet-price) and is ready for large uc-based designes especially with the bundled LEON 32bit-soft core. It has SRAM Socket and a large and fast FPGA, so this board is hard to exceed with start up design. (Spartan is much smaller)

Reply to
alterauser

What I really need to do is to program a chip to have a logic circuit, so that I can use it elsewhere. I am considering this approach rather than building with an IC circuit. Can anyone give me suggestions please?

Reply to
wanwan

wanwan schrieb:

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plugin DIP modules with CPLD or FPGA on it

Reply to
Antti

If the logic circuit is not too complex, you can concider any CPLD ranging from 32 macrocells to 1000 MC (in some cases).

Another approach would be to use Altera's MaxII or Lattice's MachXO. Unfortunately you will have to deal with BGA packages for the larger devices and high IO count. If I'm not mistaken both MaxII and MachXO have a TQFP100 package for the whole range.

The last approach is a non volatile FPGA. Only Lattice's XP and Actel's ProASIC3 provide a practical solution. The functions you can implement in these devices can be very big.

All devices mentioned are in system programmable.

Regards,

Luc

Reply to
lb.edc

If you don't mind using a Xilinx device, check out XESS website

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their boards can be placed in circuit and last I knew, worked with Xilinx's web pack distribution. I've seen these integrated in low volume commercial products and prototypes.

Reply to
Derek Simmons

Is it plug-able that's important ? How complex is that 'logic circuit' How fast does it need to operate ?

- can you describe what you want to do, and you can get more accurate advice.

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

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