Is this a good starter kit?

This Digilent combo package looks to me like an excellent way to learn FPGAs (but then, I don't know anything yet!):

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Do more experienced eyes see any gotchas with this setup? I realize the FPGA is bigger than a beginner needs, but the price seems good, and I gather the part is from a mainstream FPGA family.

Thanks.

Reply to
Mike Silva
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Looks good to me. I am actually not sure if this level of complexity (number of peripherals) is required for learning, perhaps you could find something cheaper with less peripherals. With this kit you could design a small microprocessor, but you would probaly have to add some external memory (through the provided expansion ports) to make any practical use of it...

/Mikhail

Reply to
MM

No external RAM is the biggie; I'd much rather have RAM and USB than fifteen push-button switches and a 2x40 LCD display.

Tom

Reply to
Thomas Womack

I got myself a similar combo but with the dio1 and a couple of the breadboards

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the lack of memory is a bit annoying sometimes

Have you had a look at

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Alex

Reply to
Alex Gibson

Well, there's clear consensus that I'll be wanting RAM! I did look at the burched.biz stuff, but the 2.5X price put me off.

Seems like it should be easy enough to cobble up some RAM on one of the digilent proto boards, yes?

Reply to
Mike Silva

I don't know whether it is a consensus. It all depends on what you are going to be working on... If your goal is to design a microprocessor and port linux on it then you clearly need some RAM. On the other hand if you want to do a black jack game or a traffic light controller you won't need any RAM.

You will need to build a little board with a proper connector. This will probably cost you at least as much as the difference in the prices between the boards you looked at... Have you checked with Digilent? They might be offering expansion boards...

/Mikhail

Reply to
MM

Just looking for a system to learn about FPGAs in my spare time. In all honesty I probably will never use more than a few percent of the device. Plenty of blinking lights is clearly the most important feature. :)

Well, I can buy a couple of 128Kx8 SRAMs for 12 bucks, and another $12 for a proto board that's designed to plug into the FPGA board. For a little effort I still save $250.

I also notice that the Spartan device comes with 56k bits of block RAM. I gather that I could use that for small RAM needs.

Reply to
Mike Silva

Mike,

Well, then it sounds like this board has all that you will need...

between

be

The problem with this approach is signal integrity.... It will work in principle but it might not work at the board's full speed (at whatever the clock rate is there). However, it doesn't sound as you will need extra RAM anytime soon anyway...

Yes, sure! That's what it is there for!

/Mikhail

Reply to
MM

in message news:...

xess.com has a board for the same price as the digilab, with RAM, though the FPGA is a good deal smaller and you'd have to use prototyping board for the blinkylights. I'd have thought that building interfaces to blinkylights and push-buttons was easier than building interfaces to RAM (no need to worry about signal integrity ...) but I've built neither.

Tom

Reply to
Thomas Womack

This is the same setup I started with. I started with smaller projects but after about 3 or 4 months of working my way up I was able to get an openrisc processor running with uclinux. I did have to design my own little DRAM board for this. Still there is more than enough onboard memory to run an 8bit or 32 bit cpu and do some basic testing. If you order this board be sure to ask for the 300k Spartan II rather than the 200k. The extra 100k gates only costs about $10 more. When I had the full openrisc up and running with uclinux I used 94% of the

300k Spartan.
Reply to
db

Excellent tip on the larger part, thanks!

Mike

Reply to
Mike Silva

Yep, I agree that's a consideration. Hand-wiring was so much easier in the days of 500ns memory...

Reply to
Mike Silva

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