Hi !
I have tried to enter the FPGA league for many years and I'm about to receive (at least ! the order was paid 6 months ago) my first prototype board with an Actel ProASIC. At last, I'll be able to go from the VHDL simulator to the VHDL synthesizer.
And today, in my favorite broker's "trash bin", i find a pair of unused Xilinx parts that may also serve me, but past experiences with unmounted FPGA chips make me cautious : I have already found XC3000 parts, some in PGA packages... Even an IKOS emulator
The reference of today's find : Virtex XCV400 HQ240AFP0241
So it's a 240-pin PQFP package that i can rather easily solder :-) but the marking implies a 2002 fab date, and i don't know if it's still possible to find SW that supports this part ... Would it be worth it to create a small dev PCB ? (and if the synth SW can run on Linux, that's a plus)
A google search will give results but not tell me if it is useful, and if there is some hope to configure it to something fun. Because besides the 2 FPGA, i have also found a bunch of SDRAM chips and 2MB FLASH chips :-) (plus a whole lot of things i already have)
yg, puzzled and clueless ....