Spartan3 Dev Boards

Well I almost bought a development kit from Xilinx's Online Store, however, I was looking at the schematics and saw that this is the same board designed by Digilent, a board that I already had. So I guess my first question is what do I get with the Xilinx kit that I might not already have?

I haven't pursued my Digilent board too much because there didn't seem to be any software for it. I also bought a board from Memec and it has a few software examples, but no VGA port, which is an interest of mine. If anyone has any more examples for the Memec board, that would be of great interest to me.

I would like to see a real VGA driver on a dev kit but I am also interested in what this Digilent 3 bit shoestring VGA can do. It seems to simple to believe. Has anybody done anything with it?

I think the XESS people were going to do a Spartan3 board. Anyone know about this?

Salutations,

Brad

Reply to
Brad Smallridge
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Hi,

Well, you get 8 colors, you can certainly do character generators and simple graphics. For two "exercises" that are directly compatible with the D2E/DIO1 combo from Digilient, check out:

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I'm sure these can easily be ported to the new Spartan-3 board. What kind of stuff did you want to do with it, I'm curious.

Eric

Reply to
Eric Crabill

Have a look at our new product Broaddown2. It can have a driver added using the expansion positions. Next batch available 6-8 weeks. Details here

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John Adair
Enterpoint Ltd. - Home of Broaddown2. The Ultimate Spartan3 Development
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Reply to
John Adair

I've been eyeing a board from Avnet for a while (ADS-XLX-SP3-EVL400).

It is based on a Spartan 3 400, has a VGA port (which uses a real video DAC), RJ45, RS232, PS2, ..., and a PCI edge. It is a bit pricy for hobbyists like me ($399), but it seems to be a very well-thought through general-purpose dev board. Avnet also makes a version with a 1500 part for $100 more, though when I talked to them a month or so ago, they couldn't source the S3 1500 for production.

If anybody has used this board and has some comments to share, please do!

- Nathan

Reply to
Nathan Hunsperger

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