Where to get FPGA devices for testing?

Find another hobby...Bird watching is cheap.

hum, without changing hobby, you can find some small to medium size FPGAs without spending too much. Look for the Xilinx Spartan-2 and the Altera ACEX - small but still usable devices are in the $10 to $20 range.

Sockets are expensive though ($200-$1000), so that's not a good solution to save money. For boards, look at

You can find complete boards for less than $50 (most of them CPLD based though) The cheapest FPGA board seems to be (10K gates) and doesn't require a parallel cable. Anybody has other recommendations?

Jean (fpga4fun)

Try ebay. Here is one with a starting bid of $10 and no bids yet!

And no it is not my board! ;-)

I

Jean, neat website. In your post you should probably have said that the pluto board is your board. I added a link from my links page to your site. The Burch board is also one of the lower cost ones, but is still beyond the $50 budget. There is a fairly comprehensive list of boards at

Jean, you may want to send them a note with details and a link to your board.

The Xilinx spartan2 and altera acex parts can be had for not much more than a song ($10-20 USD), and these have enough gates to do some pretty cool things. For example, I used an $18 spartanII chip to demo a shortwave radio implemented entirely in an FPGA except for the A to D converter and antenna (there is a block diagram on the front page of my website). Unfortunately, it does cost a bit of money to make a board that is going to be robust enough to work under hobbyist conditions and provide all the hooks to make it useful. The insight spartan2 board I used ran a tad over $100 USD, which is more or less the low end. The Burch board, and Jean's Pluto boards are about all that you'll find cheaper.

Jean Nicolle wrote:

--

--Ray Andraka, P.E. President, the Andraka Consulting Group, Inc.

401/884-7930 Fax 401/884-7950 email snipped-for-privacy@andraka.com

"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin, 1759

be smart. be smarter.

at

you can find FPGA BGA pulls at price from $9 for 300,000 gates and $49 for 1M Gates FPGA

even if it looks undoable at the first look BGA chips with ball distance of 1mm+ and not full grid are easily used in wire wrap proto boards.

just put it balls up onto some PCB board, connect GND and VCCxx and JTAG and ready is your FPGA proto board in budget.

My proto worked at first attempt, power on and impact reported device found in JTAG chain.

Antti xilinx.openchip.org P.S. if somebody doesnt believe I can post some photos of the working proto board

PPS there is a catch - those cheap FPGA pulls, they are mostly Virtex FPGA so can not be used with free WebPack :(

but I also obtained some Altera FGPAs they should be useable in above mentioned manner and with free Quartus, I even have some 'oveleft' chips if you want them

I believe you, but I'd still like to see the pictures!

Cheers, Martin

--
martin.j.thompson@trw.com
TRW Conekt, Solihull, UK
http://www.trw.com/conekt

: be smart. be smarter.

: at

you can find FPGA BGA pulls at price from ^^^^^ What do you mean here?

: $9 for 300,000 gates and $49 for 1M Gates FPGA

: even if it looks undoable at the first look BGA chips : with ball distance of 1mm+ and not full grid are easily : used in wire wrap proto boards.

Which FBGA FPGA is not full grid?

Bye

--
Uwe Bonnes                bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik  Schlossgartenstrasse 9  64289 Darmstadt
--------- Tel. 06151 162516 -------- Fax. 06151 164321 ----------

that is not true...bird park asks for a 7$ ticket...and 2$ on petrol...:P

Jean:

You mentioned sockets are worth $200-$1000...what kind of sockets are those? I think if it is watch-repairing sort of skilled work, maybe it is more interesting than FPGA already... Do you mind give me a example of these expensive sockets?

Kelvin

to

Wow, an Ameco preamp--that brings back memories! I once convinced a friend to build an Ameco AC-1 as his first ham transmitter. That was

30 years ago, but I'm still hoping that one of these days he may forgive me.

Bob Perlman Cambrian Design Works

... : > : at

you can find FPGA BGA pulls at price from : > ^^^^^ : > What do you mean here? : >

: > : $9 for 300,000 gates and $49 for 1M Gates FPGA

: I got 17pcs of XCV600 for $99 and XCV2000 for $49 : those are all "pulled" and need reballing

What reballing service do you use and what price to expect?

: > : even if it looks undoable at the first look BGA chips : > : with ball distance of 1mm+ and not full grid are easily : > : used in wire wrap proto boards. : >

: > Which FBGA FPGA is not full grid?

:

: sorry I did mean the BGA inner balls are missing, FPGA array is full of

Virtex is mostly BGA (1.27 mm ball spacing). That's an easy one to get prototyping boards for at a sensible price, as 0.15mm/0.15mm lines/spaces and 0.3 mm for minimum drill work a long way and the well known prototyping companies ( M&V, PCB Pool) deliver these rules. Also Virtex only occupies four rows  from the outside (no full array), while more recent families are mostly FBGA (1.0 mm ball pitch) and those rare in BGA(1.27mm) (BG575/BG728 for Virtex II) are fully occupied...

Virtex also has the problem, that it isn't supported by Webpack ...

Cyclone in a QFP240 package seems to have the most reachable pins with a recent family.

Bye

--
Uwe Bonnes                bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik  Schlossgartenstrasse 9  64289 Darmstadt
--------- Tel. 06151 162516 -------- Fax. 06151 164321 ----------

yes. I wasn't sure how to put that, so I signed with fpga4fun. Thanks for the link. Looks like

has quite some resource too, that should make a good cross-link. I tried to email optimagic a while back, but got no answer.

Yes, $100 is reasonable for an FPGA demo board. Unfortunately, there are not many choices below that, and too many choices above...

Try

I'll let you look for distributors and prices.

hobby,

UPS...And I

the

I got 17pcs of XCV600 for $99 and XCV2000 for $49 those are all "pulled" and need reballing

sorry I did mean the BGA inner balls are missing, FPGA array is full of course

antti xilinx.openchip.org

sorry, I said "need reballing" not that I have done that reballing I specially selected FPGAs in packages that can be used in wire wrap protos without any need of reballing well I would also like to know what a cheap reballing price is :)

this BGA has not been reballed it is in an condition as I got it from ebay auction

prototyping

I think you read my comments wrong I did not mention FBGA at all, so you messed with F - sure most fine grid BGAs are full array and 0.8 mm thats way more complicated for hand made wire wrap - tried once with TMS320C6205 and failed, well could have succeeded also but did it in a rush :)

I mostly wanted to have one 2Million gates test platform so obtained a few XCV2000 chips and a XCV300 for getting warm to solder the 2000"s...

yes, as I said too, thats the catch here :( it is supported by free JBits 2.8 but that is not longer officially obtainable :(

well yes, but that is not easy to get in 1 off quantity :(

Is that $18.00 per single piece or $18.00 per 250,000 pieces?

Ray Andraka wrote: : Jean, neat website. In your post you should probably have said that the pluto : board is your board. I added a link from my links page to your site. : The Burch board is also one of the lower cost ones, but is still beyond the $50 : budget. There is a fairly comprehensive list of boards at

: Jean, you may want to send them a note with details and a link to your board. : : The Xilinx spartan2 and altera acex parts can be had for not much more than a : song ($10-20 USD), and these have enough gates to do some pretty cool things. : For example, I used an $18 spartanII chip to demo a shortwave radio implemented : entirely in an FPGA except for the A to D converter and antenna (there is a : block diagram on the front page of my website). Unfortunately, it does cost a : bit of money to make a board that is going to be robust enough to work under : hobbyist conditions and provide all the hooks to make it useful. The insight : spartan2 board I used ran a tad over $100 USD, which is more or less the low : end. The Burch board, and Jean's Pluto boards are about all that you'll find : cheaper. :

pluto

$50

a

implemented

a

--

--Ray Andraka, P.E. President, the Andraka Consulting Group, Inc.

401/884-7930 Fax 401/884-7950 email snipped-for-privacy@andraka.com

"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin, 1759