Thanks everyone for the recommendations.
BigEd wrote:
Of commercial offerings, I've only used the Xilinx tools, as you mention, and it's always a struggle to get started. Once you're set up, it's not so bad
Well, that's true. Once I finally got everything installed it seems to work OK. It was the license manager that was the most trouble. I had to research and install all sorts of things that aren't standard with Fedora Linux.
BigEd wrote:
But the open source offerings are coming along: if you get a Lattice-based board using iCE40 or ECP5 parts you can run icestorm/yosys/nextpnr. The flow is much more friendly, and command line based. See for example
https://forum.mystorm.uk/t/ot-large-ecp ... 88?u=bigedand nearby on that board for more links.
Or indeed see here:
https://symbiflow.github.io/1211#structurewhere they also mention Xilinx support.
Thanks, I will check those out. I definitely want to explore the Lattice based solutions. That's what my TinyFPGA recommends using (it's a Lattice chip). The only reason I'm not using it now is because the IO is very limited (due to the tiny nature of the board).
MicroCoreLabs wrote:
If your preference is Xilinx then a lot can be done with these inexpensive boards:
Thanks for the links but my preference is definitely not Xilinx. It's just the only FPGA I have other than the TinyFPGA.