A few months back, I was inspired by the BMOW project:
http://www.bigmessowires.com/category/bmow1/I know a lot of folks have made these TTL CPUs, and it seemed like a fun, long term project. I've learned quite a bit
about digital logic and feel ready to start playing with actual hardware. I've thought about ordering a buttload of
discrete logic ICs and either wirewrapping or breadboarding. Sadly, I don't have as much time for assembly as I would like.
Right now, I don't have much of a workspace, nor do I want to keep up with dozens of wires and ICs.
I'm a software engineer by trade, and I'm much more comfortable with work I can do at my work station. I discovered FPGAs
and CPLDs not long ago and love the concepts. Verilog and VHDL don't scare me as I've worked with concurrent dev before.
I think if I went the CPLD route, I would make the most of my time and money.
Unfortunately, I'm having a really hard time finding the right dev board. I've found the
DE-0 Nano which looks great, but seems like it might be overkill with 22,320 LEs. Some of the low-end CPLDs I've found are cheaper, but not that much cheaper.
The really tiny ones are about $10 - $20 but lack programmers and don't have sufficient gates. I'm hoping to find a no frills board that will give me something
to get started with that's easy to use. I'm hoping to implement an 8-bit CPU, so it will need enough gates to support that. Maybe I just need to spend the $80 and
move on. I'm hoping for some feedback as it seems that you guys know a lot about these things. Thanks.