Survey of FPGA dev boards

[rwiker]

I think the boards I found at tindie have actually been mentioned previously in this thread, but I don't think I've seen this one mentioned before:

http://numato.com/saturn-spartan-6-fpga ... -ddr-sdram

Spartan 6 LX45 at $140.

[BigEd]

The BeMicro CV is a dev board for $49, with a Cyclone V FPGA (176kByte RAM) and 128MByte 16-bit wide SDRAM. It has 80 GPIOs and USB.
http://parts.arrow.com/item/detail/arro ... /bemicrocv

Probably 3V3 only - I can see no mention of it being 5V tolerant.


(via hackaday)

[BigDumbDinosaur]

BigEd wrote:

...Probably 3V3 only - I can see no mention of it being 5V tolerant.

I tracked down the data sheet for the Altera FPGA that is the heart of this board. You correctly surmised that it is a 3.3 volt device (GPIO pins). The core voltage is even lower at 1.43 volts maximum. Guess it isn't going to work with POC V2.

[BigEd]

I am curiously attracted to boards with 16-bit wide RAM...

[zz_indigo]

zx80nut wrote:

..
Nothing else on there apart from regs, 50MHz oscillator and the configuration chip (underneath), which personally is how I prefer it so that there is no dedicated hardware already allocated to pins.



Works really well for me, and enough on-chip to allow me to run several 6502 cores, or a full CP/M implementation with an external SRAM, serial interfaces and SD card etc...
Been so useful to me that I have bought several, and all are in use.

..l

I find alternative with Cyclone IV



+ More Keys 2 vs 1
+ More Leds 8 vs 2
+ More internal memory 270Kbit vs 117Kbit
+ Supported on newer quartus-II
- no power on headers (+5V power pins mostly on top side, no 3.3V power on headers)
= Power via USB or +5V power pins vs JACK
= Internal oscilator 25MHz vs 50 Mhz

on botom side config reload button.

[zz_indigo]

For simple computers i use this EP4CE6 kit.



- 16bit VGA (RGB 565)
- PS/2
- 4M x 16Bit x 4 Banks SDRAM
- 32M-bit Serial Flash
- 8bit A/D converter
- IR recivier
- 4 butons
- 4 LEDs
- 4 7-segment display (pins shared with LEDs_
- buzzer
- USB to serial converter (power via USB oe header)

pins used for VGA and PS2 on header

[BigEd]

They look good - do you have links to buy them, or part numbers to search for?
Thanks
Ed

[zz_indigo]

BigEd wrote:

They look good - do you have links to buy them, or part numbers to search for?
Thanks
Ed

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Altera-Cyclone- ... 3f32c53d7c

Price is ~50$

http://www.amazon.com/Altera-CycloneIV- ... B00KLQCUY2


My local copy of documentation: https://svn.mavipet.sk/svn/fpga_tests/HW/ZRtech/ (don't work on Internet Explorer. too secur setings)

[BigEd]

Thanks!

[barrym95838]

zz_indigo wrote:

... (don't work on Internet Explorer. too secur setings)

Chrome (with default settings) doesn't trust your last link either.

Mike

[Tor]

That's actually a fault of Chrome, there's nothing inherently wrong with a self-signed certificate. The whole mess is because https mixes authentication with encryption when those are really separate issues. As long as you're not uploading private data (as with banking and payment institutions) it's pointless to have an 'authorative' certificate. But there you go. As we know a certain institution also has been shown to have direct access to the 'authority' on certificates and can inject man-in-the-middle attacks on the data stream. Not so with self-signed ones.

[zz_indigo]

barrym95838 wrote:

zz_indigo wrote:

... (don't work on Internet Explorer. too secur setings)

Chrome (with default settings) doesn't trust your last link either.

Mike

self signed certificate. A planing fixed it.

[BigEd]

Hackaday now sell things, and in particular they sell an FPGA board for $49. It has a Spartan 6 LX9 and a 128k x16bit wide 10ns SRAM.
http://store.hackaday.com/products/ardu ... pga-shield


It's an open design - see the project page at
http://hackaday.io/project/38-Arduino-C ... PGA-Shield

[BigEd]

A spartan6 dev board is available from scarab hardware although presently out of stock.
minispartan6+ $75 or $105
Sister board:
minispartan3 $25 or $35

It has a 16-bit wide SDRAM on board.

See
http://forums.xilinx.com/t5/Xcell-Daily ... a-p/559300

[BigEd]

The Papilio boards range from $40 to $90, and there's a Computing Shield for $45 which offers lots of appropriate I/O connectors: VGA, PS/2, SDcard, stereo jack, joystick, serial.
http://store.gadgetfactory.net/fpga/
http://store.gadgetfactory.net/computing-shield/
http://store.gadgetfactory.net/compare/132/76/83

Dave Banks has just implemented a 2015 model Acorn Atom on Duo+Computing:
http://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic. ... 11#p110255




The Duo is like an Arduino with FPGA and a big SRAM:
- Spartan 6 LX9 FPGA
- Dual Channel USB 2.0 Interface
- 512KB or 2MB ISSI IS61WV5128 SRAM (8-bit wide)
- 64Mbit SPI Flash
- Atmel AVR ATmega32U4 - Arduino-Compatible Chip
- 54 I/O pins arranged in an Arduino-Compatible Mega Form Factor
- Digital Pins 0-16 Connected to FPGA and ATmega32U4

Interestingly, the page says that SDRAM is a lot more tricky, hence the choice of SRAM.