What do you guys think about this FPGA dev board from Xilinx?

http://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-a ... lhae0.html

I could see dropping that into a SBC to do all kinds of useful stuff. Maybe running side-by-side with a real 65C02.

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Cat; the other white meat.

Just to summarise what you get for $69:
- just .7” by 2.6” and in 48 pin breadboard format
- 46 I/Os from the FPGA
- Xilinx® Spartan®-6 LX4 FPGA with 24k block RAM and 600 slices
- USB port
- 4 LEDs and two buttons

Of course it all depends on what you need and in what kind of form factor, but this looks like a lot better deal to my (admittedly inexpert) eyes.

Are you specifically interested in something with a DIL form factor?

How important is 5V tolerance?

If it's important, make sure you check out the OHO GODIL modules:
http://www.trenz-electronic.de/products ... ronik.html

They use an older Spartan 3E FPGA (XC3S250E/XC3S500E), but do have on-board 3.3V/5V level shifters, so you can plug into an system that uses 5V levels.

I used these in the ICE-T65/Z80/6809 work:
https://github.com/hoglet67/AtomBusMon/wiki

Dave

Which is to say, the Arty board from Digilent, $99 for 5200 slices, 100k RAM, Artix-35T FPGA, 256MB of 16-bit wide SDRAM, with USB and Ethernet. And 8 LEDs!

Much more of a standalone board than a component in its own right - much bigger. And needs up to 3.5 Amps.

It has 32 I/Os in PMOD form factor and 49 I/Os in Arduino form factor.

(I agree with Dave, the OHO products are very handy, although a bit outdated they are at least 5V compatible. I think there are yet some clever projects to be made using the GOP module too - it has fewer I/Os but has on-board SRAM.)

I should have been more specific.

For me personally, the DIL packages are very interesting. Honestly, I didn't think there were many of them around. Which is why I was surprised when I saw it.

I will certainly check out that OHO too.

My interests would be for memory decoding, video generation, etc.

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Cat; the other white meat.

I think you did find a new one!

It's possible you'll also see something interesting at
https://www.enterpoint.co.uk/products/

Ah, gotcha.

A few more with a DIP form factor:

The Micro-Nova Mercury
- Spartan XC3S200A + 512Kx8 10ns SRAM
- DIP-64 package
- $79
- http://www.micro-nova.com/mercury

The XESS XuLA2-LX9
- Spartan XC6SLX9 + 16Mx16 SDRAM
- 2"x1" DIP (ish) package
- $69
- http://www.xess.com/shop/product/xula2-lx9/

The XESS XuLA2-LX25
- Spartan XC6SLX25 + 16Mx16 SDRAM
- 2"x1" DIP (ish) package
- $119
- http://www.xess.com/shop/product/xula2-lx25/

As far as I know, the GODILs are unique in their ability to arbitrarily configure (with jumpers) the VCC and GND pins. This allows them to act as plug-in replacement for pretty much any DIP-40 packaged device.

Dave

Thanks for those links!

There's a previous thread for the general case but it's good to have a thread for the DIP case.
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1787

To my personal experience, FPGA development has always been a nightmare, due to the lack of well-designed tools, and this is much more a deal killer than the price. If it would be, say, $690 instead of $69, but came with tools that were easy to use, and do not reqiure particular PC hardware not using any kind of licence, then I'd be much more interested.

This might be a good point to mention Lattice FPGAs and the open source tools people have built for them.
http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/

I have to admit, those GODIL's look pretty nice.

http://www.trenz-electronic.de/products ... ronik.html

I like the idea of drop-in replacements and 5v tolerant pins. Seems like there would be more of a demand for these...especially in the retro communities.

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Cat; the other white meat.

You do see a trickle of GODIL projects in the 8 bit world. Not a flood, but there is certainly a good fit.

GODIL's look nice but I need something with about 80k or more RAM onboard, and about 50 IO's. (35-40 5V)
Some of the boards with newer parts have enough RAM, but no 5V tolerance.
Can't seem to find a win.

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http://www.finitron.ca