CPLD trainer on eBay

[plasmo]

I dimly remembered using an Altera CPLD trainer in a class 20+ years ago and I believe it was the same board as this eBay item. $32 & free shipping is a good price so I went ahead and bought two of them. There are other similar eBay item for $39. This is a good way to start learning about CPLD.

Disclaimer, I'm not associated in anyway with the seller.

Bill

[BillO]

I have one of those. Have not used it since the last ice age, but it hangs around.

[plasmo]

The eBay seller I mentioned in my OP sold all 5 boards in 24 hours, so if you don't use it anymore, you can definitely sell yours quickly for $32.
Bill

[plasmo]

Received the Altera UP2 boards today. It is much nicer than I remembered. The EPF10K70 is one of the few 5V FPGA developed right around the turn of this century. It was rapidly superseded by newer, more dense 3.3V FPGA so now it is pretty much an unobtainum. $32 & free shipping for this board is a great deal now I have a good look at it.

I'm pretty sure EPF10K70 is big enough to accommodate 6502 in Verilog or VHDL so an emulation of 6502 SBC is probably do-able with this hardware. It doesn't have lots of embedded RAM, but should be enough to run small program. I'll play with it a bit this weekend before my pc boards come in from JLCPCB.
Bill

[plasmo]

Georgia Tech was using the UP2 for instruction so there are a good number of examples on their website:
https://hamblen.ece.gatech.edu/ALTERA/altera.htm

I downloaded the 'Pong" program to try out on my board. It was originally compiled for Maxplus so I converted it to Quartus. The program is mostly VHDL and consume 883 macrocells out of 3744 available (24% utilization). It ran nicely on my UP2 board. This is a good checkout of my board. Attached is the converted design to Quartus for anyone interested.
Bill

[greghol]

Thanks for the heads up Bill. I picked up one of the $39 units.

I haven't looked yet but I think the Flex FPGAs are 5V tolerant.

Greg

[plasmo]

greghol wrote:

I haven't looked yet but I think the Flex FPGAs are 5V tolerant.

Greg

Flex10K is actually a 5V part. It is one of the few 5V FPGA developed in the late 1990's
Bill

[greghol]

plasmo wrote:

greghol wrote:

I haven't looked yet but I think the Flex FPGAs are 5V tolerant.

Greg

Flex10K is actually a 5V part. It is one of the few 5V FPGA developed in the late 1990's
Bill

Great! Relatively dense 5V FPGAs. Hard to come by without paying an arm and leg looking at the eBay prices.

Shouldn't take much to glue a WDC 65C02 to it and make it a super IO chip.

Greg

[okwatts]

Just checking from those who know, if one was to get one of these boards what version of Quartus still supports these ie the Flex10k70 and where do you find it. My version 13.0sp1 does not!

[sburrow]

okwatts wrote:

Just checking from those who know, if one was to get one of these boards what version of Quartus still supports these ie the Flex10k70 and where do you find it. My version 13.0sp1 does not!

Same here! If you find something let me know. As of now I have not been able to find an older version of Quartus that runs on Linux Mint. I might have found one that runs on Windows(?) but I haven't tried it yet. Bill told me there might be a FLEX10K package for 13.0sp1, but I cannot find it as of now.

Thank you!

Chad

[plasmo]

Yike! that's something I didn't expect. I'm using Quartus 8.1 for the last 20 years which does have Flex10K. I also have Quartus 10 that also has Flex10K. Somewhere along the way Flex10K was dropped. Are you guys able to download older version of Quartus 8 or 10?
Bill

[SamCoVT]

okwatts wrote:

Just checking from those who know, if one was to get one of these boards what version of Quartus still supports these ie the Flex10k70 and where do you find it. My version 13.0sp1 does not!

Unfortunately, the Flex 10K family uses the older Max+PLUS II software rather than Quartus, and Intel no longer supports that software (or even lets you download it). On Intel's website, trying to download the Max+PLUS II software just brings you to a discontinuation notice, which says it the software will no longer be available after March 12th 2021. It's the same for any versions of Quartus before 13 (I just saw plasmo posted that Quartus 8.1 had the 10K)

I believe the MAX CPLD that's on that board can be programmed with Quartus 13.x, which is still available, but you are out of luck for the FLEX device.

From my somewhat old memory of actually using these boards when I was in college, the MAX+PLUS II software needed to be licensed before you can use it and it's tied to the PC it is installed on (eg. you used to go to Altera's web site, type in the computer "ID" that the software gave you on first startup, and then you could download a license file for the "free/student" version. Without Intel providing the licensing anymore, it won't be as simple as downloading an old copy of the software from a sketchy web site (which you probably shouldn't be doing anyway) because it won't work until licensed. It's a sad state of affairs because that FLEX device is really cool for combining retro and modern - the 3.3V I/O pins were also 5V tolerant even when run on 3.3V and the I/O could be a different voltage than the internal logic.

[SamCoVT]

plasmo wrote:

Yike! that's something I didn't expect. I'm using Quartus 8.1 for the last 20 years which does have Flex10K. I also have Quartus 10 that also has Flex10K. Somewhere along the way Flex10K was dropped. Are you guys able to download older version of Quartus 8 or 10?
Bill

Intel still lets you download Quartus 13.0sp1 (which supports the MAX7000 CPLD on that board) and 13.1 (which does not appear to have MAX7000 support anymore). Trying to download any older version brings you to a Product Discontinuation notice. I don't know if this is a side effect of Intel buying Altera, but when it was Altera you could still download all of the older software -- it was provided as-is and without support but was still made available.

[okwatts]

Found 9.0 for windows at archive.org,(https://archive.org/details/90-quartus-free). I think according to Intel website this is the last version to support Flex. This may be the best we can do.

[sburrow]

okwatts wrote:

Found 9.0 for windows at archive.org,(https://archive.org/details/90-quartus-free). I think according to Intel website this is the last version to support Flex. This may be the best we can do.

If you get it to work on Windows, I'll try to make it work somehow. If you have no luck in Windows, I won't even try So, please keep us posted if that works or not. Thanks!

Chad