Fpga''s And Noobs

[klikklak]

Hi all,

I've been reading a bit on the pandora forums and there were several people who've got these things: FPGA's! Ever since reading about openhardware designs (can't remember the site anymore, around the time there was a sparc design opensourced) I've been drooling for these things. I am however not a electrical engineer. So what is the learning curve on these things for regular use? If I got a C-One, would I be able to use it with a relatively good unix admin skillset?

For those that didn't notice these, there's at least two sets around: NEXYS2 and C-One. C-One is a bit pricier, but has a addon board for amiga! It also looks a lot more user friendly and aimed at retro computing.

Are there others? Also some years ago I read a bit about plans for having a CPU core made specifically (on FPGA) for running linux, did this happen and how large FPGA's are we talking about before that could be done?

 

[foft]

I'm not clear if you're after using existing cores or developing for one?

I'm trying to get into FPGAs. I bought an Altera DE1 for this. You can download the Quartus Web edition for free for compiling VHDL or Verilog. Lots of simple labs for practice. It also has onboard SRAM,SDRAM, VGA and Audio connectors. This is powerful enough to run up to Minimig, though I've not tried it.

For learning VHDL I'm using "The VHDL Designers Guide", but I've got a bit of a digital design background (degree, but unused so forgotten it!). Quite a heavy read!

There is also a board under development @ http://www.fpgaarcade.com/ which might be worth a look. Also the minimig boards too. I really hope Natami is a real project - that will be awesome if true. They certainly at least talk the talk...

 

[klikklak]

Definitely NOT core development! Seriously, that's way out of my league.

I'm more interested in using existing cores. I'm still a bit unclear whether it's actually worth the effort (the cool factor is huge in this one though), I mean I'm not much of an emulation purist. Well, the minimig seems most interesting, together with the C-One, and I could see a point in having a dedicated pc (cheap and modern) hardware with that running in it for having retro goodness.

 

[foft]

Well I don't own a C-One, so I can't comment. I can't imagine its too complicated to run other peoples cores. Less so than scary unix scripts anyway. If you get one let me know if its any good! Jens tends to make good hardware though, so sure it is...

Without the extension board, the C-One FPGA is showing its age. Hence the need for an extension to run the Amiga stuff. I've not looked at the capacity of the extension one...