fpga suggestions

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dXtr
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Joined: Tue Sep 21, 2004 12:11 am
Location: Karlshamn (Sweden)

fpga suggestions

Post by dXtr »

hi I've been reading about fpga/cpld now on this and other dev. sites and feel it would be intresting to experiment a little with them myself..
any suggestions of what could be good to get to start of?
what my goal is to learn how to program them and use them together with hardware.. I bet there are pleny of tutorials and things on the net on the programming part.. but I would love to have some help with hardware.. what fpga to get (and possibly why) and maybe some example on a first test thing you could do.. like a hello world in fpga ;)


edit:
think I found a nice page with lots of answears
http://www.fpga4fun.com

but if you have other tips ans suggestions or remakrs please post them :)
Sorry for misspellings, I'm from Sweden ^^
Bananmos
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Post by Bananmos »

I'm no expert on comparing FPGAs, but when I did a SNES-like console in school, this is the FPGA board we used:

http://www.digilentinc.com/Data/Product ... ochure.pdf

Ain't too expensive I suppose, and gives you quite a big amount of internal gates and external I/O:s to play around with. The Spartan2 FPGA chip is a decent chip IMO, though Xilinx's tools could be better. (but at least they're free of charge)

Stay away from the Spartan2E though, as that one is not 5V tolerant and will fry if the I/O:s get 5V from what I've heard.

I also made a naked NES cart with just two IDC-connectors attached to it, which is ideal for prototyping your own "mapper". I only have one of these, but I can send you all the schematic and layout files if you'd like to order it.
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dXtr
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Post by dXtr »

nice. thanks for the answear. and trying to make an own mappet (and possibly try to implement some mmc mapper too) is what my goal in the end would be, so it would be nice to see those files :)

another question.. what is the pros and cons with Verilog vs. VHDL?
after looking on the little guides on fpga4fun I can't understand why anyone would want to use VHDL.. it seems like lots of code for very little effect (kind of like I've heard COBOL is supposed to be ;) )
Sorry for misspellings, I'm from Sweden ^^
Bananmos
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Post by Bananmos »

Here you have a .zip file of it. Check out the "NES_kasset" part:
http://www.student.itn.liu.se/~miciw347/neskassett.zip

It's made in the "Protel" program. If I remember correctly, the "Gerber" files is what you send to a manufacturer like Olimex if you want them to make the board for you: (if you do, please tell)

The circuit board wasn't a PERFECT match, as I had to peel off a tiny fraction of a millimeter to fit it in a cart case, and it sits pretty tight when placed there rather than falling out by the laws of gravity like original carts. But other than that, it works fine.

And btw: since you live in Sweden, contact me if you're planning to order one of these, as I might be interested in ordering one myself, in which case we could split shipping. Though lately I've started considering ordering an FPSLIC from Atmel instead. (AVR+FPGA+configuration memory+36kB of RAM in a single chip, making it ideal for an FPGA based universal mapper cart with a compactflash card or similar. Still a pretty expensive chip, but I'm hoping it'll drop in price soon)

And I should also warn you about one thing regarding the Spartan2 devboard: when I did the videogame project, we had two of these boards dying on us for no explainable reason. So check out if there are any warranties for it...
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dXtr
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Post by dXtr »

nice. going to look through the files tonight when I come home. and thanks for note on the spartan2 board.. gonna look that up too.

and also, I promise to pm if/when I make an order.. but that would probaly not be this month.. saving up some money for another dev. project and also for a CopyNES kit when kevtris start selling them :)
Sorry for misspellings, I'm from Sweden ^^
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