All dollars are US$

FPGA:
     Cypress Semiconductor makes inexpensive entry level VHDL compiler. It
comes with a book, although the book is only fair. You can order directly
from Cypress for about $100, or you can buy one from a bookstore for about
$60. It support fairly large number of Cypress devices, including (C)PLD
and FPGA. I'm not sure about simple PLD support, but CPLD are usually
better in most applications anyways.

Books:
     For all your technical book needs, checkout OpAmp bookstore. They now
have decent search engine, and they stock most books in store. If you are
in LA or Orange County area in California, you can visit them in West
Hollywood. http://www.opampbooks.com

Oscilloscope:
     Radio Shack sells el cheapo digital scoope. It's about $100. It has a
small LCD display and it also hooks up to a PC via RS232. Fastest sampling
rate is 5 ns, but it doesn't have filters before the digitizing process.
This means you'll see many foldovers if you sample high frequency stuff.
It's good for quick and dirty stuff. In fact, I think it's a cheapest 5 MHz
oscilloscope one can buy (digital or analog).

Serial port:
     Does anyone know where I can get a serial port routine that works on
interrupt basis? I want the PIC to perform computation while the data is
being received (sort of multitasking). I have a sample serial code from
Microchip, but it's not "multitasking". Please send me the source; I
already know I should use port B state change interrupt, but I'm not sure
how I would implement this. Thanks.

Single Transistor RS 232 Receive

                      +5
                      |
                      \
                      /10k
                      \
                      /
                      |-----------TTL Sig out
                   | /
            10k    |/
RS232 IN---/\/\/---|\  NPN (2N2222 or 2N3904)
                   | \|
                      |
                      |
                      GND

     Now the question is, is there such a solution for other direction (TTL
in, RS232 out)? I looked at prices for MAXIM single supply transceiver
devices and they are EXPENSIVE!