Paul Anderson wrote:

>Does anyone know of FPGAs that one could start experimenting with,
>without having to lay out $100+ for the hardware to program them?  I'd
>love to have a chance to play with them, but alas, I am poor and
>cannot afford the hardware I've seen around.
>  
>
I've been playing a bit with the MachXO products.  Not exactly a FPGA, 
and not exactly a CPLD.  Somewhere in between.  But if you're just 
wanting to play with something FPGA-like it might be a good choice.

The MachXO products don't really have the complexity internally that a 
FPGA has in the number of gates and the like.  The real problem I had 
with most FPGA's is that you have to put the FPGA on board, and then you 
also need FLASH to configure the FPGA as well.  And usually, I'm not 
needing many gates internally at all, since I really want to use them 
for glue or a high speed counter/capture or something similar which a 
PIC doesn't do well.

The MachXO is large enough to handle reasonably large designs, is a 
Flash based part, and is cheap ($10 each Qty1 for the smallest size, a 
lot less in quantity).

They have a hardware eval board for their 256 part for $99.   They also 
have one for their larger parts as well, for about $250 or so.
-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist