On Tue, 2007-09-11 at 11:34 -0400, Joshua Shriver wrote:
> Thanks for the info, this is just a personal hobby project and wanted
> to keep it as low as possible. I like the FPGA idea. You mentioned
> getting FPGA chips for $10, do you recommend a place to get them? Can
> you program a FPGA chip kinda like you can a PIC chip? Then put the
> FPGA chip on a breadboard?

To start out, it all depends on how much money you're willing to spend.
For absolute cheapest option, I'd start with CPLDs. They are simpler,
cheaper, and come in packages you can hand solder (PLCC are common on
the low end). Solderless breadboarding is pretty much a non option,
you'll have to use a solder type breadboard for the PLCC socket.

If you have a little bit more money, I'd highly recommend buying a cheap
FPGA board.

> Some of the reading I've done made me think FPGA's were built into the
> board so the CPU(?) aren't interchangeable.

I'm not sure what you mean by "CPU aren't interchangeable". An FPGA is
like any other chip.

Note though that most FPGAs are NOT flash. On power up they load their
bit files from EEPROMs on the board, so you'll have to buy the EEPROMs
as well, and hook those up to the FPGA (another reason that if you're
just starting, and don't want to spend on an FPGA board I recommend
CPLDs, they don't need these proms). There are some newer FPGAs that can
store their bit files inside themselves though.

TTYL

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