On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 2:35 PM, Oli Glaser wrote= : > I would recommend pretty much anything with a reasonably recent FPGA on, > and easy access to the pins. I haven't looked, but the Papillo sounds > fine to me. > I started with a 60K device and just made my own simple board, which did > little more than provide a clock source and make pins accessible. It was > absolutely fine for learning purposes, as there are endless things to > try out on the chip itself, and then provide a simple debug result on > the pins. If you need to (e.g. if designing a UART) you can connect to > other things anyway using a breadboard. > For instance if you are designing an ALU, all your work is on board the > chip, and the result can be as simple as a bunch of LEDs (or display on > a logic analyser) Also, you be running things on the simulator many > times before you route the FGPA anyway, so you will get a good feel for > what's going on there. > This is a bit different to working with uCs as you assume the silicon is > working to start with. With an FPGA you are designing the "silicon" > itself, which is a huge and complex field. Hopefully this makes some > sense - roughly my point is don't worry too much about dev board > features, there will be plenty to try with the most simple available, so > grab something and start from the beginning. This is probably a better > approach, as you will not be as tempted to try out all the fancy stuff > before you understand the "basics". Just learning how to use the tools > will keep you occupied for a while.. :-) > Thanks! I'm probably going to go with the Nexys2 http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=3DNEXYS2 since I've rea= d that there is a lot of documentation and support for it. Also has on board flash and RAM as well as high speed USB2. --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .