If I can make an "off the wall" suggestion: I would highly recommend=20 the Open Workbench Logic Sniffer (OLS for short). Its readily=20 available from for US $50 (including shipping)=20 and is a *very* nice little logic analyzer. But its much more than=20 that - it also happens to be a very nice little FPGA development platform. The on-board PIC connects to the PC (Windows or Linux) via USB and=20 takes care of getting the bitstream into the FPGA. That means that=20 you can do the 'burn - crash' type of development *very* quickly,=20 since it takes only a few seconds to send the bitstream to the FPGA. 16 pins of the FPGA are fed by a logic-level buffer (1.8V - 7V input=20 range) and another 16 pins are brought out to a row of header-pin=20 holes along the long edge of the PCB, along with +5V, +3.3V, Ground=20 connections. The FPGA has 3.3V I/O signal levels. As a logic analyzer, it captures up to 32 channels of data at up to=20 50 MHz and is easily configured to capture up to 16 channels of data=20 at up to 100 MHz (200 Msps). In other words, when you are finished playing with it as a dev board,=20 you can use it as a very worthwhile logic analyzer. It is, of course, open source everything - hardware, PIC code, FPGA=20 code, PC-side software. There are *many* other FPGA dev platforms available but I really like=20 this one because it is such a useful test tool when not being used=20 for FPGA development. dwayne At 11:32 PM 5/1/2013, Joshua Shriver wrote: >I'm wanting to learn more about FPGA's and programming them. The FPGA chip= s >themselves seam pretty cheap but the cost for a development board can rang= e >from $50-hundreds. > >A lot of projects I've seen online, especially opencores can run on these >Xilinx FPGA's. What do you recommend getting, for the most bang for the >buck? > >My main goal prototyping custom processing logic for a project I'm toying >with as a hobby. > >-Josh > >P.S. If this is to far OT, fpga forums or mailing lists is also appreciate= d. >-- >http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive >View/change your membership options at >http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist --=20 Dwayne Reid Trinity Electronics Systems Ltd Edmonton, AB, CANADA (780) 489-3199 voice (780) 487-6397 fax www.trinity-electronics.com Custom Electronics Design and Manufacturing --=20 http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .