Dangerous Prototypes

Hi,
Because I want to learn about other logic chips than microcontrollers, what would be a better idea for (not to complicated) hobby projects, A CPLD or FPGA?

If I want to take a start at learning about FPGA's. I do not have a good idea of where to start.

I would like to know what is a good and cheap (for student) development board to start with and what brand? I also would like to know how to program these? I assume it is possible to program them over JTAG via the Bus Blaster?

Gadget Factory's FPGA board is cheap, has integrated programmer, and several examples.

Plus you will be supporting the community if you go with Gadget Factory... (disclaimer I don't have one)

To answer your question, (as far as I know) programming a CPLD is more like changing the wiring your circuit board. It does not contain too much logic cells, but I/O routing is easier. Plus it has a non-volatile memory, so you can program it once without needing any external memory. FPGA is all these logic cells, you can do crazy stuff with them, more like a computer program. I/O routing can be problematic (If you are using most of the logic cells, you may not be able to route to a pin you want (Never had this case, most of the stuff I do is small)). It does not have a non-volatile memory on board so you have to load the design each time you want to use the board, or there is some sort of memory IC on board and you put your design in that. These are changing as new products are developed (CPLDs with lots of logic gates and FPGAs with on board configuration memory) but as far as my knowledge goes (and it is little) these are the cases.

I would also suggest Papilio boards. I bought a local one as I don't have a local credit card (damn banking laws, no credit card for gaijins except super-duper rich ones) and I don't want folks back home to pay for me. The board is nice, no problem there but it does not come with any type of examples or whatnot, and that sucks big time! I'm kinda checking out Jack's tutorials to grasp stuff that I learned and forgot (during college) or didn't even learn (DCM, UART etc).

Here's (http://http://excamera.com/sphinx/fpga-devboards.html#devboards) a (partial) list of some entry level boards.

Thanks for the comments!
I ordered a Papilio and a CPLD board, now I have to do some serious learning about them two I hope this is a good start!

www.xess.com (http://www.xess.com) have a nice catalog (I don't own any of their boards) http://www.xess.com/catalog.php (http://www.xess.com/catalog.php)
And Dr. Dave Vandenbout (from XESS) published a very nice book (first chapters of his great tutorial book) for beginners tha you can download as PDF here: http://devbisme.webfactional.com/webfm_send/341 (http://devbisme.webfactional.com/webfm_send/341)
and you can find answers to most beginners questions here :) http://www.xess.com/index.php (http://www.xess.com/index.php)

Jeri Ellsworth plebisciting the Papilio FPGA board :)
https://plus.google.com/115971553634517 ... e6tv3jbtqW (https://plus.google.com/115971553634517134434/posts/We6tv3jbtqW)

bit late but i like this board, thinking about ordering one:
http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/ ... .pl?No=593 (http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?No=593)
for 59 dollars (as student) its cheap and blazing fast, lot more Logic Elements, a G sensor (lovely :D) and an ADC.
programmer onboard aswell, it looks quite neat.
and look at that box, it looks amazing:

I am cooking up some altera test boards too. Their low-end chips, while expensive, trump the low-end Xilinx chips (when only comparing chips that come in leaded packages, that is).

How good is the free synthesis suite for Altera? I presume there is something equal to webpack.

Just found a new review about a cheap $79 dev kit: DE0-NANO FPGA Development Kit
http://www.designspark.com/content/de0- ... ew-terasic (http://www.designspark.com/content/de0-nano-fpga-development-kit-review-terasic)

@brian
i prefer the Altera programming enviroment over the xilinx one.
i wanted to order this board but the shipping is a bit more then 40 dollars :(
bit sad to pay 40 dollar shipping on a 60 dollar board.

riktw: I looked at some of the videos Altera had they looked like labview (though I am sure there is some pure code stuff). Anything that is color based is almost unusable for me because I am pretty colorblind. I will look at it more though to be sure. Learning VHDL is on my todo list.

I also want to start FPGA or CPLD. Searched around the net and found it.

blog. davr. org/2009/05/18/comparison-of-entry-level-aka-cheap-fpga-boards/

 by David

remove the space between "blog. davr. org".
I am newbie and forum spamgard not allow me to post a link yet.