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Learn FPGAs With a $25 Board and Open Source Tools

Posted by samzenpus on from the watch-and-learn dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Hackaday has a 3 part tutorial with videos of using open source tools with a cheap ($25) FPGA board. The board isn't very powerful, but this could be the 'gateway drug' to FPGAs for people who don't want to spend hundreds of dollars and install 100s of megabytes of software and license keys just to get their feet wet. The videos are particularly good--like watching them over their shoulder. As far as I know, this is the only totally open source FPGA toolchain out there.

2 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. truth is... by hjf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    truth is... you don't need a board to "get your feet wet".

    You only need a simulator. A deep understanding of combinatorial and sequential logic, an idea, and a plan. Simulate, simulate and simulate. After a few hundred cycles of simulation, if you didn't get bored, you can go ahead and get the FPGA and start fiddling with the electrical part.

    Thats why the Spartan-3 Starter Kit I bought 10 years ago is in its box.

  2. Re:Field Programmable Gate Array by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, because "Field Programmable Gate Array" makes it perfectly clear for those never heard of an FPGA...