[Noisebridge-discuss] FPGA hacking

[Lamont Lucas]

  On 10/6/10 4:26 PM, Dr. Jesus wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 4:19 PM, Casey Callendrello<c1 at caseyc.net>  wrote:
>>   I couldn't take advantage of them, but I'd love a class in how to use
>> them. Is anyone here feeling teach-y?
> I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.  That being said,
> FPGA work is usually the sort of thing you learn over a semester:
>
>    http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs150/fa10/home.php

I also recommend the http://www.fpga4fun.com/ site, which has a series 
of very short and simple tutorials.  Basics include flashing an LED and 
building a switch debouncer, while the intermediates include things like 
how to build or interface with JTAG or even PCI.

The author also included a nice set of introductory texts and some 
verilog and vhdl tutorials.

There's also some very cheap eval boards for a chip that merge a 32 bit 
ARM processor with 200k FPGA gates, a bunch of ram, and even flash 
storage for user stuff or to store the FPGA config in it:

http://www.actel.com/products/hardware/devkits_boards/smartfusion_eval.aspx

That's $99 from mouser, btw, and only requires a usb interface to program.

I'd like to get back into it so need a small verilog project to start 
back up with.