Good/Affordable Stater kits

Hi guys, I was wondering if there were any good starter kits you know of 
and where I am able to purchase them, I want to dip into VHDL a bit and 
try out my creations on a FPGA, nothing too fancy as I'm no engineer, 
just a hobbyist :) I saw one on Xilinx's online store for ~$50 US is 
that a good choice?

x86asm wrote:
> Hi guys, I was wondering if there were any good starter kits you know of 
> and where I am able to purchase them, I want to dip into VHDL a bit and 
> try out my creations on a FPGA, nothing too fancy as I'm no engineer, 
> just a hobbyist :) I saw one on Xilinx's online store for ~$50 US is 
> that a good choice?
> 

Unless you just want to just run the canned demos,
I would suggest that you defer picking a device or buying
a board until you learn some vhdl language for synthesis
and simulation.

Work with modelsim or sonata until you have some synth code
and a working simulation testbench for your creation.

       -- Mike Treseler

You may look at the Avnet's Spartan-3 promotion...The brochure claims
buying one demo board get one free later, at 95US$...but I don't know who
is elligible to that promo...

Best Regards,
Kelvin





Mike Treseler <mike.treseler@flukenetworks.com> wrote in message
news:400C5E31.802@flukenetworks.com...
> x86asm wrote:
> > Hi guys, I was wondering if there were any good starter kits you know of
> > and where I am able to purchase them, I want to dip into VHDL a bit and
> > try out my creations on a FPGA, nothing too fancy as I'm no engineer,
> > just a hobbyist :) I saw one on Xilinx's online store for ~$50 US is
> > that a good choice?
> >
>
> Unless you just want to just run the canned demos,
> I would suggest that you defer picking a device or buying
> a board until you learn some vhdl language for synthesis
> and simulation.
>
> Work with modelsim or sonata until you have some synth code
> and a working simulation testbench for your creation.
>
>        -- Mike Treseler
>

You may evaluate ActiveHDL . This is a extra user-friendly HDL
development/simulation environment and works with many synthesis tools
including WebPack XST. Sinthesis tools give an idea of how HW structure
looks like and programmable devices that can fit your design. When choosing
a board look at the devices it has.

Look at

http://www.c-nit.net

for a Spartan-II board.

Sumit

"x86asm" <isaac_8e@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:45YOb.12249$7JB1.3852@news04.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com...
> Hi guys, I was wondering if there were any good starter kits you know of
> and where I am able to purchase them, I want to dip into VHDL a bit and
> try out my creations on a FPGA, nothing too fancy as I'm no engineer,
> just a hobbyist :) I saw one on Xilinx's online store for ~$50 US is
> that a good choice?
>

"Sumit Gupta" <do_not_reply_to_this_addr@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
> Look at
> http://www.c-nit.net
> for a Spartan-II board.
> Sumit
> 
> "x86asm" <isaac_8e@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:45YOb.12249$7JB1.3852@news04.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com...
> > Hi guys, I was wondering if there were any good starter kits you know of
> > and where I am able to purchase them, I want to dip into VHDL a bit and

Dear Sumit,

you already posted to this newsgroup that you have a protoboard for sale
as you have noticed your posting hasnt got any replies. Trying to push
your ad for your board again, doesnt make it better for your sales.

The previous replies to the original poster where good ones, specially
the $99 offer from Avnet looks really good, you get 2 boards for $99
(50,000 gates and 200,000 gates FPGAs). Also it defenetly is possible
to start without buing a board by using some free simulator.

Now to the original poster - the $49 Kits are usually PLD kits, they are
probably nice too, but if your budget allows for $99 - $149 price then
you should look for some board with 200,000 gates FPGA on board.

There are several such offerings, digilent is $99, this avnet offer is $99
most other 200,000 gate boards are little more than $99. there are many
100,000 gates board for around $99 (that c-nit board is just one of them).

About the avnet promo offer (compressd info accesible here)
http://xilinx.openchip.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2

I tried to buy it, the "checkout" was kind ok, but then I got to a page
that told me that they will contact me, what hasnt happened yet. So cant
tell if the offer is still valid and what are required qualifications.

Anyway you should do some shopping before buying there are lots of nice
kits available.

Antti

You might want to look at www.digilentinc.com
They have several boards under $150.00
and they're all supported by Webpack

Anna


x86asm wrote:

> Hi guys, I was wondering if there were any good starter kits you know of
> and where I am able to purchase them, I want to dip into VHDL a bit and
> try out my creations on a FPGA, nothing too fancy as I'm no engineer,
> just a hobbyist :) I saw one on Xilinx's online store for ~$50 US is
> that a good choice?

So does this mean from now on if I reply to a query for
a proto/starter board, you will start beating me :)

Sumit

"Antti Lukats" <antti@case2000.com> wrote in message > you already posted to
this newsgroup that you have a protoboard for sale
> as you have noticed your posting hasnt got any replies. Trying to push
> your ad for your board again, doesnt make it better for your sales.

x86asm <isaac_8e@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<45YOb.12249$7JB1.3852@news04.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>...
> Hi guys, I was wondering if there were any good starter kits you know of 
> and where I am able to purchase them, I want to dip into VHDL a bit and 
> try out my creations on a FPGA, nothing too fancy as I'm no engineer, 
> just a hobbyist :) I saw one on Xilinx's online store for ~$50 US is 
> that a good choice?

See http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/kit-dev_platforms.jsp for a
listing of Altera's development boards.  The $99 7K board and $195
Cyclone board are good choices for someone on a budget.  The Cyclone
board has a better (bigger & faster) FPGA on it, but for hobby
projects you likely want to focus at least as much on the board I/O
capabilities as you do on the FPGA on the board.  So it's good to look
at the list of what's on the board and see if it meets your I/O needs.

As other posters have pointed out, there's no shortage of dev kits at
pretty low prices out there.

The cheapest solution of all to get some experience is just to
download a CAD suite and start synthesizing & simulating without a
development kit.
You can get the web edition of Quartus for free from
http://www.altera.com/products/software/pld/products/quartus2/sof-quarwebmain.html.

Regards,

Vaughn
Altera

On Mon, 19 Jan 2004 21:36:00 GMT, x86asm <isaac_8e@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Hi guys, I was wondering if there were any good starter kits you know of 
>and where I am able to purchase them, I want to dip into VHDL a bit and 
>try out my creations on a FPGA, nothing too fancy as I'm no engineer, 
>just a hobbyist :) I saw one on Xilinx's online store for ~$50 US is 
>that a good choice?

There is an extensive list of boards listed at:

   http://www.fpga-faq.com/FPGA_Boards.shtml

Many of these can be programmed with the free sw from Xilinx and Altera.

Philip




===================
Philip Freidin
philip@fliptronics.com
Host for WWW.FPGA-FAQ.COM