Jim,
if you can
afford them the pukka ('genuine' to non-UK readers) Xilinx and Altera boards
are probably good.
When I was
buying I couldn't afford the cheapest Xilinx board (minus the FPGA itself is
3x the cost of the
boards I use at
the moment) and considering Xilinx makes them both you think they could
bundle them?
Also the Xilinx
boards are for Virtex and Virtex-E devices not the Spartan II and II-E which I
would expect
are the defacto
'intro to FPGA programming chips'. I wouldn't suggest any 'newbies' spending
more than
$200 (USD) on a
development board before they find out whether they actually like hardware
programming.
A FPGA board is
for life not just for Christmas. ;-)
I have no
experience with the Alteras yet so can't comment on them but funds permitting
will be buying
Xilinx,
Xess
and Altera boards next year.
Paul
Look at the developer's kit from Altera.
The Altera Excalibur NIOS Kit has just about everyting you
need to get started for under $1000.
Xilinx is another place to look for developer
kits.
P.S. I am inexperienced at this myself. But I am looking
around myself. These were the two
vendors that seem to me to have the best products (for my
requiements).
Some of the other old hatters here might have better
advice.
I am an old-timmer looking for a new hat.
Jim Dempsey
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2001 2:07
PM
Subject: [oc] FPGA/ASIC Design
Kits
Sorry Guys I'm new to this but I want to get
on track as fast as possible.
what kind of Kits would you use for trying
and testing your designs for ASIC or FPGA, ofcourse you don't go to the
foundry for each new idea ?
Paul
?