Chris Cason wrote:

> nope. FPGA == Field Programmable Gate Array, with the emphasis on 'Field'.
> i.e. it has to be re-configured each time it powers on.

Field-programmable just means it can be reprogrammed "in the field". 
Doesn't say how often. ;-) But yeah, OK...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Invisible wrote:
> So I know there's a fairly diverse set of people in here so... Anybody 
> have any experience with using FPGAs? It's something I've often thought 
> of playing with, but I have no idea (1) how much it costs, and (2) how 
> difficult it is to make something that works.

NB at it appears you are interested in getting into hardware, you might be
interested in looking at the Hammer board:

  http://www.tincantools.com/

Particularly their hammer kit, which comes with a very nice prototyping
board. I have one of these and it's easily the best of the various embedded
development kits I've had over the years. My previous platform for personal
projects (up until a few months ago) was the gumstix (gumstix.com) but
while it's OK for plug-and-play, I found doing custom hardware work with it
to be a bit of a pain (particularly due to its small connectors and overall
mechanical setup).

The nice thing about the hammer (apart from the dev board) is the fact it's
got a standard 40-pin DIP form-factor, meaning it's very easy to wire into
custom projects. Of course you lose some flexibility in that you have very
few I/O pins to play with, but currently it's got all I need.

-- Chris

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Chris Cason wrote:

> NB at it appears you are interested in getting into hardware, you might be
> interested in looking at the Hammer board:
> 
>   http://www.tincantools.com/
> 
> Particularly their hammer kit, which comes with a very nice prototyping
> board. I have one of these and it's easily the best of the various embedded
> development kits I've had over the years. My previous platform for personal
> projects (up until a few months ago) was the gumstix (gumstix.com) but
> while it's OK for plug-and-play, I found doing custom hardware work with it
> to be a bit of a pain (particularly due to its small connectors and overall
> mechanical setup).
> 
> The nice thing about the hammer (apart from the dev board) is the fact it's
> got a standard 40-pin DIP form-factor, meaning it's very easy to wire into
> custom projects. Of course you lose some flexibility in that you have very
> few I/O pins to play with, but currently it's got all I need.

Mmm, interesting...

I seem to have misplaced it, but *somewhere* I have a box of 7400s and 
some breadboard. If you chop up lots of wire and hot A LOT of patience, 
you can wire up arbitrary logic devices with it. Latches, counters, 
mutiplexers, etc. I always wanted to sit down and wire up an actual 
processor. I mean, it's one thing thinking you know roughly how to do 
it. But the proof is in DOING it. ;-)

I just thought an FPGA sounds easier than plugging in millions of wires 
and then trying to figure out why nothing is working. :-}

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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