FPGA hacking
Back in 2004 or so, I acquired a
Altera
Nios Development Kit, Cyclone Edition with an EP1C20 FPGA and a
AleaREP (now Microtronix) Lancelot
daughercard to do FPGA hacking on. So far, my biggest project has
been cloning the Swedish ABC80
microcomputer from the late 1970's, but I also have written a few more
hacks, including the CompactFlash player that is available on the
Lancelot page as a demo.
NEWS:In December 2008 I ported this design to the
Terasic DE1/Altera
Cyclone II Starter Kit (it is the same board, so you can get
whichever is cheaper where you live.) These have a similar capacity
FPGA (EP2C20), and a fairly similar feature set, just lacking the
Ethernet connector. However, these boards are much cheaper,
with a list price $150 instead of $1200, and a discount ($120) for
students. The last two pictures show the DE1 board. There is now
also a
DE0 board
which is even cheaper, at $120/$80.
One of the pictures also show the
Olimex ENC28J60
Ethernet module, which happens to match the pinout of the DEx GPIO connectors
with only a connector replacement.
The source code to these various projects are at:
Download a zipfile with all the images
(26.4 MiB/27.7 MB)
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