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)