Last Update: 2012-01-21

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Stromeko: FPGA Experiments

Introduction

I've been doing quite a bit of FPGA work while at the the university, but haven't got around doing so ever since I left. It didn't seem a good idea to spend more than a grand for a decent development system when there wasn't a concrete plan of what to do with it. Over the years I've always been following the developments in the FPGA sector. Some time ago I had to get a WinXP laptop for some unrelated software that wouldn't run on Linux and I soon convinced myself that this was easily capable to run any of the free FPGA IDE, moving the focus to a suitable development board.

• Development Board 1 — Avnet Spartan3A-Eval
• Development Board 2 — Digilent ATLYS Spartan-6
• Development Board 3 — Avnet Spartan-6 LX9 MicroBoard
• Notes on Xilinx ISE/WebPack

Update 1

I've gotten the IDE to run on Linux and I'm very happy with how nicely that works, but the downloading of the bitstream into the FPGA can be problematic when there is no supported software for Linux. Digilent is to be applauded for making this fairly painless, see some notes below.

Update 2

My XP laptop just died from the »Nvidia Blackscreen of Death«. Still looking for someone to repair the motherboard, but meanwhile I've ordered a new one with Windows7/64 Pro and a much speedier processor.