[Coco] Cheap alternative to the DE-1?

tim franklinlabs.com tim at franklinlabs.com
Wed Oct 28 08:23:44 EDT 2015


   I ran across this while surfing E-Pray this morning. It looks
   interesting. For those, like me, who are interested in FPGA's, this
   $70.00 unit seems to have everything needed to port Gary Beckers
   CoCoFPGA to it:

   [1]http://www.ebay.com/itm/Altera-Cyclone-NIOS-II-SOPC-FPGA-Development
   -Learning-Board-EP2C8Q208C8N-LCD1602/272020523309?_trksid=p2054897.c100
   204.m3164&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D2014
   0407115239%26meid%3D8d211755ec994eff8913982e805be0c8%26pid%3D100204%26r
   k%3D12%26rkt%3D21%26sd%3D261661704545

   It uses a smaller FPGA so there may be a limit here. I'm not sure how
   many LE's Gary's code uses.

   This board: EP2C8      8,256 LE's
   DE-1: EP2C20           18,752 LE's

   Also, there are only 2 PLL's and I'm not sure if both are connected to
   clocks. I bought a small FPGA that had 4 clock inputs with 2 PLL's. The
   moron who designed the board connected the clock to one of the CLK pins
   not connected to the PLL's.

   This board:     2 PLL's This assumes there are clocks connected to
   both.
   DE-1:              4 PLL's DE-1 uses only 3 (one connected to the
   external clock)

   Since Gary posted an "almost" up to date project of his 3.0 FPGA code,
   i went ahead and bought one to see if I can port it. It comes from
   China, so it wont arrive for a while (slow boat from china joke in real
   life). I'll keep everyone posted.

References

   1. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Altera-Cyclone-NIOS-II-SOPC-FPGA-Development-Learning-Board-EP2C8Q208C8N-LCD1602/272020523309?_trksid=p2054897.c100204.m3164&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20140407115239%26meid%3D8d211755ec994eff8913982e805be0c8%26pid%3D100204%26rk%3D12%26rkt%3D21%26sd%3D261661704545


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