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[on:]

... and use the "standard" libraries ?

But you'll find it hard to do with an Arduino, but a ZPUino will surely do the job (and much more). Like playing a Tetris game.

Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Rabo-9Hd2OM

Same IDE, same libraries (or "almost" the same), all open-source, hw design, IP cores and software included. All you need is a FPGA.

http://www.alvie.com/zpuino

Cool, isnt' it ?

Álvaro

[Reply #1 on:]

Wake me up when I can buy the Spartan-3E for the same price as the Arduino (Mega?):

http://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-kits/HW-SPAR3E-SK-US-G.htm

Unless you know of a supplier of these boards (or similar) at that price already...

Other (and cheaper) options:

http://leaflabs.com/
http://www.liquidware.com/

[Reply #2 on:]

You can buy a S3E250 board, with FPGA + SPI flash and USB programmer/UART (FT2232) for US $50: http://papilio.cc/index.php?n=Papilio.Buy. The S3E500 is a bit more expensive, but IMHO is worth the money (USD $75).

GadgetFactory is also working on new boards, based on Spartan6 with integrated SRAM. Those will be amazing for sure, I haven't got my hands in one yet.

Even if they are marginally more costly than Mega, they do offer you other possibilities - one is you don't require that much external components (digital) for your projects. Disadvantage is lack of internal ADC - you can use a SPI one if you wish, and they are cheap and with very good performance (500ksps).

So, I guess is time for you to wake up

Alvaro

[Reply #3 on:]

You can buy a S3E250 board, with FPGA + SPI flash and USB programmer/UART (FT2232) for US $50: http://papilio.cc/index.php?n=Papilio.Buy. The S3E500 is a bit more expensive, but IMHO is worth the money (USD $75).

GadgetFactory is also working on new boards, based on Spartan6 with integrated SRAM. Those will be amazing for sure, I haven't got my hands in one yet.

Even if they are marginally more costly than Mega, they do offer you other possibilities - one is you don't require that much external components (digital) for your projects. Disadvantage is lack of internal ADC - you can use a SPI one if you wish, and they are cheap and with very good performance (500ksps).

So, I guess is time for you to wake up

Alvaro

Hmm - well, I'll have to keep those in mind for future projects, should I need the capabilities - thanks for the links!

[Reply #4 on:]

Very interesting! FPGA could be a future direction. I'll keep an eye on it.

[Reply #5 on:]

Here's a VGA 640x400 12-bit color output interface, using an embedded VGA controller core.



This is the new Spartan6 board from Gadget Factory, with 512KB (4Mbit) 16-bit wide SRAM. The framebuffer is exported to CPU (memory mapped). Pixel clock is 25MHz, with 16-bit (4 bits are not used).