14 Nov
2011
14 Nov
'11
1:05 p.m.
For a one-off
design, where size is no real issue, I much prefer to grab
a handful of TTL pacakges and start soldering.
From that standpoint, I'd say you'd have
almost as much fun with
simulation as with the real hardware. The real hardware
is a much bigger headache than simulation, because unlike
simulation and a board
full of TTL chips, you can't go in and probe specific nodes without
rebuilding the design.
That is one thing I dislike about FPGAs, certainly. On the other hand,
I've had problems iwth (expensive commeraical) simualtrs that either fail
to show glitches when they do exist, show glitches where the can't
possibly exist, or generally have problems.
That said, I do FPGAs for a living and I enjoy working on them from a
hobbyist perspective, but largely because I don't have a huge library of
TTL parts at my disposal (and it's expensive to acquire them all at
It's amazing what you can still easily get. Alas (foer me) many of the
more obscrue and intersting ones are no logner manufactured, but ther are
plenty about. And it's aamzing what you can do with just gates and
D-types, both of whcih are easy to get new.
once, and decent wire-wrap boards are hard to come by
at least in the US,
etc).
The availability of nice FPGA eval boards (like the Terasic ones,
which I absolutely love) make it attractive to me. I'm still working on
my 68000 SBC, but it's mostly in concept only until I can find a decent
source of wire wrap boards (the kind with traces, not just bare
phenolic) around here.
I guess you couldalways design the sort of board you need and eitehr etch
it or get a PCB house to make it for you. And then wire-wrap on top of
that.
Quite honestly, ofr me, the less pre-built the better. Then I can use
'real' solder....
-tony