10 Dec
2008
10 Dec
'08
11:24 a.m.
than $20. Compared to the price of admission fee for,
say, FPGA,
it's a real bargain.
You can program xilinx and altera FPGAs for less than
$20 if you have
a
parallel port. Do a search on "byteblaster" and be happy :) From the discussion fo the AVR and PIC
microcontorllers, it appears that
should I wish to program them using an HP9816, or
a PERQ, or a PDP11,
or... then the information is available to do so. I can write a
cross-assembler, debugger, downloader, etc. You may feel that's not a
sensible use of my time, byt darn it this is a hobby, and it is very
difficult to justify time spent on hobbies _other than 'you enjoy doing
it'.
But AFAIK the same information is not avaiable for any FPGA or CPLD. You
_have_ to use the mnudactuere's tools running on whatever machine they
tell you you should be using.
-tony