>> You
might actually want to look into Qsys, which is Altera's GUI-
>> driven system generation interface. That actually lets you get up
>> and going rather quickly with all the interfaces you mentioned
>> above. When you write your own logic (e.g. a CPU core), it's not
>> *too* hard to bolt it on using Qsys, which does all the drudgery
>> of making the buses and address decoders for you.
> I am not sure what I can use nowdays, everthing is $$$ for the IP
> stuff.
[head explodes]
<hands industrial size box of bandages to Dave>
<and a mop>