>> 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>