[sdiy] New cheap FPGA development system

[Eric Brombaugh]

Sarah wrote:
> One advantage of using their EDK tools is that by using the Microblaze OPB
> bus you get easy access to a lot of free soft peripherals including an easy
> to use low gate count delta sigma DAC (or ADC). I haven't tried using the
> DAC for audio use yet  only for programmable reference voltages but I think
> it could be quite successfully used.
> Developing systems with these OPB peripherals is very straight forward and
> adding your own peripherals onto the OPB bus is quite easy - EDK allows you
> to add OPB master/slave user logic using configurable FIFOs or DMA.
> I think it is the ease of development into the FPGA that makes the
> Microblaze attractive over ARMs AMBA bus (other processors like PICs are not
> in the same performance league).
>   
That's good info. I'm not opposed to the EDK in general and I'm not 
suggesting that Microblaze is comparable to a $3.00 PIC. There are a lot 
of nice peripherals and the tools seem quite polished. No doubt you can 
do wonderful things with it. It's just that I've got a lot of other 
things I'd rather spend $500 of my DIY budget on. On the other hand, if 
I could justify it for a paying job I wouldn't hesitate.

Eric