WTB cheap low-end evaluation board and cables - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: OldCodger
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: April 10, 2022, 02:47:30 am
content: Hi Folks,I've retired after a long career in IT. After many decades away from electronics I have been enjoying getting my hands dirty again with Raspberry Pis, Arduinos and ESP32 SOCs. More recently my thoughts have turned nostalgic as I remember being very privileged at age 13 in 1969 or so to learn programming on one of the first PDP-8s in the country (Physiology Department at University of Melbourne). That machine was a DTL "straight" 8 but I've been looking at lots of interesting reimplementations/homages in 74LS chips or FPGAs. Its a delight to be able to think about something like the PDP-8 down at the gate level - modern systems are so much more complex that much higher levels of abstraction are required which, to me anyway, looses some of the charm. I'm not especially interested in a software emulation though I fully understand what excellent work people have done producing these.I've signed up to audit the CourseraIntroduction to FPGA Design for Embedded Systemscourse the next four weeks which optionally uses an Altera BeMicroMax10 and a Terasic DE10-lite evaluation board. Needless to say with the international chip shortage these are essentially unobtainable at the moment (certainly at a price I can afford) as are many other simple, cheap low-end FPGA boards that I might normally press into service to get me started.I thought I'd post on this forum to see if anyone out there has a surplus evaluation or breakout board with programming cables (that its still possible to source a toolchain for) that they have grown out of and that they expect never to use again that they would be willing to part with this next week or so for a modest amount of money?Don't care too much what platform, though the course is focused on Max 10 and my preliminary reading around creating a PDP-8 suggests that a larger Lattice based system might be the go.I'm located in Adelaide Australia and would love to be able to sort something out in the next few days.Cheers.

author: hamster_nz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 10, 2022, 03:15:42 am
content: Over here in Christchurch I have an AliExpress Cyclone IV EP4CE6E22 board (witches, 7 seg, VGA, serial, ps/2 and an 2x32 LCD). With clone USB Blaster and Serial adapter.No offchip RAM, all the documentation is silkscreened on the board :÷)Haven't touched it in years, but did get some designs running on it.Happy to send it for postage & packaging costs. NZ -> AUS postage is taking a while at the moment.DM me your email if you want photos.

author: OldCodger
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: April 10, 2022, 08:45:25 am
content: Thank you so much for this generous offer @hamster_nz !That will get me started very nicely - PM with details sent. Lets hope that the postal service is not too much delayed - about 12 months back I had an item come from Hungary in just over a week which was pretty extraordinary when stuff from China was taking up to three months!If someone else has something else that might fit the description (especially maybe something that is breadboardable) I'm still interested in low cost alternatives that will help get me started in the spirit of belts and braces.Cheers.