Postcard #6 - FPGA's, PCB's, and (g)EDA

Scroll to the bottom of this post to see a summary.

Well, I'm still gEDA-challenged right now, but that's because I haven't had much time to sit down and coax it into working. In the meantime I've been doing other research...

I found some interesting sites that talk about PCB fabrication:

• PCB Fabricator's Home Page
  
• PCB Express
• PCB 123
• Of course, there's always Wikipedia! :)

My goal here is to find some help for the production of the PCB's and, where possible, get some assistance w/ component layout, etc. I'm also hoping to get an idea on the prices we're looking at for a project like this. Mostly, though, I'm just trying to learn more about the process of PCB creation since I haven't touched the subject since high school.

I'm also looking into FPGA's to get an idea of what we need, what they can do, how much they cost, etc. I've also looked at some of the development kits that are available. I'm not ready to throw down much money (yet) because I'm not quite there yet, although I did see some really inexpensive FPGA learning kits on eBay. (~16 USD) I also found a very cool set of products from Digilent. They have several FPGA starter kits, ranging from 50 - 150 USD. They also have add-on boards for mad-scientist tinkering. I'm seriously considering picking one up. In the meantime I've printed out the Xilinx Spartan-3 family datasheet. It is definitely an improvement over the Spartan-2 datasheets.

That also lead me to another question: how am I going to test my circuit? The only thing I could think of is an oscilloscope. Curiously, there are open source oscilloscope projects out there, including one with a cool USB attachment that runs about 200 USD. Again, I'm not willing to part with lots of money until I at least give the 'free' options a chance to shine. I'll report back after I've had more time to digest all of this stuff.

-MC


Summary:

• I suck at getting gEDA to work
  
• There are lots of firms that produce PCB's - prices vary widely
• I have Xilinx Spartan-2 and Spartan-3 datasheets for 'light reading'
• Digilient has cool starter boards for learning about FPGA's
  
• I'm research O-scope options for a limited budget