DE0-Nano board final cost & distribution
Charles Manning
I finally have the un-santa part of the board purchase ready.
Full cost including shipping & GST is NZD115, except for Paul who pays $90 due
to getting a student discount.
GST invoice will be supplied for business people.
Payment can be made either in cash or bank transfer to 06-0821-0272206-00.
I am picking the boards up tomorrow am and we can arrange pickups.
I will be in town from 10 to 4 on Tuesday at Hamiltion Jet and people can
contact me on 0211185707.
Otherwise, I'll be at next week's roboclub meating,
Otherwise... email/phone me (033182923).
-- Charles
Michael Field
Pros
- Tiny - nice and portable. 1/4th the size of my other FPGA board
- System Builder tool is very cool - gets everything right from the
start. Almost idiot proof!
- Self test app is great (except visual feedback on the the push button
test is pretty poor)
- Examples are pretty useful, given that the board only has 8 LEDs for
feedback.
- Managed to build examples on CD and upload them to board first attempt.
- Great that all the component datasheets are on the CDROM
- The packaging is excellent, although a little bit too large for what
it contains. Much better than a thick DVD case with a bubble-bag that my
other board came in... and it comes with CDs!
- Header pins are nicely protected by the metal standoffs
- Retractable USB cables are nice for having in the laptop bag.
Cons (mostly my failings)
- Tiny - the switches are too small and hard to access for anything
other than "reset with biro"
- Still scratching my head on how to get ModelSim to work from within
Quartus II. :-/
- Can program the FPGA but have yet to work out how to get a project
stored in configuration flash - need to convert programming file
somehow, but instructions in the manual are for an older version...
- Had to download USB Blaster driver directly from Altera (might be on
the Quartus II CD that I didn't look at - already downloaded the latest
from Altera)
- Guess I better learn a bit of Verilog - DE0-nano system build doesn't
support generating top level VHDL file.
It is definitely more of a "use for a real application" board than a
"play and experiment board", but all in all I am very happy.
Thanks Charles!
Charles Manning
Hamster has sure been on his wheel :-)!
I too had the problem installing the USBBlaster driver. Some web scratching
kicked up how to do this.
Navigate Control Panel/system/hardware/device manager.
Find broken device
Load up new driver from
c:\altera\<version>\quartus\drivers\usb-blaster\usbblstr.inf
Unplug, plug in, maybe reboot (this is Windows!).
Then I had problems getting the DE0Nano Control panel going (PC app that
interacts with the board). Sorted that out too...
Copy code from CD onto hard disk.
Copy the following two dlls from c:\altera\<version>\quartus\bin
dinkum_alt.dll and jtag_client.dll
Launch the control panel again and it worked.
All up, itching to do something with this... I think I'll start by nobbling an
existing application and go fromthere.
-- Charles