Archive for category: FPGA

J1a system on a Lattice ICESTICK40

June 22, 2016 | FPGA | By: Mark VandeWettering

Long time readers of this blog might remember that I received a Gameduino board designed by James Bowman. I used it to construct ANGST, an Arduino and Gameduino satellite tracking project. James did all the heavy lifting: the Gameduino uses a Xilinx FPGA to implement an Arduino shield that can generate graphics and sounds. To […]

Papilio – An Introductory FPGA Kit

June 11, 2011 | FPGA | By: Mark VandeWettering

My own explorations of FPGA have been, well, slow. Well, let’s be truthful: since buying a BASYS-2 board, I have done little more than ensure that it powers up. But I’m still interested in FPGAs, and so I thought I’d draw attention to a board that I saw for the first time at the Maker […]

Welcome 2011, with some project ideas…

January 2, 2011 | Amateur Radio, FPGA, My Projects | By: Mark VandeWettering

Hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday. I must admit that my own vacation wasn’t productive in the sense of completing projects: I spent far too much time sleeping in, relaxing and playing far too much Epic Mickey on my Wii. But I have also spent some time thinking about the past year and year […]

The J1 Forth CPU, running on an FPGA

December 2, 2010 | FPGA, Hardware, My Projects | By: Mark VandeWettering

Tom showed me a link to The J1 Forth CPU, a very small processor which is coded in Verilog (only 200 lines!) and can run very fast on existing FPGA boards. It is quite an intriguing design. Forth is an intriguing if somewhat archaic programming language. In the bygone ages of my youth, I experimented […]

LatticeXP2 Brevia Development Kit, with a deal breaker

December 2, 2010 | electronics, FPGA, Hardware, My Projects | By: Mark VandeWettering

I’ve been playing with a BASYS2 FPGA development kit from digilentinc.com, and pondering the world of digital system design. I chose the BASYS2 because of its low price ($70) and because it included a reasonable number of LEDs, switches, a VGA interface and a connector for a PS/2 keyboard. Still, I’ve been looking for other […]