FPGA/ CPLD as a substitute for Microcontroller?

gorski123 said:

Just in case anyone stumbles upon this old thread looking for an FPGA DIP board, have a look here -> **broken link removed**

Click to expand...

That sounds close to perfect for what i'm looking for - after an unwieldy Altera DE-1 board, i'd like to get something small.

But i can't google up any reviews of this board, or even verify if the company is still alive.
Any comments on that module?
What can it be programmed with (there is "coming soon" in the programmer description)?

Artlav said:

That sounds close to perfect for what i'm looking for - after an unwieldy Altera DE-1 board, i'd like to get something small.

But i can't google up any reviews of this board, or even verify if the company is still alive.
Any comments on that module?
What can it be programmed with (there is "coming soon" in the programmer description)?

Click to expand...

I actually stumbled on this post a year or so ago looking for a DIP FPGA board and at the time was unable to find one with the features I was looking for (5V tolerant I/O, on-board ADC, etc), so I set out to make one with a friend of mine. The Mercury board I linked to on our website is a result of our work. I can tell you that we have used this board for quite a few of our own projects and it is a very hardy little board - seems to hold up to abuse very well.

We have a little windows app that can be used to write a bit file to the on-board flash chip, it should be up on our site now.

gorski123 said:

I actually stumbled on this post a year or so ago looking for a DIP FPGA board and at the time was unable to find one with the features I was looking for (5V tolerant I/O, on-board ADC, etc), so I set out to make one with a friend of mine.

Click to expand...

Ah, wonderful.
So, it's your project, and you're just starting selling it?
It would help a lot if there was a forum or some more apparent feedback mechanism over there, and a FAQ.

Is it (the site & infrastructure) already done enough for me to buy one?
Would you do international delivery (paypal lists it for free)?

Hey thanks for the feedback on the site! We are adding new content to it every day. We hope to have an FAQ section and a forum very soon, along with some more cool reference designs and VHDL tutorials. I think this is a cool little board that could be very useful to a lot of people. Turns out that creating and designing a board is one thing, but letting people know it exists is a whole different project entirely!

To answer your question - yes the site is fully operational and ready to receive orders. International delivery is available - we ship Priority Mail International.