dingo
Member level 2
Hi Bingo600,
I use a XSA-100 XESS board + XST-2 board, so I can't guarantee that my opinion is not biased.
I have no complaints whatsoever regarding the board or it's design. You can find many examples on XESS' site, some ready to use and the customer service is excellent, you will be talking to the guys that actually designed the board or wrote the software (at least this is what happened to me when I needed them).
The cons are that the XSA-100 has an FPGA with 100,000 gates which is smaller than the project I am developing and it also has very few pins, so some pins are multi-function which makes the design a little bit more complicated than with other boards.
In contrast, I am currently running my project on a board by Avnet which has more gates. Their customer service is a bad joke, I received a defective board which they refused to exchange because the warranty expires in 45 days (gotta be kidding right?) and it took me more that this to detect the problem. When I asked for some diagnostic routines they also sent me the source codes and I found several conceptual errors in them. After this the sent me other routines that were supposed to work but no source code (as to hide the total incompetence). There are no software examples included. I found three discrepancies between the schematics and the actual board, after several weeks (each time) trying to figure out what was wrong with my design.
I hope that this helps. dingo.
I use a XSA-100 XESS board + XST-2 board, so I can't guarantee that my opinion is not biased.
I have no complaints whatsoever regarding the board or it's design. You can find many examples on XESS' site, some ready to use and the customer service is excellent, you will be talking to the guys that actually designed the board or wrote the software (at least this is what happened to me when I needed them).
The cons are that the XSA-100 has an FPGA with 100,000 gates which is smaller than the project I am developing and it also has very few pins, so some pins are multi-function which makes the design a little bit more complicated than with other boards.
In contrast, I am currently running my project on a board by Avnet which has more gates. Their customer service is a bad joke, I received a defective board which they refused to exchange because the warranty expires in 45 days (gotta be kidding right?) and it took me more that this to detect the problem. When I asked for some diagnostic routines they also sent me the source codes and I found several conceptual errors in them. After this the sent me other routines that were supposed to work but no source code (as to hide the total incompetence). There are no software examples included. I found three discrepancies between the schematics and the actual board, after several weeks (each time) trying to figure out what was wrong with my design.
I hope that this helps. dingo.