
Brewing Up a myStorm FPGA board on the kitchen table - monsonite
https://folknologylabs.wordpress.com/2016/07/30/brewing-up-a-storm/
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zombees
I love all the FPGA boards coming out but I really wish the software was
better. Lattice uses the same synthesizer as Xilinx which is well known to be
completely user hostile (will silently optimize huge swaths of code because it
doesn't like them). The least headaches come from Altera but that's not a high
bar...

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zerohp
This chip from Lattice is supported by icestorm. It is the only open source
FPGA tool chain.

[http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/](http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/)

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rvense
And I think you'll find this is the exact reason the iCE40s are showing up in
so many hobbyist projects.

I'm at my hackerspace right now. There's three people with HX8K evaluation
boards at this table alone (I've got two, actually). None of us have even
downloaded the Lattice tools.

I've got the HX8K eval board doing text over VGA at 1280x1024 with a simple
home-etched PCB that plus into it and some very naive code, hope to hit
1920x1080... It's a lot of fun. The toolchain has some niggles, but overall
it's extremely pleasant and I'm so happy it exists. I've been wanting to work
with programmable logic for a few years since getting into electronics, but
I've just not got along with the Xilinx and Altera tools.

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ElaineB
If you read the blogpost on #myStorm that describes the hardware
[https://folknologylabs.wordpress.com/2016/07/21/a-perfect-
st...](https://folknologylabs.wordpress.com/2016/07/21/a-perfect-storm/)

It sounds like this board is going to be available for $30 and you add your
own Rasp-Pi - but the $5 Pi-Zero plugs straight in on the end of the board.

There's an ARM M3 acting as FPGA programmer, GPIO, ADC and up to 512K bytes of
fast SRAM on the flip-side of the board.

For $30 that seems a bargain!

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jacquesm
Are you somehow associated with this project? It's the only story you posted
and each and every comment associated with this account plugs that board.

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joshu
This would be better if there was a link to the actual product.

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ElaineB
In what way would it be better? Two guys doing something cool - what do you
want? It's all opens source - you go make one in 10 days!

~~~
joshu
Btw, calm the hostility - I was complaining about the context-free blog post.
The project seems interesting.

