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Altera_Forum
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12 years ago

MAX II CPLD Selection for Encoder

Dear all, I am new to CPLD here. I want to use a CPLD MAXII (3.3V) EPM240 to realize a 20 key encoder. Does anyone know if MAXII is recommended to new design? If EPM240 is enough to re...
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Altera_Forum
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12 years ago

MAX II CPLDs are still valid for new designs. The new MAX V devices don't have too many advantages, so I would guess both products will be around for a while.

The MAX II PCI Development Kit would be ok for your development. It has a breakout header (Santa Cruz header) which probably has enough pins for your requirements.

The kit is around $150, but it comes with an Altera USB-Blaster (which is $300), so its a good deal :)

One caveat: MAX II Flash is rated for 100 programming cycles - that is not a typo. I have a MAX II PCI kit that stopped working ... I suspect I exceeded programming it by over 100x.

If you just want to test your HDL code, then you might want to buy a Terasic DE0-nano instead. I typically test on an FPGA development kit, even if I target a MAX II CPLD. So long as the synthesis passes timing, it will work fine in hardware.

Cheers,

Dave