Honored Contributor
Honored ContributorYes, the 100 writes limit is a bit unfortunate.
The reasoning is, I think, that MAX II are very very optimized for volume. For on-off applications, such as development setup, the price diference between a MAX II and a small Cyclone is negligible. My choice would go to a Cyclone IV or III. Note however that these devices need several voltages: 1/1.2, 2.5 and 3/3.3V are a given. These devices are more flexible but also provide more ways to end up with a PCB design that doesn't work (this isn't meant to scare you). Recommended readings to avoid this annoying part: http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/qts/qts_qii52013.pdf http://www.altera.com/literature/an/an592.pdf http://www.altera.com/literature/dp/cyclone-iv/pcg-01008.pdf They also support several configuration schemes. For your application, I recommend the Active Serial + JTAG scheme. More information, including the schematics: http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/cyclone-iv/cyiv-51008.pdf As a foreword, when reading the documentation, you'll probably come to conclusion that you need to pin headers for the programming cable: one to access the EPCS via the Active Serial and another to access the FPGA via JTAG. This is not quite true: you can do without a pin header in the AS interface and access the EPCS via JTAG through the FPGA, using the Serial Flash Loader function. This is a bit slower than direct acess and requires an extra step when generating the programming file but it works very well.
