program external nor flash (paralell) through cyclone iv (de0 nano)

PFL is mainly used for different tasks not for uploading pictures and stuff in a flash but i guess it is also possible. have not messed with that to be honest. now... if you do not have experience with electronics, messing with an FPGA will be very hard for you since there are 1000 tiny things that you must already know in order to make it work. using FPGA is the hardest way in comparison to other methods.easy it is when you already know what's what. if you will use Nios, you will have to find specific C/C++ library written specifically for Nios to communicate with flash. i don't know where to search that. and i guess you were joking about developing your own CPU :) i guess you meant building a circuit inside FPGA to talk to the flash, yes, that one is feasible of course :) using an atmega microcontroller is the easiest.C++ libraries and functions for communicating between flash and atmega are openly available mostly for free (i guess...). but biggest difficulty ahead is communication between your PC and your Device which has a flash on board. this is painful task not only for you, but for many other developers. as i sense... shortest way would be to write a COMM driver... it's tutorials are available on the internet, then a file grabber which will grab the file and shoot it through COMM port, and connect another end of COMM to your atmega. in case of USB you will have to add a USB interfacing IC to your device. ...you know what.... simply buy an arduino it has everything soldered on it already, and get some app which sends and receives from the flash. and that's it...