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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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13 years ago

Free support for Cyclone

Hello,

First of all I'm new to this forum and FPGA in general so please understand my lack of knowledge.

Now for the topic. I wanted to get familiar with FPGA and one of my lecturers in faculty gave me some old Cyclone (I) development board which was laying around unused. It came with software CD (includes old Quartus II version and some other tools), but that software was old and licensed (not unlike the the new Quartus II Web edition which is free). So I decided to install the new version of Quartus and the problem is that there is no Cyclone (I) device support under free edition, but only in the Quartus Subscription edition, although on the web page of Cyclone (I) it says that there is a free software ("You can also download the customer-acclaimed Quartus® II Web Edition software now for free, and no license required.").

So is there a way how I could learn a bit of FPGAs for free?

4 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    13 years ago

    Some low-cost Cyclone IV boards are available on Ebay, which are suitable for use with Quartus II 12.1 Web Edition.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    13 years ago

    The DE0 and DE0-nano are inexpensive and you may be able to get an academic discount.

    If you do not want to purchase a dev kit, you can always create designs and simulate them using software like ModelSim, which has a free version.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    13 years ago

    I use Quartus 9.1 Web Edition for most of my development (it still has a built-in simulator) and it appears to support the Cyclone I family. I believe there is a way to download earlier versions of Quartus from the Altera website.