Jake/Michael,
Thanks for the cheerleading and words of support. One of the biggest challenges I face is one of time. The system needs to be in place within 8 weeks for first HW.
I am going to give it a shot and try again but a slightly different approach. The magnitude of the number of slave blocks and all of the changes that are going into this change is huge. We are taking 2 lattice FPGAs w/ two ARMs and combining into a single Arria II with a Nios. I believe I will attempt an Avalon Slave bridge to the custom code to just get the system moving. If that is successful we at least will have a working system in 8 weeks, after which we have another 8 weeks to start porting individual slaves one at a time.
Brett