Updating my FPGA Course

Thanks for the link to the BeMicro MAX 10. I am not familiar with that board. 8000 LE is probably enough for the intro course. SoC which I did not mention is a longer term goal. I want to offer and FPGA SoC course as a follow up to this one. The school has yet to agree to this, so I can not say if it will happen or not. The Max 10 looks too small for this topic.

We do not need complete UART functionality, just basic character sending and receiving in a fixed configuration. What are the limitations of this JTAG UART?

Looks like Nios II designs should fit in the Nano and the CV. I would like to set up a follow up course where we use the Nios II, build some custom peripherals, write some custom device drivers and run an RTOS (FreeRTOS or uCOS). Is there anything to be aware of in attempting this on Nano or CV?

Thanks,

Phil

--- Quote Start ---

If 8000 LE are enough for your introductory course, the BeMicro MAX 10 board from Arrow is cheaper than the Terasic boards and has (2) Pmod headers.

http://www.arrow.com/bemicro/

In general regarding UART's, if you need a true UART you probably need an off-board adapter (e.g. http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/ttl-232r-3v3-2mm/768-1095-nd). But you might be able to get away with the (free) Altera JTAG UART IP core which looks somewhat like a UART in the FPGA, but you need special (Altera) software on the PC to communicate with it.

Regarding board lifetime and Quartus overhaul, you'll probably need to contact the board vendors and Altera directly. You didn't mention "SoC" design, but Altera just dropped it's older SOPC Builder tool and the replacement Qsys is probably here for a while (both tools are installed as part of Quartus).

--- Quote End ---