Re: Xilinx legacy situation

Hi,

I recently went through the exercise of updating my material
from XSE 2.1i to XSE 4.2i.  It was a lot of work, I will admit.
All of the schematic based projects needed to be converted into
Verilog.  Plus new hardware (Spartan-IIE).  Anyone who is doing
the same, or considering doing the same, please feel free to
borrow anything that helps you from my class website:

http://www.engr.sjsu.edu/crabill

Thanks,
Eric

Tim wrote:
> 
> Tim Forcer wrote:
> > Peter Alfke top-posted:
> >>
> >> Tim, you have to get over the idea of still
> >> getting something from your old chip investment.
> >> Xilinx FPGAs have become 100 times (!) cheaper,
> >> have added functionality and better software
> >> support since the days when you bought the
> >> XC4013s.
> >
> > It's not the chip investment that's the *big* hangup, but the
> > equipment investment.  The chips were chosen deliberately in
> > pin-grid-array package so we could replace as and when we wanted
> > - including when/if they got blown up by misuse.  Throw-away ICs
> > we can live with - even at the price of PGA 4013s.  Throw-away
> > experimental units is another ball game.
> 
> I suspect your best compromise may be to select the latest
> and greatest - in Xilinx' case, this is currently Spartan-3
> - and have a tiny daughter board built with FPGA, regulator
> and protection/interface chips.
> 
> Of course you would still have to address the issue of
> updating all the course material, as Jonathan discussed
> a month or so ago.
> 
> And you would have to repeat the exercise every five years
> or so.