Cheap FPGA Development Boards

I can't let a topic like this pass by without mentioning commercial (often obsolete) FPGA-based products that are repurposed as development boards. They usually offer FPGAs with much higher capacity for rock bottom eBay prices. * Pano Logic G1 board: https://github.com/tomverbeure/panologic * Pano Logic G2 board: https://github.com/tomverbeure/panologic-g2 * Colorlight 5A-75B: https://github.com/q3k/chubby75 * Cisco HWIC-3G-CDMA: https://github.com/tomverbeure/cisco-hwic-3g-cdma Playing with these has been a fun…

Unfortunately, cost of the development boards is in no way the problem blocking wider use and knowledge of FPGAs. FPGA tooling is stuck in the dark ages. FPGA pipelines are windows-only, the development environment UIs look like a toddler was given access to VB6, and the licensing is crazy. Lattice semiconductor will give a free licence for iceCube2 to a resident of the USA in less then 24 hours but will deliberate for weeks over giving one to someone in…