Options for microcontrollers inside the Apple //

[Ralph <rwhyre@gmail.com>]

I've been thinking about adding microcontrollers and inexpensive FPGAs
to an Apple // to make more interesting
expansion cards.

One idea was for an Arduino platform, inside an Apple II.  Once the
logic levels are converted, it would allow people
to do more experiements with their vintage Apples, as it would give
people the ability to add Arduino shields like
the Ethernet shield or Gameduino - the Gameduino (gameduino.com) is
interesting because it has an FPGA onboard.
Gameduino was a kickstarter project designed to allow you to implement
tiled videogames on the Arduino.

My Gameduino has a Xilinx SPARTAN chip, (XCS36200A) - and spaces for
the JTAG connections - repurposing
the FPGA would be the interesting part of this..along with the
challenges of addressing RAM with the device that
needs to store and retrieve something.

Ethernet shields are around $40 from various places, and the gameduino
is slightly over $50 from US distributors... possibly a
slight variation (perhaps with a different FPGA?) is apparently $29
(!) from CuteDigi...

http://tristesse.org/FPGA/CheapFPGADevelopmentBoards has details on
this and other boards

Is this kind of project (plugging and Arduino clone into an Apple II
expansion slot?) something
other Apple II // III, or //gs hardware users would be interested in?
What would you want to do with it?