Re: A 21st Century Apple II?

[alex.freed.007@gmail.com]

On Mar 6, 10:14 pm, apple2fr...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Mar 7, 12:13 pm, "Simon D. Williams" <bb...@chebucto.ns.ca> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 6 Mar 2009, apple2fr...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > I have no interest in making this a business.  This is my hobby and
> > > I'm just happy that there are other people out there with similar
> > > interests I can share it with.
>
> > > If you're limited to the $200 price range, there are other FPGA dev
> > > boards bywww.knjn.comwhichmay interest you.  Check out the Xylo-EM
> > > which has an Altera Cyclone II FPGA + VGA + Ethernet (10baseT) support
> > > on it all for $129!
>
> > How feasible is it for a novice to get one of these things going? Assuming
> > someone smart has already done the programming, could I purchace one of
> > these boards and just download the appropriate ROM file(?) and have a
> > reasonable chance of success, or is this something that requires more
> > specialised knowledge? I guess my interest in a project like this really
> > starts *after* there's a working board ;-)
>
> You might check with Alex & Steve ofwww.applelogic.orgto see if
> their Apple IIe design could easily run on this hardware.  Also, at
> the top of this thread, I pointed out another IIe FPGA implementation
> by Stephen Edwards of Columbia University.  He uses an Altera DE2
> development board which goes for $269 for educational customers, or
> $495 for commercial customers.  I suspect that if you choose a dev
> board different from what the system was originally developed on,
> there will be some tinkering required to make everything work.  If
> this doesn't interest you, or you don't have the right background for
> it, you might want to wait until someone else gets it working for you.
>
> --
> Apple2Freak


To be more accurate Steve is behind some of the coolest  Apple-related
FPGA hardware.
I do the programmable logic design. Your best bet right now is likely
the $150 DE1
board with Cyclone 2. See my Apple running on it with all the sources
here:

http://alexfreed.com/FPGApple/revisited.html

-Alex.