Hi,
I have been studying FPGA for awhile and wanted to get into it. So far, the toolchain has been extremely unwieldy and I've not been able to actually get anything up and running. It's utterly nothing like setting up a python stack.
What does the software to silicon chain look like with this thing? If I'm a student with basic verilog and systemverilog comprehension, how am I going to get this thing running?
This is a much more important question to me that 30 bucks on the cost of a board one way or another.
It's fairly simple once you get used to it;
1. create project; it will ask you which chip you are targeting.
2. set pin assignments (which physical pin corresponds to which port name)
3. type some VHDL
4. synthesize & upload to fpga board
5. profit!!!
On youtube you can probably find videos that walk you through each process for altera quartus or xilinx ISE.
If you search "xc6slx9" on aliexpress and sort by # of orders, you will find $20 xilinx fpga boards that has double the number of logic elements and sram. The kickstarter one has ADCs though. Depends what you need.