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I would recommend considering being more ambitious and learning how to design and prototype digital circuits on an FPGA development board. Pong Chu's book "FPGA

I would recommend considering being more ambitious and learning how to design and prototype digital circuits on an FPGA development board. Pong Chu's book "FPGA Prototyping by VHDL Examples--Xilinx Spartan-3 Version" is really excellent, with lots of well-explained projects. You can get really nice Xilinx starter kits compatible with this book for cheap. To be absolutely compatible, you can get the old Spartan-3 starter board from digilentinc.com for $99, but be aware that you need a PC with a parallel port. If you prefer like me to connect your FPGA board to your computer using USB, I recommend either the Nexys-2 board for $99 or the Spartan-3E starter board for $149, available at digilentinc.com, or the more up-to-date Spartan-3A starter board for $189, which you can buy at nuhorizons.com or avnet.com. These boards are mostly compatible with the book, and you can get lots of peripheral modules like seven-segment LED's for them from Digilent. The software necessary to program these starter boards is available for free from Xilinx. The only slight problem is that you need to use Windows or Linux--no Mac OS X.

blackguardx 18y ago
Anyone wanting to know about electronics shouldn't start with FPGAs. I do FPGA design for a living. I wouldn't really consider it "electronics." It is closer to embedded programming than circuit design. To an outsider, they are almost exactly the same. Many companies lump FPGA design with firmware. With FPGA design, you start with a board with an FPGA on it and then write some code in Verilog (Verilog is much easier to learn than VHDL). Once the design is complete, you hit the synthesize and place and route buttons and download the reulting file into the FPGA. With embedded programming, you start with a board with a microcontroller on it and then write some code in assembly (you could also use C or something else). Once the design is complete, you hit the compile button and download the resulting file into the microcontroller.
- jsyedidia 18y ago
  Yes, FPGA design is more like programming than it is like analog electronic circuit design. No need for soldering, or for thinking about analog equations. I think a lot of the audience of Hacker News would find it an interesting way to learn more about hardware, even though it doesn't answer the original poster's question about electronics a la resistors and capacitors. If one prefers Verilog, Pong Chu also has an edition of his book using that language. VHDL is more verbose than Verilog, and more strict about typing, which many consider to be a good thing for hardware designs. But at the level of Chu's books, they're almost equivalent--he uses a bunch of re-usable code templates which are easily translated between Verilog and VHDL. It's not worth agonizing about the difference; I chose VHDL mostly because more reference designs for the Xilinx starter kits are written in VHDL.

blackguardx 18y ago

Anyone wanting to know about electronics shouldn't start with FPGAs. I do FPGA design for a living. I wouldn't really consider it "electronics." It is closer to embedded programming than circuit design. To an outsider, they are almost exactly the same. Many companies lump FPGA design with firmware. With FPGA design, you start with a board with an FPGA on it and then write some code in Verilog (Verilog is much easier to learn than VHDL). Once the design is complete, you hit the synthesize and place and route buttons and download the reulting file into the FPGA. With embedded programming, you start with a board with a microcontroller on it and then write some code in assembly (you could also use C or something else). Once the design is complete, you hit the compile button and download the resulting file into the microcontroller.

jsyedidia 18y ago
Yes, FPGA design is more like programming than it is like analog electronic circuit design. No need for soldering, or for thinking about analog equations. I think a lot of the audience of Hacker News would find it an interesting way to learn more about hardware, even though it doesn't answer the original poster's question about electronics a la resistors and capacitors. If one prefers Verilog, Pong Chu also has an edition of his book using that language. VHDL is more verbose than Verilog, and more strict about typing, which many consider to be a good thing for hardware designs. But at the level of Chu's books, they're almost equivalent--he uses a bunch of re-usable code templates which are easily translated between Verilog and VHDL. It's not worth agonizing about the difference; I chose VHDL mostly because more reference designs for the Xilinx starter kits are written in VHDL.