Get into fpga's with the brilliant Mercury Development Board
For Mercury DIP FPGA board
Hi,
I am delighted with my Micro-nova Mercury fpga development board, delivery was very efficient, considering I am located in the UK. I first encountered the Mercury board in a youtube video by Nick Williams, which closely follows the getting started tutorial on the Micro-nova site. I am running windows 10, and have had a few issues with Xilinx ISE Webpack software. Particularly with _pn.exe and xlcm licensing. Having overcome this issues by searching for solutions on the internet, I finally got the BlinkLEDs example VHDL code to compile. I then hit another issue with the MAP 258 error, this was related to a licensing issue, which I resolved by going to the Xilinx website and finding a solution. With my fingers and everything else crossed, I rerun generating programming file and waited with baited breadth. You can imagine my relief to see "build successful" message and a series of green ticks. Finally successfully produced a .bit file for the blinkLEDs code.
Next to upload the .bit file to the Mercury board, which could not have been easier, worked without a hitch. I am so pleased that I purchased the Mercury board and very much look forward to running through Nick Williams Lesson 2 and 3, examples to get to know the board and fpga projects. I particularly like the fact that you can use the board with breadboard, for prototyping, I also look forward to getting a copy of the Micro-Nova Base board to allow be to connect to peripherals.
I have very little previous knowledge of VHDL or in working with fpga's, but have found the documentation on the Micro- Nova website very helpful and easy to follow. Anyone thinking off getting into fpga's then I highly recommend getting a Mercury board. I look forward to learning much more and creating some exciting projects with the Mercury Board. Micro-Nova, Mark Bowers thank you very much for opening up this very exciting field to the beginner/enthusiast.
