MAX1000 FPGA

I have always been somewhat in awe of FPGAs and nervous of the challenges they present.  Recently, in the March/April edition of Elektor, I saw an instructional article to create a processor on  an Altera/Intel MAX1000 which reminded me of a study of Computer architecture, based on Nand2Tetris.com, which I enjoyed immensly .  The web-site (and book) leads you through all the important steps involved in building a computer starting from a collection of Nand gates and ending with  processor, assembler, compiler and Operating System to run your own programs.
Nand2tetris provided a hardware simulator based on building an increasingly complex hierarchy of components but naturally enough it was too slow to deal with running non-trivial programs.

I went through the following stages to find out more.

1) Purchase a $30 MAX1000 from Arrow Computers

2) Elektor 8080 + Small-C compiler part 1 : LED pattern

Following the instructions in Elektor magazine I built the 8080 simulator FPGA program and was able to run the C program which generates a MAX1000 LED pattern.

3) MAX1000 User Guide Tutorial : LED counter

When delivered the MAX1000 runs an LED counter program, using the tutorial I was able to recreate and download to the FPGA.

4) Quartus, Hello World : NAND gate LED

I wanted to write the simplest possible program and decided on a Nand gate.  Unfortunately only one button is easily available on the MAX1000 so I implemented a NOT gate instead.  When a button is pressed an LED goes out.
This exercise simplified technical work into two tasks:
a) a very simple HDL program to implement a NOT gate.
b) assignment of two MAX1000 pins to a button and an LED

5) Altera NIOS II Hardware Development Tutorial

NIOS II is an FPGA microcontroller developed provided by Altera.  A tutorial is provided which goes through a significant number of steps to build the solution.  It helps you become familiar with the Quartus Prime environment and the specific MAX1000 hardware.

By the end of this investigation I had a very basic idea how to use Quartus Prime and a MAX1000 board.  Clearly 1 usable button and 8 LEDs are insufficient to maintain an interest in programming.  Rather than adding my own devices by breadboarding the MAX1000 and various peripherals I decided to buy a board which already has them built in.