open-fpga-verilog-tutorial VS icestudio

The toolchain is called Icestorm, main tool is yosys, most information will be in English. I started with this tutorials here (also in English) https://github.com/Obijuan/open-fpga-verilog-tutorial. Then I used books to learn more on the basics of cpu design in verilog (which can also found online). Obijuan is a Spanish profesor teaching digital electronics in university, he lead the development of a graphical user interface to generate verilog based on a blocks UI, which helps design circuits when you are starting, but unfortunately I believe all his videos are in Spanish, I'd suggest you give it a try even if you don't understand English, as the material available (wiki and videos) is very good. Look for "fpgawars jedi academy " and IceStudio (the tool). But in the end, I personally felt limited by the GUI tool (which was still under heavy development at the time) and went straight to code the verilog code by hand (which obviously is more flexible). Anyway I feel there are not that many pattern to know.

Among your choices, FPGA is the answer. I would suggest a cheap iCE40 board like the iCESugar, to get started. Then follow tutorials targetting ice40+open stack.

In fact that docs are out of date and even more boards are supported and you can find the list directly in icestudio menu. If you want to check it beforehand, i think it's possible to see the list here in source code:

https://github.com/FPGAwars/icestudio/tree/develop/app/resou...

This is crazy helpful for beginners: https://github.com/FPGAwars/icestudio

They have drag and drop visual gates and cores with very well documented examples.

This is the project: https://github.com/FPGAwars/icestudio

I am slowly moving off my retro computing hobby. The last straw was recent chip shortage and crazy prices. I bought myself a copy of "The 8088 Project Book" and I wanted to build the presented 8088 breadboard computer. Guess what? The only factory that was building compatible 8088/8086 chips caught fire (Renesas factory fire). I had to order 20 year old chips for the price x2 of the new chips. But not only that, some chips are either unavailable or crazy expensive due to a lot of recent interests in retro-comp.

In other way, the hobby became unreasonably expensive for me. So I decided to move my interests into FPGA. The fun is almost the same, but the cost is way lower (you only need to buy a good board and a book, and you are set up). I started with this extremely simple IDE: https://github.com/FPGAwars/icestudio

As for this build, I have mixed feelings about using FPGAs to revive old computers. Can't we create something new out of it? It would be fun to have a _modern_ FPGA based SBC with easy to program graphics (memory mapped) and with simple device interface (I think USB is way too complicated for hobbyists). Just something powerful enough to create games, yet simple enough so that teenager can write a simple OS in his spare time.