Altera MAX V CPLD Development System - MegaProLogic

Waste of perfectly good pins. Half the pins on that nice 40-pin connector are NC, while the 4 leds on the board consume 12 pins of the CPLD. Documentation, while lengthy, was confusing and incomplete. Clock on pin 23? I think not. I couldn't find a good qsf file that matched the board so I had to resort to mapping out each pin from the raw schematic and quartus pin mapper. Add futzing with the level shifter directions (why isn't the LED lit?) and the slow downloads makes for a mediocre out-of-box experience.

I just got this in today, and I HAD to leave a review. I was so surprised at the quality of this kit. Everything down to the tack switches feel very solid and robust. It comes with a little hat on top of the shield to do FTDI stuff over USB. The pins are a little extra long so they make firm contact with the board below it. All pins are 5V tolerant thanks to a few SN74LVC4245A's. Having this board sit on top of my knockoff IEIK Arduino Mega knockoff feels like putting a Porche cover onto a Ford Taurus. It's very solid and nice.Alright, enough gushing about the quality :) If you're just beginning FPGA or CPLD development, you won't go wrong picking this one up first. It's going to be a while before you really surpass the capabilities of this board, so if you're dipping your feet in the water to see how you take to FPGA/CPLD development, you can do a whole lot worse than spend ~$20 for one of these and get several times that in value.

Just be sure to install Intel (Altera) Quartus Prime software and not Quartus II software and the driver situation for the JTAG should work fine. I took off one star because this product ships with a EPM570 device installed on the board which is a MAX II CPLD not a MAX V CPLD. For my application this didn't matter but for some it might so please check out the company website first for product details.

High quality board for the price. Well packaged, dvd with software and instructions.