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Comment by ksdme9 | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone here aware of beginner friendly learn-by-building style resources for getting into FPGA programming? Eventually, I would like to get to a point where I could build something like a DCPU-16 or maybe even an rv32mi core.

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I wish 8bitworkshop got more love. It is amazing. From the homepage "Write 8-bit code in your browser. Ever wanted to be an old-school game programmer? Learn how classic game hardware worked. Write code and see it run instantly." It lets you get your feet wet in Verilog without buying the hardware first. This description doesn't do it justice at all so check it out.

https://8bitworkshop.com/

At the risk of sounding like a shill because it's the third time I link to it: https://nostarch.com/gettingstartedwithfpgas

I was looking for a resource to get started too and stumbled upon this new book. I haven't picked it up yet but liked all No Starch Press books so far.

Russell's book is great. We got to preread it for FPGAjobs. His website, NANDland.com, is also great - and free!

Nand2tetris, skip around until you find something that interests you.

Fpga4fun is a other good resource if it's still around.

Try and do some stuff besides just another softcore CPU in the beginning, even if it seems redundant. Maybe try a VGA pattern generator with some cosine LUTs or something.

In a game jam a friend and myself turned the Nand2tetris computer into a working computer on an FPGA board with VGA output. Then we built a small game (game and watch level) using the Nand2Tetris high level language. Very fun.

I haven't tried this but this looks interesting. Designing Video Game Hardware in Verilog https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1728619440/ref=as_li_tl?ie...

And the online learn by building simulator. https://8bitworkshop.com/v3.10.1/?platform=verilog&file=cloc...