Lpc2000

> I can see going with a less powerful core than an Arm7 in order to
> have more logic gates left over for other things, and that's why a
> 6502, or another 8 bit archtecture, might make more sense.
> 
> Eric
>

IIRC, the T80 core (Z80 emulation) takes in excess of 200k gates.  
It fits easily on a 300k Spartan IIE but I am not convinced it will 
fit on the 200k Spartan 3 Starter Board.  The good news is that for 
a few bucks more, you can get a 1000k gate Spartan 3 Starter Board.

With increased gate count comes increased BlockRAM.  While this 
could be used for CPU memory, it is probably more useful as display 
terminal memory (25x80 text mode).  The Spartan 3 Starter Board 
comes with 1MB SRAM.  The board only costs $149 for the 1000k gate 
version http://www.digilentinc.com/info/S3Board.cfm.  You select the 
device size when the board is added to the cart.

RISC cores tend to take far fewer gates for the very reason that 
they have a reduced and very orthogonal instruction set.

For $149 you can get a great education in hardware design.  Projects 
that were impractical for the hobbyist (200+ pkgs of TTL) are now 
created with a few lines of code.  Very cool stuff!

Richard