OPENCORES.ORG

Hi, Manuel,
First, it's hard to say where you should start, coz you don't mention what is your intention/application.
In general, Spartan-3E is a good starting kit for beginner. Well, we are talking about Xilinx stuff(provide that you will choose one of Xilinx FPGA). Spartan series FPGA could offer a soft-processor ip(Microblaze by Xilinx) while the Virtex-II Pro and above contains one or more hard-core PowerPC. It's up to your performance/budget to decide which will be your choice.
Xilinx itself provides couples of demo applications in various fields, you can simply download from web and configure to your FPGA, let alone abundant third-party examples/tutorials.
JTAG interface is one of the download options.
Anyway, try to investigate a little bit in Xiinx website(Altera), you will have a rough idea about what shall you do.
regards,
Jeffsen

----- Original Message ----
From: "mgiannos2000@y..." <mgiannos2000@y...>
To: cores@o...
Sent: Saturday, July 5, 2008 7:46:33 PM
Subject: [oc] newbie in FPGA & CPLD field

Hello to everyone.
  I'm totally new to this field so I would appreciate any help. I
notice that you guys have developed a lot of  "cores" matching some of
my applications. I want to get into the world of fpga's so any hint
from where i can start? I know that there are a lot of dev kits such
as the SPARTAN-3E. Is this one a good point of start? Does any of the
cores developed by you are downloadable to this kit? Is it possible to
get done through the JTAG interface of these devices?
thank you for any response
Manuel Giannos
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