Sipeed Tang Nano 20K GW2AR-18 QN88 FPGA Development Board with 64Mbits SDRAM 828K Block SRAM Linux RISCV Single Board Computer for Retro Gaming Console Support MicroSD RGB LCD JTAG Port

I've been using the Nano-9k for projects. The memory (BRAM) is a bit limit so I decided to try the Nano-20k. It would be nice if it was pin compatible with the Nano-9k. The smaller size is convenient for applications that don't need a lot of IO but the fewer pins will be more limiting. The Gowin IDE is very approachable. There are lots of simple examples. Out of curiosity I ordered a Primer-25k. Haven't received it yet though.

Learn a new way of thinking about "programming". It's fun! You should looking to getting an 8 channel logic analyzer. It will make it easy to see what is going on.

This is a great board for people who want to explore FPGAs at a low price. Gowin provides a licence-free educational tool chain.

I'm not a retro enthusiast (which you can use this for some very old stuff) and bought this for FPGA projects. It's a decent sized FPGA for a great price, and the pre-soldered headers make it breadboardable (note that it uses 3.3V logic). I am docking it one star however as some people have found the SDRAM (which is inside the FPGA package) can't run at the rated speeds. Really the fault of Gowin, but since it's a selling point for this listing I thought I should mention it. If you do decide to buy it and use the SDRAM, note that there are no IO constraints or pins for it. It uses magic names for the signals that you must define in the top level design file.