My ZX81's stopped working. :-(

[mk79]

Well, the 5V compatibility drove me to the XC95144, but maybe it would have been better to just use lever shifters and a newer chip, no idea.

What made you move from the ispMACH 4000 family to XC9500?

The development tools are better and availability with my go-to prototyping house JLCPCB was also much better, especially when compared to the more or less equivalent LC4128 (back then the XC95144 was some 7€ plus 7€ or so for SMD assembly, I don't fancy soldering myself at that price ).

[Peter]

Okay that's a very individual procurement situation. I was just wondering if I had overlooked a nice technical feature of the Xilinx chip - it just seemed 60% more expensive to me.
I agree that the Lattice tools are inferior to those of Intel and Xilinx. Lattice as a small PLD/FPGA vendor can compete surprisingly well on the silicon front, but the development tools are no match.

[mk79]

Okay that's a very individual procurement situation. I was just wondering if I had overlooked a nice technical feature of the Xilinx chip - it just seemed 60% more expensive to me.

Technically I'm sure the LC4128 would work fine, too, but in Asia the Xilinx stuff is usually both easier to come by and cheaper.

I agree that the Lattice tools are inferior to those of Intel and Xilinx. Lattice as a small PLD/FPGA vendor can compete surprisingly well on the silicon front, but the development tools are no match.

If I had the choice I would always choose Intel, the Quartus software is way ahead of everything else I've seen, especially when it comes to debugging. Xilinx ISE is nice to develop but debugging is a nightmare and the version is so old that it becomes more and more difficult to make it work. The latest Xilinx Vivado suite only supports newer chips that I don't use, so no idea if that has improved. Similar to Lattice where I only know ispLever and not Diamond.

[Peter]

If I had the choice I would always choose Intel, the Quartus software is way ahead of everything else I've seen, especially when it comes to debugging.

I agree that Quartus is the most user friendly, I worked with it for a decade or so.

Similar to Lattice where I only know ispLever and not Diamond.

You probably mean "ispLever Classic" for PLDs which I find even worse than the FPGA variant "ispLever" that I used for the Q68.
I still like toplevel schematics, and the schematic editor was at least usable in "ispLever". In "Diamond" that one has become complete crap.
For the Qzero I had to move to "Diamond", so there was no other way than to go text-only.
Apart from that, "Diamond" is an overall improvement, but still the build system sometimes screws up the project in a way that not even the full cleanup resolves. In the end I had to write my own cleanup scripts. Also the speed result of the Lattice synthesis tool is relatively poor for the free 68K cores.

[mk79]

You probably mean "ispLever Classic" for PLDs which I find even worse than the FPGA variant "ispLever" that I used for the Q68.

Yes, the classic one. It at least has an apt name, it does have strong WIndows 3.1 vibes But speaking of it, for some unexplained reason the classic license apparently now costs 600 USD per year, so that also rules out these chips for new designs.
My license expired in June, so I cannot even alter the old QL-SDs anymore.

For the Qzero I had to move to "Diamond", so there was no other way than to go text-only.
Apart from that, "Diamond" is an overall improvement, but still the build system sometimes screws up the project in a way that not even the full cleanup resolves. In the end I had to write my own cleanup scripts. Also the speed result of the Lattice synthesis tool is relatively poor for the free 68K cores.

The LFE5U is still covered by the free licence, isn't it? I see JLCPCB even lists the LFE5U-25 for SMD assembly, but currently not in stock.

[Peter]

But speaking of it, for some unexplained reason the classic license apparently now costs 600 USD per year, so that also rules out these chips for new designs.

Same happened to Lattice ispLSI devices. But back then I could at least get a permanent license, and it was not so expensive.

The LFE5U is still covered by the free licence, isn't it?

According to https://www.latticesemi.com/Support/Licensing, yes. But I tremble everytime I need to renew my license file...