Sipeed Tang Nano 9K FPGA Development Board Gowin GW1NR-9 RISC-V HDMI (Tang Nano 9k)

I bought this out of curiosity to learn about programming FPGAs in Verilog. Given its low price, the Tang Nano 9K has worked out very well for that purpose. I have enjoyed experimenting with it.The FPGA on the board is made by Gowin which offers a free version of its toolset for educational purposes. It works well with this board, especially on Windows. On Linux Ubuntu 22.04, the programmer and the "analysis oscilloscope" do not work for me, but programming can be done by openfpgaloader.The Tang Nano fits on a breadboard and has enough capacity to support interesting projects such as running a small soft risc-v core.There is a quite a lot of documentation, but it is not always very good. It tends to explain the obvious while leaving deeper questions unanswered. But it is useful. There is also a sipeed wiki page that helps you get started.I had no trouble getting started with it, although I am not a complete beginner.

I have a dead one but I'm not convinced it arrived dead. I didn't know anything about a power on self test and demo until after my first programming attempt revealed a dead unit. Maybe I killed it, maybe it was DOA.However, the shipping and packaging were great and expedient. A little costly if you don't know what you're doing though. If you have the time to wait, you can get them cheaper.Oh, and get two whatever you do.

I used Yosys instead of the manufacturers choice of software and learned Verilog. I had some ideas about clock generators, and it did all I needed it to do. I'll probably buy another at some point.

It may be not the greatest FPGA around, but it's cheap and has great software and manual from LushayLabs.