Ollonii

Thank you very much. That makes sense. Now to find a board that has a SATA connector.

Dear Friends, I am a rank beginner with FPGAs - when I did my MScEE, Intel had just developed the 80286 and I was working on systems using a pre-release version of it! Life has taken me away from computer design but, now that I'm retired, I'd like to implement some of the ideas I have. But oh how things have changed! One of the first things I'd like to work on involves physical control of disk drives (and later, SSDs). I figure I'll start by replicating one of the open-source SATA cores. To begin, I've purchased a Digilent Nexys A7-100T but, of course, it has no SATA connectors. Is there an easy way to add one (or two) to this board? I'd have thought that was a common need but I can't find anything. Related to this, I'll expose my lack of knowledge by asking about the board choice. I selected Xilinx because of their market share and history, Digilent because of their support, and Artix7 because it's not likely to become obsolete in a year or two and it appears to have plenty of horsepower for the things I'd like to try. I have no idea where Zynq7000 might fall, here. Are these reason sound, in your experience? Thanks for any input. I'm excited to be back working on design again although I think there might be a *steep* learning curve ahead.