[15155]

This is your job, and it really shouldn't feel difficult. This is really not tedious: the minimum board design for these chips literally consists of just power, JTAG pins, and a clock (if the internal oscillator isn't good enough.)

The Gowin FPGAs are available (at a massive premium) from Mouser, just like whatever MCU you are already using. Many are available for <$1-2 in China. Efinix are available from DigiKey, with some SKUs under <$10.

All of the Gowin documentation is available on their site with a free, approval-less email login and no NDA, or via Google directly (PDFs, just like Xilinx, even numbered similarly.)

[mschuster91]

> All of the Gowin documentation is available on their site with a free, approval-less email login

The problem is trust. I'm hesitant to hand out my e-mail anywhere because far too often I have been hounded by salespeople as a result, not to mention data breaches or bombardment of newsletters.

[15155]

So just use Google to obtain the documentation? Or a fake email? The PDFs are pretty easily obtainable by title:

https://www.google.com/search?q=gowin+user+guide+filetype%3A...

https://www.google.com/search?q=gowin+primitives+filetype%3A...

https://www.google.com/search?q=gowin+gw1n+filetype%3Apdf

[mschuster91]

If I really need something I'll go that route, yes. But for something that is just on a "cool, that might be interesting" it's too much effort.

[exmadscientist]

Exactly!

If I need it I will go do the thing and jump through the hoop.

If I am exploring, hell no.

And, next week, if that thing I was exploring turns out to be useful, congratulations, you just sold 100,000 chips.