Here you go:

Cheap FPGA boards for educational purposes: https://store.digilentinc.com/fpga-for-beginners/

The software is free: https://www.xilinx.com/products/design-tools/ise-design-suit...

The hard part is several semesters worth of textbooks to go through that cover digital logic (try Mano's "Digital Design: With an Introduction to the Verilog HDL" to start with) through computer architecture in order to know what to do with the board.

Much, much larger and better $113 FPGA development board with free 1 year license: https://www.microsemi.com/existing-parts/parts/139680 You never pay the $159 list price. Besides, the FPGA alone would cost you >$350 retail. Arrives with Risc-V preprogrammed and 'hello world' type demos on wifi and usb.

Really exotic and complex board to start with. No community support (think about Digilent or Terasic). I also guess, no examples. I visited a seminar about RISC-V and Microsemi presentation was really weak on this topic. Do not recommend this for getting started. Only for experienced users looking for pain. Cheap and affordable board is for example Max1000 from arrow.

Examples RiscV softcore, ADC, wifi, 12,5 Gbps Serdes(!), tic tac to, console echo. https://github.com/Future-Electronics-Design-Center/Avalanch... https://github.com/RISCV-on-Microsemi-FPGA/PolarFire-Eval-Ki...

Community support is indeed just beginning but the risc-V community and the HiFive1 - SiFive community support these polarfire FPGA's. Even 50 Risc-V softcores fit on this FPGA.

After the one year, the software costs $995 per year ("The board includes a 1 Year Libero Design Software Gold License worth $995!"). Not really a good deal for a beginner.

You buy a new board every year for $113 to extend the license. My point remains, its by far the most powerful FPGA for $113 and good for beginners.

Just a happy user, not affiliated with Microchip/Microsemi

There are also some boards listed here: https://symbiflow.github.io/#boards

If you want something even cheaper look for some ICE40 boards, like up5k MDP, or tinyfpga.

A few interesting things to try out: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1112/ECAD+Arch/background/... https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1112/ECAD+Arch/files/Thack...

An intro to verilog: http://zipcpu.com/tutorial/

Leaving aside the fact that open source toolchains exist for various Lattice FPGA's (the ice-40 and ecp5 etc)

About the simplest environment for doing what you just described is http://papilio.cc/

While using the existing Xilinx Webpack tools for actual synthesis, place and routing, etc. the Papilio Design-IDE will LITERALLY let you add peripherals to virtual Arduino like appendages! It takes advantage of a number of community projects like the Wishbone bus, and achieves a nearly drag-n-drop level of visual design tool.

Once you have loaded your custom arduino chip onto the papilio boards FPGA you can program it with a modified version of the Arduino IDE!!!!

One of their virtual chips you can start with IS the arduino atmega 328! Another is the ZPU-ino, an implementation of the Zylin ZPU (a 32bit mcu) done by Alvie Boy that allows you to program this much more powerful device ALSO by the Arduino IDE!

There are a bunch of FPGA project breakout boards on Crowd Supply, at generally low prices, cheap enough to try one at a time until you find one that clicks for you.

I highly recommend PYNQ. It comes with a Jupyter interface through an ethernet port that lets you interactively program and execute. Of course, actually designing the RTL overlay is the hard part, and you'll need to get comfortable with Vivado to do it properly.

http://www.pynq.io/