where to start?

[professor_jonny]

I'm looking to make a memory like device to attach to the nand interface of a gaming console.
Problem is fpga's and cpld's are not my thing and I'm intrested in advice /help designing a system.

I was thinking I could add expansion pheripherials to the console by using the nand interface as a make shift expansion bus as there is really no other bus suitable for this task.

What I plan to do is attach the fpga to the nand chip of a gaming console so I can read and write to it.

The fpga will also connect to a second nand (256mb) on board my nand expansion device along with some ram (256mb) and possibly link to a Arm microcontroller.

The plan is to have the ability to boot from the onboard nand (16mb) boot from my nand (256mb) with ram mapped from 256-512mb

This will give me an alternative signigicantly larger nand to boot from and 256 mb as ram window for Arm to device communications and offloading unused stuff from kernel and dynamic recompiling and patching of the kernel at boot.

The micro/ fpga will also have a few spare I/O and buses for expansion prehiperials i2c spi usb bluetooth and that sort of thing to attatch things possibly in the future.

What do you guys think?

I just dont know where to look for advice, also price is of concern as I plan to make this and sell it, I was looking at an igloo m1 as a possibliity as it has an embeded arm core.

[mon2]

My 2 bits (half a nibble)...

1) review Gowin and the open-source tools. The Gowin devices will be a lower cost option.

2) review the Tang Nano 9k by Sipeed. Well documented, low cost hardware from Aliexpress, etc. No hard CPU inside but they do offer other devices with a hard Cortex cpu. Any part with 'C' in the markings has the hardened CPU core.

3) review fpag4fun on learning about verilog - there are other great sites as well.

4) review lushaylabs.com to learn about the Tang Nano 9k. Gabriel's website is off the charts amazing and he is very responsive to feedback / Q&A's.