I got 5 boards and I started testing the basic stuff. you can see in the picture that i've populated the board so far with the regulators and the usb port. I am able to power the board over usb and the regulators give off the right voltages (3.3v and 1.2v). So far so good.I tried to put on the FPGAs though, and that was a nightmare. The thing has so many pins, and they're so close together. my first board try was an absolute disaster. My second try went better, but apparently i shorted the 1.2v supply vcc and ground. From visual inspection of the board it seems like the relevant pins are unconnected, so I'm not sure what's wrong. Maybe I fried the FPGA?
I'm tempted to just try again and potentially torch another board but I don't want to waste the 3 good bords that I have left. I might be able to get access to a hot-air rework station which would be easier to deal with than just a soldering iron, I think. There's also the griddle/toaster oven option. I'm going to e-mail the guy in my building who has the hot-air station and see what he thinks (or see if he even responds to me).
