I've used a number of DIGILENT's older (SPARTAN-2,-2E, and CPLD) boards with considerable success. These had the FPGA, an oscillator, and the programming interface, which varied somewhat. The ones I use most of the time had a few strange features, such as VERY long signal traces, exacerbated by the fact that some of the FPGA signals were expected to drive signals attached to connectors at opposite ends of the board. I encountered ringing and overshoot that exceeded Vcc by a volt or more, i.e. signals were at 3 volt levels, but reflections and other forms of noise caused the signals to show noise of 8 volts or more, peak-to-peak, making the board useless without diode clamps and load resistors. Once those signals were tamed, the boards were useable and quite convenient.

It's important that you look carefully at the pictures. I was disappointed to find that the boards with prototyping area on them, which is very convenient for me, used connectors that made the prototyping area irrelevant, as the connection points were on very short connector pins. Putting a wire-wrap area on a board but using pc-mount connectors is not terribly useful. The boards were sufficiently fragile, that removing the connectors and replacing them with useable ones was damaging to the boards, despite the careful efforts of my long-time technician with much experience doing this sort of thing.

I mention these things only because you may be tempted buy "pre-opwned" boards on eBay, or elsewhere, and you should be aware of what you're buying.

RE