Ah okay, I was a bit perplexed because eldentyrell was talking about capacitors, clock crystal, and whatever else that I've little understanding of in his thread.

So how exactly do you calculate the MHash/s for a FPGA board? It seems like a lot of members are just throwing out random specifications, but I guess it's from experimental data and not from a theoretical perspective. Though if there is some kind of formula that would allow me to estimate the MHash/s of a FPGA board, I would like to know. 

I sort of expected my thread to get buried. I didn't see anything about bumping being against the rules, so here's my fourth post. I'll bump my thread once more if it gets buried, and then head on over to the proper forum section.

I've been doing quite a bit of reading for the past couple of days, and from my understanding, CPU and GPU mining are pretty much obsolete in the face of FPGAs and ASICs. With that, these threads popped out to me the most:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=44891.0 <--- Low cost DIY FPGA Miner by rph

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=8987.0 <--- Cost efficient mining hardware by cypherf0x

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45532 <--- Minimalist Spartan6-LX150 Board by eldentyrell

Before anyone tells me not to proceed with any FPGA projects for bitcoin mining, I just want to say that this is more for nerd-type fun than profit or breaking even. If I do end up earning a profit though, that's cool too. 

While I have enough programming experience to be able to learn more complex programming logic along the way, I have very little experience or knowledge when it comes to custom hardware (FPGA, ASIC, etc). So I was completely lost when I was going through those three threads that I read. I guess my very first question is what do I need to start building a minimalist FPGA miner?

Cypherf0x's cost efficient method is interesting, but it looks like there are some necessary details cut out to be able to start building miner hardware with the crypto-chips that he mentioned. Not sure how many of those chips are able to stack on a single board either.

I've been doing my research, but it's starting to get to the point where I need some guidance and be sent towards the right direction. I have a feeling that my thread is going to be buried in the pile of numerous other newbie threads, so I'm going to post this again (if needed) in one of the proper sections of the forum.

Junior level software developer here! I'm not entirely sure where to start or how to contribute, but I've been doing a great amount of reading for the past two days. I might start by making Android apps that are BTC related. Hmm...

Hey all! I've always wanted to tinker with custom hardware, and reading up on FPGAs really caught my attention. I know how to program at a junior developer level, but I believe that tackling a custom hardware project would be beneficial to me as a software developer.