The following is the thought process that led me to this site combined with discussions with my supervisor and a couple of other students. Realistically a cheap option for the department would be to buy 10-15 of the same type of device. Currently we share a single board SP601 between 4 of us for practical elements of the course:
http://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-kits/EK-S6-SP601-G-image.htmThe only thing that it offers extra is an ethernet connection over one of these bitcoin mining boards
Latest sale that I found on ebay values a Cairnsmore1 at around £50-£60:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FPGA-Bitcoin-mining-rig-5x-Enterpoint-Cairnsmore1-miners-4-1GH-s-btc-miner-/281273958864There's an ad valuing a ZTEX 1.15y at £100ea, but no bids on that:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2-x-ZTEX-1-15y-FPGA-Quad-board-800Mh-SHA256-Coin-miner-/161237115709This probably gives an open market value of about £30 ea for Icarus and Lancelot boards as they have 2 rather than 4 Spartan fpgas?
Clearly the components are worth more than this, however, recycling bga components is close to being a waste of time. In addition, because the software to develop on the Spartan 6 150 is so expensive the demand should be pretty small for these boards. As I'm at a university I have use of their software licences on their systems.
This all assumes that no-one comes up with an alternative commercial use for loads of fpga boards that have been retired from bitcoin mining.
