FPGA 101 without a Nexys4DDR board

[ohault]

To start with FPGA and LiteX, FPGA 101 is great if you have a Nexys4DDR board, but you could have another board like SQRL Acorn CLE 215+ or not board at all.

What can be done in these cases ?

Case A : without any FPGA board
How a given board could be described with with LEDs, switches, ... ?
Could Nexys4DDR board be simulated using Verilator and perhaps Renode ?

Case B: using another FPGA board to emulate with a GUI the Nexys4DDR board
Using a SQRL Acorn CLE 215+, it could perhaps be possible to emulate a Nexys4DDR board following this Complete Block Diagram of FPGAEmu ?

For case A & B, I would be pretty cool, especially for beginners to develop of a GUI to visually mimic HMI of a Nexys4DDR/NEXYS A7 board with support of

Audio
Microphone
2 4-digit seven-segment displays
16 Switches
5 Buttons
16 LEDs
2 Tri-Color LEDs

This concept could even be extended to

• virtual Ethernet 10/100
• virtual SD microSD card
• virtual VGA output