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I have a large group of new and old devices and I would like to find a FPGA to start poking around on. What products or types will be likely to have FPGAs in them?
I recently asked this question on the reverse engineering stackexchange, but was directed here and thought the question would benefit from the original source that has inspired my search: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY9SBPo1Oy8
FPGAs are rather hard to find in the wild, since once the prototyping phase of a project is done, the company will usually switch to an ASIC instead. The best place to find them would probably be discarded FPGA evaluation boards.
One additional problem is that if you find an FPGA the packages aren't typically suitable for breadboarding. Some smaller devices will have SMT packages such as TQFP that you could potentially remove and install onto a TQFP to DIP adapter, but some are just about impossible to deal with at home coming in high density BGA packages.
For reference a TQFP package is a kind of quad flat package that has surface mount pins extending out from around the outside of the package, the pitch (gap between pins) varies depending on the size but 0.5mm is a common one. With some practice and fairly basic tools they can be removed and resoldered at home. The pins are sufficiently small that they need to be soldered to a circuit board however. You can get TQFP to DIP adapters where you solder the chip on top and 0.1" pins extend down that can be plugged into a breadboard.
A BGA is a ball grid array that has balls at the bottom of the package that aren't even visible when viewed from the top, so hand-soldering them one-by-one isn't an option. Specialty equipment is needed to rework those reliably and sometimes X-ray inspection is used to inspect the solder joints because it isn't possible to see them otherwise.
The gear you're most likely to find them in such as high-end routers, switches and video processing equipment are likely to use the larger devices. Many (most?) FPGAs also require multiple power supplies and the I/O lines often aren't tolerant of higher voltages so they're also pretty easy to destroy unless you're careful with the design.
As haneefmubarak suggested Digilent make an excellent range of prototyping boards. They take care of the tricky interfacing requirements and are an ideal way to get started. I purchased one for around $100 some time ago and had it up and running with a simple design in a manner of hours.
Since you want to know places to look for FPGA boards. Try this wiki page that is usually uptodate!
Ask your local FPGA distributor. They make have some older ones that are cheaper than the current generation of parts. But if you are "poking around on", you probably want an evaluation board.
you can opt for something like HD video boards. then use some vide peripherials to connect it. But it depends on how you define cheap. according to your hackaday link, that device the guy uses is found in video hardwares, i think it has something to do with the matrix in television. http://www.amazon.com/electronics/dp/B00BUUV4X6 you can buy one for 15$. the dev boards Papilo is 65$ and LatticeXP2 is 49$.
Here is a similar question: Cheap/old consumer devices to recover FPGA boards from
And a slashdot thread with some similar discussions: http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2086242&cid=35835256
If you are willing to buy new but cheap take a look at digilent (especially their educational prices) and papilio ($38 as of now) here : http://store.gadgetfactory.net/papilio-one-250k/
If you are familiar with the Arduino and are interested in (fairly) simple FPGA development, then you could give this a look. I personally don't have experience with it, but SparkFun tends to make/carry good products. It even has some interesting accessories for VGA and other connectivity. Hope this helps!
The best place that I can think of, especially as a student myself, would be http://www.digilent.com
EDIT: Added specific boards.
I would go for a device based on a Spartan 5 or 6, so one of Digilent's Nexys or Atlys series'.
