FPGA Based IBM-PC-XT

There is 32MB of SDRAM on the FPGA board.... I wonder exactly what using 1MB of that as the system memory would have entailed instead of the separate 1MB SRAM chip that had to be soldered. Was using the extra SRAM chip just done just to do it, or is there a specific reason there that I'm not seeing/understanding...

The main reason is just due to me knowing my own limitations. SRAM is really simple to interface with and i've not yet tried to write a DRAM controller since its much more complex. Putting SRAM on the board made me more confident about the project. I did have it in mind that I could try to use the DRAM in place of the SRAM at a later stage (as you suggest) as a good way to focus on learning how to use it.