Low Cost JTAG Boundary Scan

Al Clark escribió:

You can have XJLink (hardware) and XJAPI (C libraries) for 1,200 ?. The GUIs are much more expensive but, in theory, you could make your own GUIs with XJAPI. I use XJLink & XJAPI & my own VisualC++ programs to program Flash memories via XJTAG-capable processors inside proprietary boards, and it works fine. See

What's a DB25-M go for these days?

(If you are really cheap, you can just fold over the ends of the wires and shove them in the parallel port)

Of course you have some software work to do...

Indeed he will have, but not that much (given that all he needs to learn in this context is only JTAG related). I did it a few years back and I don't remember spending a lot of time on it (a week or so). [ However, I did it with everything under my control (no outside software involved at all), which is pretty unleashing (once you are that far ...)] A major problem he may encounter is the fact that many (all?) silicon manufacturers keep much of the JTAG accessible stuff inside their chips secret, hence the high prices for the tools - thus they just filter out the small potential users for whatever reason they may want (or have to?) to do it. If just boudary scan is the purpose, that will work, BSDL files are public (those I have needed were, at least).

Dimiter

------------------------------------------------------ Dimiter Popoff Transgalactic Instruments

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cs snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote:

JTAG Technologies

offer a scan function library (c based development routines) which work at the SCAN-IR, SCAN DR level for free with any hardware controller purchased. I think a basic hardware controller costs about 500 quid. If your wanting to write your own code for testing or accessing internal registers then this is the way to go. The costly element in most of these systems is the auto test program generator stuff which parses the board netlists and BSSDL models to create boards tests. If it is just simple pin access via boundary-scan that you're after there is another product from Universal Scan that is a better bet (and cheaper) that the XTAG system I think.