Low cost solution to program Spartan 3AN DSP development board AES-SPEEDWAY-S3ADSP-SK Opzioni

for real diy-hards the 0 cost solution is 5 wires to LPT port, but if you are no so confident with that (and you are not as you are asking for the advice), then well there are cheaper solutions, but at the end of the day you spend more in frustration, etc..

but when buying Xilinx own cable then get USB CABLE II, not the old one, the price difference is some 20 EUR but i think it makes sense

the usb cable II is based on Spartan-3A internally not CPLD any more, so should you one day feel like doing some usb-FPGA development you could reuse the cable II as USB-FPGA dev platform :)

so i would advice to get cable II, if it really is out of budget, you could just forget the FPGA stuff completly, sometimes it just doesnt pay off to save the last penny on development tools

Antti Lukats cheaper solutions

1) LPT or USB cable not xilinx compatible --- DO NOT USE because you would not be able to use chipscope 2) china clones of xilinx usb cable (at least 2 different models available) are cheaper but hard to get at low price

Digilent has inexpensive Xilinx JTAG cables, with parallel or USB interfaces. Not sure how much shipping cost may impact...

They also include programming cables in many of their development kits, for another option.

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

YES but they are not compatible with Chipscope and other xilinx tools so at the end its waste of money

Antti

I disagree they are a waste of money - especially for a newbie. If you don't need to use Chipscope and just want to program an FPGA, they do just fine. Or, they have for me. In fact, I find the Digilent software easier to use than IMPACT.

well, my opinion WAS and IS that impact is not software byght nightmare :) and I do NOT like the closed protocol Xilinx solutions, so sure the other cheap solutions CAN be used, but if you have already invested for started the S3A DSP kit what is defenetly not the cheapest for the newbie then i would say the USB cable make sense as well, as it is supported by all Xilinx tools

if Chipscope saves you once a few hours of frustration, then the extra price paid for the usb cable is already paid back for you.

I did partially RE the chipscope server protocol, and I know it would be possible to make CS server that connects to chipscope analyzer and would support 3rd party hardware, but well I had no time to finish it, and so far has nobodody else done it either.

Antti

I'm in trouble, do you think that could be possible to program the FPGA from ethernet for this board ? Thanks,

Antonio

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More details at:

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 [mail]: Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net) 
 [page]: 
            Try the download section.

Not directly. Some combination of one of the many mpu's with embedded ethernet mac and XAPP502 or XAPP058 can work. You might also try a bootloader running on the S3AD to pull the bitstream through the onboard PHY, and store it to flash. The trouble, of course, is getting the bootloader onto the device to start with. You might try a simple parallel cable to drive the JTAG pins to do that.

I notice the price for the embedded and DSP kits that include your board have gone up considerably in the past week. Both versions include the USB-II cable, for (previously) not much more than for the board alone, along with the embedded or DSP tools as appropriate.

Thank you Rich,

I'm interested in this as well, but I wonder if there is a Macintosh solution? Digilent's free software is for Windows.

From

it looks like the Xilinx software is Windows/Linux only, so you may need a dual-boot solution to go that route.

As far as the programming cables, from

"The Xilinx iMPACT tool is compatible with any Xilinx programming cables, the Xilinx USB interface, and the Digilent parallel port JTAG cable. The Digilent Adept Suite software is compatible with the Digilent parallel port JTAG cable and the Digilent USB interface. Xilinx and Digilent both have USB interfaces, but they are incompatible." So the relatively inexpensive parallel port JTAG3 cable could be used.

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

Thanks again, So I just use the Adept software instead of iMPACT?

That doesn't sound horribly burdensome. I'd prefer iMPACT just because it fires up and programs the device automagically if you want, but I could create the .bit file with ISE and send it with Adept - or am I reading this wrong? My interest is specifically for the ExtremeDSP Spartan-3A DSP board. I'd like to be able to work from either Windows or a Mac, but initially Windows is more important to me.

Thank you for your help.

If you use a Digilent USB cable instead of the parallel port, yes. Note that they (Digilent) often toss in a parallel-style programming cable (the JTAG3) "for free" with their kits and that seems to be good with either Xilinx's or Digilent's JTAG device programming software.

IIRC, Adept can use .bit, .jed, .mcs, or .svf device files so it would be a two step process (erm, insofar as HDL --> device file could ever be considered a single step): create the .bit file then program the device with Adept.

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

You might look at xc3sprog which as an open source jtag loader for (plain) spartan 3 fpga's under linux. It should not be hard to port that to OSX. You might need to do a little work to get it to configure a spartan 3AN rather than a plain spartan 3.

Another option might be trying to run either the windows or linux software in some kind of emulation environment or translation layer with a hacked up I/O driver.

Using an svf file should be workable, you'd need to make or find an svf player for OSX and your hardware cable, but I believe the necessary information and perhaps even source code are published.

Finally you could look at configuring the device in passive serial mode rather than via jtag, the advantage being that all of the necessary information to do that is published, because people want to do it with embedded processors all the time.

You could also install windows on the mac...

Thanks, that's what I figured. The Mac stuff needs to run as native, but that's a job for someone else on this project (c:

Thank you again, that answers all of my questions. My Spartan-3A DSP board and the Digilent cable are on their way! Can't wait, what a nice (ahem) "toy" - you all know what I mean... (c:

You can use the project delivered with the S3a Starter kit (see ug330 pag.17) and available in

.

With this project you can use the the RS232 cable to program the flash. Then you can use new configuration at next power-up.

This project is a nice starting point to implement a similar project using ethernet.

I've just received my Digilent USB-JTAG cable.

Unfortunately, the Adept ExPort software doesn't seem to know about the Spartan-3A DSP. I also have a Spartan-3E Starter Kit and using the same cable, the software finds and properly identifies all 3 devices in the JTAG chain.

When I use it on the -3A DSP board, it reports:

Initializing scan chain... Found Device. IDCODE: 03840093 Initialization complete. Device 1: UNKNOWN

I've emailed Digilent support, I assume a software change is required.

Here is their reply: ==================================================================== Hello Scott,

Adept supports the Spartan-3E FPGA's up to 1600k gates, but only supports Spartan-3A FPGA's up to 1400k gates. All of the supported FPGA's under the Adept Suite can be found on our FAQs page here .

Regards,

Dion Moses

Digilent Inc. =====================================================================

I've asked them if that means they cannot or will not add this device to their suite, awaiting a response.

The Adept Reference Manual does not indicate that there are size limitations. In fact, the reference manual would seem to indicate that any Xilinx device in the JTAG chain is programmable with Adept.

The link above shows which devices are programmable with Adept version

1.7, however the current software is version 1.10.0.

This project claims to be a cable server that will translate between the digilent USB cable (amongst others) and Xilinx's impact tool.