FPGA's be afraid, very afraid, of my wife!

Hi

recent events:

1) trying to use Xilinx Cable III (actually Amontec chameleon) to program actel PA3 on protoboard using DirectC 2) with big fights i got "random" results sometimes reading first IDCODE ok, but NEVER passing any further 3) after disconnecting GND it looked to be better (% of succes IDCODE reads increased a little) 4) now i disconnected 2 wires that delivered power to the Actel FPGA 5) measured at one side of those wires 3.3V (at power source) 6) measured other side 4V !!! (just plain 2 wires open in my hands, no load connected, fingers not touching) ? 7) now I called my wife to check out my doings (to prevent any other CAN NOT BE THINGS...) 8) look here, i measure here, we have 3.3V right? yes she says 9) and now look the same wires, i measure here it will be 4V I say, i connect the multimeter and we both see 3.3V 10) now I connected the 2 power wires back to actel FPGA board 11) and start the directC, and it works 100%, it does flash the FPGA and reports FULL success!

I had checked the connectors before myself several times with no luck, now she is just close and looking... and it all just starts to work! No explanation. But yes, DVB anttennas, WIFI sticks, are also afraid of her...maybe she should start business of scaring things to work ;)

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smile, smile, smile :) Antti

Reply to
Antti
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Perhaps the power supply was oscillating...

Are you using an LDO regulator ? These can be unstable with low ESR capacitive loading.

Reply to
Arlet Ottens

Antti schrieb:

Nice. But just in case you did'nt notice, valentines are over for this year. ;-)

Reagrds Falk

Reply to
Falk Brunner

1) I borrow 3.3V from Xilinx starterkit boards user connectors, this is OK, another actel PCB powered from can be flashed with flashpro3 OK 2) the TARGET board is just protoboard with A3P250 on it, JTAG and DIODES to drop voltage 3.3V-->1.545V + caps of course

now, the WORKS OK result was unfortunatly just ONE time event, that is

50 times before it did not work, 51 my wife looked WORK FULL SUCCESS 52 ..100.. not work (also when she comes to look)

what is strange is that there is dependancy on the failure if the DirectC code is compiled with Release or Debug setting in VC2005 !! similar things are visible with impact where the access to actel JTAG is different when using SVF vs XSVF (execution speed issues)

most stable is my own SVF player, that passes beyond the place where the directC failes with no random errors, but I also had "execution speed" related issues with actel jtag

I wish someone could explain me why Actel uses IRPAUSE/DRPAUSE an not RTI/IDLE as "parking state"... maybe it is not all related, but still curious

oh yes, I should get another target board, and another cable, etc..

Antti PS I did not notice valentines this year (that is I did not know the date when it was the day)

Reply to
Antti

On Mar 1, 4:21 pm, Antti wrote: [snip]

Then be sure not to miss March 8th, or there may be more than FPGA's in fear ;)

Reply to
Gabor

Antti, I am impressed!!!

/Mikhail

Reply to
MM

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