1. Home
  2. Field-Programmable Gate Arrays
  3. iMPACT 5.1i w/Parallel Cable

iMPACT 5.1i w/Parallel Cable

Hello everyone.

I have been having some trouble with iMPACT 5.1i and I was hoping that someone would recognize the problem and be kind enough to help me.

I am using a 3rd party Parallel Cable III from Digilent, and I cannot get the iMPACT software to use the Parallel port. When I invoke "Cable Setup..." I get the messages:

Connecting to cable (Parallel Port - LPT1). Checking cable driver. Driver Version = 212. LPT port is already in use. Cable connection failed. // *** BATCH CMD : setCable -port LPT0 // *** BATCH CMD : setMode -bs =>

The parallel port is set up for Bidirectional mode in the BIOS. The system is a laptop running Windows 2000. The Xilinx software fileset.txt and install.log appear to be OK, and I do have windrvr.sys and xpc4drvr.sys present in the WINNT/system32/drivers folder.

I know this has to be something fairly basic, but after a lot of experimenting I just can't seem to figure out what is wrong. I have searched the web and the Xilinx web site but there doesn't seem to be anything that resembles the problem I am seeing.

Has anyone seen this before? I tried disabling the LPT port in the device manager, but that didn't seem to make any difference.

Thanks in advance for any replies. I read this group regularly and find it to be one of the most interesting and informative groups on Usenet.

Ewan D. Milne Egenera, Inc. snipped-for-privacy@egenera.com

Reply to
Ewan D. Milne
Loading thread data ...

Ewan,

it seems that you are forcing (in batch mode) to run to LPT0 and the cable is attached to LPT1

// *** BATCH CMD : setCable -port LPT0

Aurash

Ewan D. Milne wrote:

--
 __
/ /\/\ Aurelian Lazarut
\ \  / System Verification Engineer
/ /  \ Xilinx Ireland
\_\/\/
 
phone:	353 01 4032639
fax:	353 01 4640324
Reply to
Aurelian Lazarut

I wondered about that... When I select LPT1 as the device to use, the output says LPT0. I tried selecting LPT2 and LPT3 and the output showed LPT1, LPT2 respectively. None of them worked, I assumed it was just an off-by-1 error in the software or something. I'm not sure how to change this in any event, the batch stuff was just something the iMPACT software did by itself.

The output did say "Connecting to cable (Parallel Port - LPT1).", the reference to the wrong LPT number was after the error messages.

Thanks very much for replying. I appreciate it. Ewan D. Milne Egenera, Inc. snipped-for-privacy@egenera.com

Reply to
Ewan D. Milne

There are a number of possibilities. The first could be that you actually have something else using the parallel port. Are you using, perchance, anything by Macraigor? If so this solution record (section

8) will help:

formatting link

The other items in the solution record may be useful but it seems unlikely.

Another possibility is that you have multiple versions of iMPACT running (or ChipScope or EDK). Only one can run at a time. It is possible that you have opened the cable in Slave Serial mode and then tried to use it in Boundary-Scan mode without first closing it in Slave Serial mode.

These are some possibilities and some issues have been resolved with the latest versions (6.3i)

I h> Hello everyone.

--

     *CAUTION:* Shameless self-promotion follows...
Reply to
Neil Glenn Jacobson

I eventually figured out what was wrong, so I'll post the solution in case anyone ever runs into the same problem.

The problem was the windrvr.sys file in C:\WINNT\system32\drivers It was present, but it was an older version of the driver. A newer version was in the $XILINX\bin\nt directory and I copied it to the right place.

Thanks very much to all who responded.

-Ewan

Reply to
Ewan D. Milne

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.