WTF? - Spartan-3E starter kit with no printed board manual?

But a printed manual wouldn't have any of the fancy hyperlinks that let you cruise around the board with the click of a mouse!

You have to use the computer to work with the board - designing, programming - why not use it to bounce around the .pdf to your heart's content? I, for one, sincerely appreciated the ease of getting around the manual with the help of the hyper-linked image and other internal cross-references. A decent manual all around.

But i'm certainly using the ug230.pdf document as well. No question about it. But there is no real reason for the absence of the printed manual. Or maybe cut down $5-$10 of cost?

Or is it more reasonable to bounce around the .pdf and the ISE environment all the time? OK, so give away all your books (your hardcopies). Would you like that?

I'm preparing some stuff for some end-users that are complete newbies (first lab for some students that involves any kind of board). I'm used to several different boards (ARM evaluator, ARM integrator, S3SK (this i actually bought), Altera Nios-II Stratix-II DK board) although i considered myself a (relative) newbie as well. This is the FIRST case of a board/kit without a single drop of printed manual/help!!! ONLY some dumpass evaluation versions. So what am i supposed to do with them? Eat them for lunch?

I think that the X* guys enjoy their reign BIG TIME. UNTIL THEY FALL.

And when they do, they'll do it the HARD way.

An angry Xilinx customer

PS: I, myself, suggested the S3E-SK here at the office, because i thought (and still believe) and it's a very good deal for the buyer. And we bought a certain amount for a lab.

But no printed manual?

I thought this had already happened, some years back, on most low-cost eval level systems ? Some vendors now off-load their manuals to a Web printing company, who have a library of PDFs and they print/bind a book, just for you. [for a fee, of course]

-jg

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Actually, I don't work from hardcopies anymore. Only a few ancient reference texts are at home in hardcopy, rarely referenced but there for safekeeping. I gave up my bookcase full of data books when I moved 7 years ago and haven't accumulated any more references (unless you count company training).

The reference design examples found at

aren't limited to Xilinx-generated material. I haven't gone through them myself but did use the initial design as a starting point to add my own modifications for the LCD driver, for instance. The Starter kit's primary goal from my perspective (as a Xilinx user) is to get some hands-on with the part, not necessarily to educate the student in the art of FPGAs.

The board was designed partly or wholly by the folks at digilentinc.com - a company dedicated to making FPGAs accessible to students in addition to intustry. There was a post on this newsgroup recently that pointed out material on the digilentinc.com website that's useful in the teaching environment. You might find better student-oriented material directly from them as opposed to Xilinx; it is their main focus, after all.

My S3E starter kit is at home so I can't verify the kit contents. The PCIe eval board comes with an "Introduction to Programmable Logic" book (192 pages) that isn't board specific. The S3-1600E board (similar to the starter kit) I got directly from Digilent. While the same board from Xilinx (packaged with specific software) comes with additional documentation, the board from Digilent came with just the raw board and power supply.

I'm sorry that the item you consider crucial to the proper use of the board in your environment wasn't included. Any manual would end up tossed aside by a user like me. The cost of the manual would be shouldered by all purchasers for what ends up as a few people who need it. Is it too much to have the .pdf printed? Is there a concern that the rights aren't there to reproduce the manual for the students' use? I'm certain Xilinx would work with you to give you the allowances you need to get things done; the University Access program I've heard about might be a good contact point.

And find out what Digilent has or can do.

- John_H

Hello Uncle Noah,

I'm sorry you found the lack of a printed manual to be a hindrance in using our Spartan-3E Starter Kit. I can sympathize with you, because I much prefer to read paper, and somehow find it difficult to read detailed technical documents from the screen.

As pointed out by others, a printed document would make the kit more expensive for everybody. Another concern (although not a major issue) is that electronic delivery of the documentation allows us to get the kit to market faster and also more easily maintain the document when we need to make changes/corrections. For all these reasons (and more, including "ease of use" for most customers) Xilinx decided to stop including printed manuals with the Spartan-3 Generation Starter Kits.

I am also using UG230 extensively in a class I teach at SJSU. You can read more about the class here:

where I have UG230 and my handouts (including a tutorial) in PDF format on-line. You are welcome to re-use anything that might help you. For a number of semesters, I had offered to have documents printed at the student print shop (including the board's user guide) if there was sufficient demand from the enrolled students. Even though I am not the copyright holder for the board's user guide, I figured Xilinx would not prosecute me for helping students learn how to use Xilinx FPGAs. I never received more than a handful of requests so I stopped asking -- and figured people who wanted a paper copy could go to the student print shop with a PDF file and get one made for about $10.

Eric

Uncle Noah,

I completely disagree. It's much better without printed material. Far better, online resources are the future.

Even so the S3E kit I have came with no less than nine booklets, about four cds and a little printed book explaining an introduction to VHDL and programmable logic (mentioned before, about 190 pages) - if you REALLY want a printed copy of things, then just print off the manual from the web:

I really dont see why this would be an issue. Plus, electronically, the kit is a complete steal for $149 ($130 now - if you act fast)

Just my 2p. Ben

It could be worse: on top of not having printed manuals, the $300 XUP-V2P comes without software. Since ISE WebPack does not support the XC2VP30, anyone buying one of those boards is screwed unless they have access to a full copy of ISE+EDK or other suitable synthesis tools through some side/back-channel.

I am still puzzled that Xilinx happily subsidizes $1300 to put these boards into future logic engineers' hands and into universities' labs but makes accessing the necessary tools so impractical. I heard even Xilinx's sales reps are surprised when they hear about this situation for the first few times.

IMO, missing software easily tops a 'missing' printed manual. Like others here have said, I prefer the searchable digital format. If I find myself repeatedly referring to specific sections (like schematics), I can print them as necessary and any way I want... from two pages per side duplex on 8.5x11 for plain text to 11x17 for schematics.

Considering universities can request the full tools for free its not a problem.

We have a xup board and have everything we need to work with it include ise , system generator , edk and chipscope pro.

Its great that xilinx provides their tools like this. Its one if the reasons we still use xilinx cplds in the undergraduate course for programmable logic (its certainly not due to the schematic editor).

Now if anyone knows of a good xilinx based sdr(software defined radio) kit, that would be a big help. Most of the visible fpga sdr projects seem to be using altera fpga's.

Alex