Altium Livedesign eval boards - can you add a configuration prom?

May 25, 2006 3 Replies
R

I've been eyeing the Altium Livedesigner evaluation boards as a potentially cheap way to get a reasonably powerful FPGA board to play with. Either the Altera or Xilinx board seem to have decent size parts, and plenty of accessories - especially for $99



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The problem is that neither have a configuration memory - which is understandable given the target audience.



I'm curious if anyone owns one, and has looked to see if the necessary configuration pins are brought out anywhere. The schematic for the Xilinx version shows that all but the din and init_b signals should be available at either resistors or LED's. Not sure what the red lines mean in the schematic. They could be direct vias to either ground or VCC, or test points.



Has anyone attempted to add a configuration PROM to either of these boards?



Thanks!



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A

you can alway add a 1.5 USD MCU and 2 USD flash and have the config done over jtag :)

Antti

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K

I had the same idea, but at least in the Cyclone version of the board there's no way to reach them (and I think they're directly connected to a GND plane). The boards are a good buy anyway. I use one as a multi-purpose peripheral (playground) attached to a Coldfire CPU board (which does initial configuration via JTAG/LPT port). Other boards with fewer connectors (and less displays) are available from other vendors, those are better suited for standalone operation.

K.

mr. kolja waschk - haubach-39 - 22765 hh - germany fon +49 40 889130-34 - fax -35 - http://www.ixo.de
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D

You might want to be careful assuming they work.. The example project for the Memc/Avent Spartan 3 board doesn't work for me and I have had quite a number of support emails back and forth but no progress yet (and they don't actually have the board anymore). Can't say it inspires me to buy it when the demo version doesn't work on a board they have allegedly tested with..

Seems pretty dumb they don't have a GDI fallback (since they already have it written and debugged)

Yeah given Altium's apparent inability to fix bugs in their software or come up with half decent licensing models I am not surprised :)

Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from." -- Andrew Tanenbaum GPG Fingerprint - 5596 B766 97C0 0E94 4347 295E E593 DC20 7B3F CE8C
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