FPGA board for USB experiments?

Take a look at opalkelly.com. They have very elegant boards and excelent abstraction of the USB link (Verilog and VHDL on the board side and C++,Java and Python on Windows and Linux). Check the FrontPanel user's manual.

Jim.

Dave Farrance wrote:

Thanks. That's the sort of thing that I'd probably use once I'd understood USB, and needed to design a USB interface plus programmable logic into (say) in-house test equipment. It's a bit expensive for self-teaching, though.

I note that Xilinx can sell a board with a 500K-gate FPGA and a huge bunch of peripherals (and configuration via USB) for just $149:

So I'd hoped that an FPGA starter-kit type of board that was pared down to USB could be obtained from somebody for under $150.

I guess I'll look at the schematics of the Xilinx starter kit, and see if it can be rewired to also pass the USB data stream directly to generic-I/O on the FPGA.

--
Dave Farrance

Dave Farrance schrieb:

the USB chip on the Xilinx s3e starterboard is the same as on the opalkelly board I think, so just rewrite the usb eeprom and use the xilinx s3e board as usb devel board - only drawback you need to re-create that parts of the schematic that xilinx censored out from the digilent design eg the wiring of the usb controller - but with an beep-tester it should not take longer than a few hours

Antti

Thanks for that. It would have to be the USB interface on the censored page. Is the usb eeprom reprogrammable on-board?

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Dave Farrance

Dave Farrance schrieb:

the usb micro is cypress fx2 so if you dont load xilinx usb drivers then you should be able to rewrite the eeprom using cypress tools

Antti

Ah, I see. I've looked up the Cypress FX2 details, but I'm not interested in developing interfaces to a specific USB controller chip at the moment. I want to investigate the generic USB protocol hardware, and I'd put that on the FPGA itself.

I'll use another USB port for that, and I'll put together a transceiver board to handle the signal-levels so that I can route the raw data stream directly to the FPGA I/O. Such a USB interface would be speed-limited, but I'm not worried about that.

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Dave Farrance

The interface is not only speed limited, but also missing needed functionality, at least for USB2. USB+ and USB- need to be evaluated in many ways, not possible with a normal FPGA input. There are chips implementing the physical access (UTMI).

--
Uwe Bonnes                bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik  Schlossgartenstrasse 9  64289 Darmstadt
--------- Tel. 06151 162516 -------- Fax. 06151 164321 ----------

Antti a écrit :

Are you 100% sure of that (the only FX2 they mention in the datasheet is an extension connector) ? If yes, how is the FIFO port of the FX2 connected to the FPGA ?

Goodbye, Stéphane.

"Stéphane Goujet" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:5RQgg.38$ snipped-for-privacy@read3.inet.fi...

pretty sure, yes the datasheet refers to FX2 (as extension connector)

but the board has on on-board embedded usb platfrom cable, and that includes the cypress FX2 usb micro this pages are left out from schematics and are covered up with ink on PCB prints

Antti

Antti Lukats a écrit :

But perhaps just the pins to program the FPGA and the flash memory are connected, and the USB port cannot be used to transfer personal data through the FIFO of the FX2 microcontroller. It seems to be so, because else they would probably mention that this board has a USB port that can transfer high-speed USB data, and they do not. They just say that the board can be programmed through USB.

Yes, I saw that... :-(

Goodbye, Stéphane.

Hi,

take a look here:

I think, the Spartan-3 Micromodule with USB UTMI Phy is exactly what you want.

best regards Thorsten Trenz

St=E9phane Goujet schrieb:

is

ludes

PCB

well they dont provide and user communication over the USB controller, but sure it would be possible, maybe not with the max transfer rate, but still possible

Antti

St=E9phane Goujet schrieb:

I did not say the FIFO port is connected - I said that the USB controller can be used for user defined protocols, also transferring user data

Antti

Thanks. I see. If I built an transceiver board myself, it'd have to be for USB 1.1 with a basic transceiver chip such as the MAX3346E which I'd run at low speed. I have managed to solder 14-pin TSSOP packages to prototype boards in the past, although I'd rather find a DIP chip if I could.

--
Dave Farrance

Ah yes. Thanks. That's the most promising so far. The Trendz TE-XC3S micromodule with TE-0143 carrier board and TE-0149 programmer comes to $173. I can live with a parallel-port programmer, although I rather have USB or serial-port programming.

--
Dave Farrance

Whoops, I mangled your name, Herr Trenz. Sorry about that.

--
Dave Farrance

Dave

Have a look at this module

in conjunction with our Raggedstone1 product. Basically the module is a voltage limiter(bus switch) on the USB lines leaving the logic to be implemented in the FPGA.

-- John Adair Enterpoint Ltd. - Home of Raggedstone1. The Low Cost Spartan-3 Board.

Antti a écrit :

OK, well, it is a pity (for me, I suppose those pins are more useful somewhere else for other people). I guess I have to look towards boards like Orange Tree Tech.'s ZestSC1, Opal Kelly's XEM3001 or Cesys' USB3FPGA. Only problem is that they are 2 or 3 or 4 times the price as Xilinx' S3E starter kit without all the functions this starter kit includes.

Goodbye, Stéphane.

Thanks. I'm a bit confused by the "shop" section. The RS1-400 and the RS1-1500 both have the same description including:

"FPGA: XilinxTM SpartanTM-3 FPGA, in FG456 package, fitted to the board. Available with XC3S400 fitted."

I presume that it should be the XC3S1500 in the latter case.

Also the wording is ambiguous. I presume that "Available with XC3S400 fitted" does mean that the FPGA *is* fitted for the that price, rather than being an option?

--
Dave Farrance