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JTAG without parallel port

I have a Xilinx Spartan 3 board, and comes only with the parallel JTAG cable. My big problem is that any of my computers have parallel port, and I can't program it. As I work with a desktop and a laptop I had to discard buying a pci parallel card. I know that they have an usb and serial cable, but are very expensive and the shipping too. I'd like to know if there is any alternative, such as a homemade serial or usb cable, or if any of those parallel-to-usb adapters work with this.

Thanks

Reply to
Rafa
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A USB-to-Parallel Card with a FTDI Chip and a good driver should do the job...

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

Institut fuer Kernphysik  Schlossgartenstrasse 9  64289 Darmstadt
--------- Tel. 06151 162516 -------- Fax. 06151 164321 ----------
Reply to
Uwe Bonnes

Hi Rafa, For your laptop, you can buy PCMCIA to Parallel port from Quatech

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It's retail price is $129, perhaps you can buy it cheaper from Ebay. I use this device myself. I have mixed results with it. Sometimes it works right away, sometimes I have to retry it multiple times to make it works. You may have a better luck. USB to Parallel port adapter will NOT work! The software that is used to download the bitstream must see the parallel port at low hardware level. SPP100 works at low hardware level and fool the system to think that it has a real parallel port. The USB to Parallel port is for high level software emulation only. It only works for device like printer that has device driver. Your FPGA board doesn't have device driver. USB to Parallel port converter will NOT work with most FPGA board.

Hendra

Reply to
Hendra

Digilent have a low cost USB cable listed. Can not confirm if it is good or bad as I have yet to play with one.

John Adair Enterpoint Ltd. - Home of low cost FPGA Development Board MINI-CAN.

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Reply to
John Adair

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