legacy Xilinx software

Xilinx's software, in my experience, does not play well with others. I've taken to running even my later versions in VirtualBox VMs. This way whatever nonsensical fights FlexLM wants to have with other programs can get trapped in individual sandboxes.

So it seems by that logic, you should be able to set up a VM running a

Yes, FlexLM, even on Windows, was a messy and very poorly documented system. I did get it to work after migrating a very old Foundation

I really HATE to have all these separate VMs running. I have one VM for Windows CAD software, but have moved everything I can to native Linux.

Anyway, after some more digging, it seems Ise WebPack 12.2 explicitly works on 64-bit systems and supports the CPLDs and Spartan 3A. So, I think I'm going to go with that, assuming I can get it to install.

Many of the older products have documentation/release notes links that don't work, so it was pretty difficult to tell what was and wasn't supported by various older versions. But, the link for 12.2 did work.

Thanks,

Jon

Am 11.11.2013 23:40, schrieb Jon Elson:

I run 10.1 on a virtual XP machine and it works, including the USB download cable. Also my old Modelsim 6, Sigasi, and the current Altium designer. Vivado Webpack works, too, but I installed it only for curiousity, not for real work.

One nice thing is that I can move the virtual machine from the workstation to my Dell Precision laptop and I have everything I need.

I even exported the virtual machine from Virtual Box and then imported it into VMware Workstation, and it simply ran ( 2 weeks ago). Access to shared folders seems to be slow in my case on VMware, some friends say it's not for their systems. It looks like the XP network interface runs into timeouts when searching hosts, I'll sort that out when I have some time.

USB and graphics integration is better on VMware, at least for my taste.

My machines run Xubuntu, maybe MINT soon.

regards, Gerhard

If you're willing to drop the Spartan 2, 2e, Virtex 2 and older parts, you can go right up to the latest ISE (not Vivado) which is 14.7 IIRC. However if you're not interested in the 7-series, I think 13.4 is a very stable and usable platform. It also has some very usable improvements to ISIM, if you don't have another simulator at hand. Basically the part support changed going from

I still have a very old system running 32-bit XP, so I can't comment on the virtual machine. I also run Foundation 4.1i on the same machine, so altogether there are quite a few versions of ISE installed. Lately I've been using 13.4 for all of my Virtex 5 and Spartan 6 work, and just getting into some 7-series projects with 14.6

From what I can tell, Vivado is not ready for prime time and I don't have the will to beta test it. If I do use it, it will only be because they stop adding new support for

How about XC9500XL and CoolRunner II CPLD's? The Xilinx download page doesn't have working release notes for most of the older Ise versions.

OK, sounds good!

Well, I tried 12.2, and it installed just fine, but got an error message while trying to read the license file. All the things on the main page that seem like they connect to your browser (Firefox in my case) get the same message about GLIBCXX(specific version) not found. But, it seemed to run anyway (maybe 30-day trial license) so I tried synthesizing a simple vhdl file, and it crashed with a

Then, I copied over my 10.1 Webpack install using sftp, and it almost works! I did a complete compile of that same VHDL, worked fine (and was quite a bit faster than my old computer). But, Impact wouldn't even start from the GUI, complained about "Cable operation is not supported" on the 64-bit platform. I'll have to tinker with this a bit and see if I can come up with a version of Impact that works. I don't need it to be integrated with the GUI either.

I also didn't try isim, and that may need me to generate a new license.

Thanks,

Jon

The CPLD's are also in the latest versions of ISE, however there have not been any improvements other than simulation that would warrant upgrading.

There is a license manager you can access from the GUI under Help. That would tell you if you're using an eval license. Also I would double check whether 12.2 actually supports your OS. I was under the impression that OS support was enhanced in much more recent releases like 14.x On the other hand, that may only affect the newer Windows versions (Vista, and 7). I don't think Windows 8 is supported yet.

Impact was never very good with 64 bits. On the other hand, you don't really need old versions of Impact. The newest Impact should still support the old devices, as well as old bit files.

As I said, ISIM got a lot better in the 13.x releases. For one thing they added the Re-Launch button to work around the issue that you can't recompile and restart from within ISIM.

Right, but none of these buttons do anything. There is a "License manager" button, and an "obtain license" button, these do nothing. I think it is because it uses your default browser, and there is a library mismatch that prevents the interface to the browser from running.

LINUX! It seems other than some library problems, none of the Linux versions actually care about the OS version.

Yes, that's what I'm thinking, but I'd have to get a new version of Impact installed. I see some "lab" versions of ise that probably have impact and a few other things in them that ought to do it.

OK, I couldn't get the release notes for 13.x to work from the download web page. But, maybe I should try to download 13!

Thanks,

Jon

The license manager should be standalone. Try starting it from the command line with:

xlcm

or

xlcm -manage

If you can't find the executable, that could explain the fact that the buttons don't work. On my WinXP system, the executable is in ISE_DS/common/bin/nt under the installation.

For what it's worth - we've NEVER had any luck with any of the flex-lm wizards like xlcm. Cadence/Modelsim/Xilinx they just don't work. Xilinx xlcm, just crashes. The others all report an invalid license, when in fact they're valid and work just fine.

Now, on the other hand setting up the license server on a linux box, and just controlling the licensing by hand isn't any trouble at all. Took a few hours of reading the flex-lm docs 6 or 7 years ago. Now, just copy any *.lic into appropriate directory (minor edits to fix the daemon pathname), and run "lmutil lmreread". Done. Hasn't failed us in all that time. All the end users need to do is make sure that env variable: LM_LICENSE_FILE = 1717@license_server

And tell them NOT to run the license manager gui. That one variable (and single lmgrd) dishes out all licenses (Xilinx/Modelsim/Cadence/ others...)

Regards,

Mark

No, it didn't work, either, as it seems it also uses your browser as a front end. But, I just copied my text license file over, and it worked.

So, a BIG thanks, Gabor, for the suggestion to try 13.4! It seems to work fine except for Impact. So, I brought in a VHDL file and did both the implementation steps as well as ran an isim simulation on my test bench, and these all worked. Isim has changed enough that I had to search for the familiar buttons, but I got it to work after a couple of minutes. Hmm, default time units are now ps! Leads to insanely large numbers on the screen.

The install complained that drivers could not be installed, probably you need to compile them separately. I seem to recall having to do this on 10.1, also. I did find it had built a kernel module install_windrver6, but I could not get modprobe to install it. I suspect I can take this up with Xilinx, as 13.4 must still be supported.

Thanks again,

Jon

Well, a little bit of an update. I couldn't get xilprog to work, and can't contact the author. I then did get xc3sprog to run and correctly ID a CPLD. So, I'm guessing it could program one, too, but I haven't tried that. But, accessing the parallel port and talking to the JTAG device through a DLC5 (parallel cable III) was way farther than I had gotten with anything else.

I think Impact will work if I have the kernel source installed before I try to compile the cable drivers. Also, one big trick I found online is to rename the whole digilent/adept directory. Something in there causes Impact to just terminate when it gets to the cable setup. Since I don't have a Digilent device, that shouldn't affect me.

Jon

I have no issues running the command line 10.1 tools on Win7pro 64 bit. I'v e no use for any of the GUI components, so I can't vouch for that. I don't install though. I keep a zip file that is the installation folder of the 10 .1 tools from long ago. I mount that as a drive using a zip mount utility. I point my $XILINX environment variable to the mounted drive, and I can run the command line tools just fine. I preserve a number of the old versions of tools this way to support various old designs from time to time. I just carry those zip files forward to new machines. Very easy to migrate.

Webpack won't let you install 10.1 on a 64-bit OS (I think either Win or Linux) due to US export restrictions at the time. I was able to simply copy the whole file tree over and synthesis, etc. worked, but the Ise simulator didn't. Probably related to C compiler version.

OK, so then you did about the same.

Ise Webpack 13.4 does install fine on 64-bit Linux, and works except for the download cable driver. I have a workaround with xc3sprog, but think I know how to make Impact work, eventually. I still use their GUI, but admit it could be better. But, for the relatively simple projects I do, it seems to work OK.

Jon