Haven't been able to find one of those either... The problem seems to be that iMPACT/Chipscope don't recognize the "virtual" LPT-ports those port replicators usually provide... There are parallel-port-controllers for Cardbus/PCMCIA you can plug in to get a "real" parallel port on your laptop, but I haven't tried any of those, so I can't comment on how good they are. The problem is the chipset: to get decent programming speeds, the parallel port should support 2MHz or 5MHz operation. All PCI-plugin-cards I've seen in stores lately use the same cheap controller-chip that doesn't support operation above 1MHz, so the cable will work in compatibility mode and drop down to 200kHz.
Instead, I suggest buying a Platform USB cable. Gives you much less trouble in the long run, and works well on every modern machine. ... if you can afford it, that is. I think it's $150, so about double what the parallel cable costs. Plus, I'm not sure if it works under Linux, but there have been discussions about that here lately.
Users of Amontec Chameleon POD ( generic JTAG interface dongle ) buy Quatech SPP-100 PCMCIA for resolving this. You may remap any parallel port address to the SPP-100. Work just nice !
Let me know if you do not find Quatech reseller. We have a large stock of SPP-100!
( Or buy a new Xilinx USB cables! )
Best regards, Laurent
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___________________________ Unlocking the power of JTAG
My latest experience is that it works in Linux, but only if you start impact in Windows first to initialize the firmware in the programming cable. If I don't boot Windows first, impact in Linux wants to upgrade the CPLD configuration which according to other posts on this newsgroup will break the programming cable.
To be honest, at this point I prefer to use XC3SProg
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in Linux. Sure, it is rather slow since it uses the parallel cable IV in cable III mode, but it feels much more stable in Linux than impact does.
What I would really like something that can write Xilinx .ACE files. The impact from Foundation 6.2 is terribly slow, and from Webpack8.1 is pretty flakey. (It wrote ace files everywhere but where I wanted them.)
--
Steve Williams "The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
steve at icarus.com But I have promises to keep,
I'll agree that the interface is not particularly intuitive, but the main limitation I see is that the ace files must always be placed two directories deep. I've used Impact from ISE7.1 on Linux regularly, and had no problems at all. I haven't used the 8.1 version much, but a quick test seems to indicate that it works the same.
Arrgg... I just noticed that the ipf project files have switched from plain text in version 7.1 to binary in version 8.1.
Hey Xilinx, please take a poll of your paying customers. We don't want binary project files!
When I wave my hands over it just right, it does. But for a few days I found it writing jtr/jtr/jtr.ace files in the most surprising places, including in jtr/jtr/jtr/jtr/jtr/jtr.ace, $HOME/jtr/jtr/jtr.ace, $(CWD)/jtr/jtr/jtr.ace, and a few other places I haven't thought of. I'm still occasionally finding jtr.ace files here and there.
And then there's that.
--
Steve Williams "The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
steve at icarus.com But I have promises to keep,
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