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Programming the JTAG flash in circuit

We have a Xilinx Flash (XCF series I believe) that we would like to program in circuit from a microcontroller in order to support field reconfigurability. This flash has a JTAG backend. We were thinking about using the GPIO ports on a microcontroller to wiggle the JTAG lines and load the new files that way. Problem is we don't know much about the upper protocol involved in JTAG and the documentation seems hazy. Has anyone done something similar? Does software exist that will do this for us?

Thanks, WP

Reply to
wpiman
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We've done something similar. Xilinx has a utility called "playxsvf" that can be probably modified to fit your environment. I changed it to work with a dedicated h/w shifter used to send the JTAGS data stream without requiring our host processor to do the low level bit banging.

Look through the Xilinx app notes and you should be able to find the zip archive that has the source code you'll need.

Good luck!

John Providenza

Reply to
johnp

Another software package is JDrive from Xilinx. I was able to modify it to work with my system. JDrive uses the IEEE1532 standard. This allows the programming algorithm, which is contained in a seperate file, to change while not effecting the program data.

Reply to
dscolson

Why bother about a Configurator. If you connect a std flash or SPI dataflash (AT45) to a fast enough controller (AT91:-) you will be cheaper off..

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Ulf Samuelsson
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Ulf Samuelsson

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