S3e starter kits available

It's been front-(wb)page news for 2 days and it's *still* not at the online store. If it's available, what's the proper way to get hold of one? Do I need to contact my local sales guy for a development board?

We're a big account but I don't want to bother with a PO in this "belt tightening" era so I'll just buy the darned thing myself and use it at work and home. Best way to do this is the online store. Where else

*should* I go?

strange, when I registered the 25USD off from the Spartan3e starterkit price I was provided to online order link directly, but I cancelled out. but it looked like the online ordering was available

Antti

I was sure hoping this would be available before the end of the year. Money is in the budget for this year, but now it looks like I'll have to go through the budget process again after the first of the year. I wish Xilinx understood the end of year money cycle and would go ahead and let you order.

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Joe Chisolm
Phoenix Arizona USA

Hi Joe,

you are right - Xilinx kind of promised that "December is the month" !

and oh I know very good that the "year end money" is something that needs to be used, and its really pain if some item that was scheduled to be ordered before the end of the year can not be ordered.

you could try there

but I am afraid it may as well not lead to the actual online entry form :(

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Antti Lukats
http://www.xilant.com

[snip]

Thanks for the link. You are right, the starter kit link just takes you to the online store and you cannot order there.

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Joe Chisolm
Phoenix Arizona USA

ok, sorry,

I landed somewhere where it told me that I need to complete the order if I proceed, so I cancelled at that point as I did not want to order, so I did not know if there was actual order entry or not. Sorry - as time is running out so it seems that there is nothing more todo.

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Antti Lukats
http://www.xilant.com

FYI the Xilinx store has been updated with a Feb 2006 date for the s3e starter kit. Ironically the Xilinx front page has a link to 'Buy Your Full-featured Spartan-3E Starter Kit Today'. Oops.

cheers, aar> "Joe Chisolm" schrieb im Newsbeitrag

schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

Hi Aaron,

give them a brake - and read what they write

Xilinx frontpage:

"Spartan3 logo" - not 3E!

"All Spartan3e in Production" - I dont know about 1200 and 1600 but I have s3e 100, 250 and 500 here, so those at least are real

so the front page has been carefully edited :)

dont try to read what is not there, there is no "buy s3e kit now", that text isnt there. hum the development board page says s3e starterkit is available Q405 !!! possible Xilinx webmaster is on vaccation (or fired?)

and notice that online store doesnt say that the S3e starterkit will be available Feb 2005, it only says 'targetted' meaning : nothing at all

Antti

seems to be the only vendor selling and shipping s3e500 based boards today, well at a bit higher price than the starterkit

Top right under "Tech Spotlight" "Buy Your Full-featured Spartan-3E Starter Kit Today"

The big graphic block has the Spartan-3 test with 3e production quote.

My grumbling is loud. I didn't get any toys for Christmas this year.

I'm wondering if a Spartan-4 starter kit (if ever there will be such a thing) would best be produced by one of us newsgroup folks rather than waiting for the dragging feet. Like many others, I can deal with ECNs on the first boards out of the chute so I'm lost with respect to the delay.

I hate Quartus, but don't want to wait for the S3E kit anymore... Anyone have experience with this guy?

"Pierre" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

no hands on experience but I would recommend the TREX C1

for 149USD its pretty much loaded, also for that board the design guru of the "C1 reconfigurable" computer is providing amstrad emulation with lots of games working from the CF card, etc..

both the DE and C1 board have on board byteblaster that is also useable for customer applications for USB comms so that pretty nice.

digilent s3e starterkit includes platform usb cable, but that is only useable for config not for user API access

as said I dont have the TREX board so I am only commenting on what I have seen or heard.

Antti

I received the sample pack in the mail yesterday (from Avnet/US); the $25 discount offer on the case says it's valid until the end of January, but if you click the link it says: "The introductory pricing period for the Spartan-3E Kit is now over"

Over before it started, eh...

The other funny thing was, when I took the board out of the case there was a strategically placed piece of electrical tape on the board whose only purpose seemed to be to obscure the "Linear Technology" logo on the silkscreen.

The card has pads for four of the new Digilent 6 pin I/O headers, plus one of those %#@$&!! forty pin, one ground I/O headers.

have fun, Brian

we are (having fun)

Brian would you be interested to beta-test a standalone utility to configure the sample Pack?

we are currently working on the auto-fix of bitstream startup clock, etc, and and having some problems with auto-CRC in the compressed bitstreams, but the main functions already work, so if you have a parallel cable III or compatible you can use the utility.

I assume the EDK/XPS/XMD flow for Flash programming also works but it is really not and easy way to reflash the board.

I can send you discount reigstration code for the s3e Starterkit discount, well I dont know if that is valid either (but I am not going to use it anyway)

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6pin headers, actually there are 5 of them, the JP1 has same pinout but only 1 I/O and 3 Input only

the 40 pin header, funny 1 ground, and 5 unconnected pins !!

Antti

Avnet is not selling Linear ! Tthey sell power supply solutions from TI, so I am not surprised. Maybe they did also take out the Linear Tech's ad booklet from the DVD box !?

Antti

Yes, and replaced it with a TI booklet, see pictures at:

Digilent now has a accessory page offering a power supply and parallel JTAG cable for the starter board:

I ordered one of those low cost ($37.50 USD) Digilent USB JTAG cables to try out, along with a couple of the

6 pin I/O cards.

Oddly, there doesn't seem to be any documentation about the sample pack board at Xilinx, only on the Digilent pages as you pointed out earlier, which now also has the user's guide:

I could try it out briefly, as long as there are no exploding voltage regulators involved :)

Also, the S3E sample packs are shipping with ES parts, which have a slightly different pinout and errata than the first production stepping. Have you seen any evidence of the JTAG startup problems discussed in the -ES errata ?

On mine, JP1 is the JTAG, and JP2 brings out the serial boot mode SPI pins, something I want to test with an external serial config prom before doing my own S3E board.

Thanks for the offer, but I'm sure Xilinx has plenty of time to fix their webpage with the discount offer before the kits start shipping, so I should (eventually) be able to register mine.

Maybe they should have printed "Offer valid for 30 days after S3E Starter Kit online ordering commences" on the DVD case.

I think they pinned it out to be compatible with the older Digilent boards; but since they stuffed it with a different connector than the old boards anyway (straight male instead of right angle female), I'd rather have seen something like two twenty pin headers, each with one row grounded.

Brian

I would say LT could win in court. I assume LT sponsored the sample pack and the booklet printing, so replacing it with ir-relavant stuff from the competition really isnt nice move from Avnet.

unfortunatly I am not supporting this cable (as I dont have it)

most of the info about Sample Pack at digilient website appeared within 2 hours from my email - their reply to me was: "be careful when throw rock in an glass house" !

I possible wasnt so easy on them in my first email but it really triggered some results, also documentation for other products appeared at digilent website a few hours later.

I defenetly hope so - my crash happened during some plug in plug out of the power and jtag cables, its defenetly not triggered by software

no, I havent seen those startup problems, but there are other undocumented erratic behaviour, namly if you program the flash with the bitstream location at close at the configuration start address then you can not reprogram again using impact in JTAG mode. nice isnt it? The configuration state machine gets confused as it sees the signature from parallel flash during the jtag configuration sequence.

my software has a special fix for this to be overcome. (by placing the flash in read status mode and those preventing the FPGA to see the signature from flash)

for impact you need to set jumper in the middle position of the mode select and powercycle

No, I dont think your board is different of what I have and you can not use JP2 for serial config, its not wired to proper pins, I also wanted to test out serial config and ended up doing a quick proto:

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Antti Lukats
http://www.xilant.com

Oops, you're right; the Rev C. board pictures in the user's guide label those connector pins "MOSI, MISO" etc so I thought they'd brought out the serial boot pins. The schematic also labels that connector as "Alternate Programming", but I hadn't checked the FPGA pin connections.

Brian

hm, I only have seen rev D or D.1 schematics, and no MISO/MOSI reference the JP2 is labelled as alternative programming, but that just means nothing

first beta of standalone programming and config utility is now downloadable (only Xilinx Cable III support drivers are included)

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Antti Lukats
http://www.xilant.com

Just My 2 cents why I think there is such a big hold up (granted this might be way off base).

They arent going to ship the S3E starter kit with anything less then

8.1 Foundation Eval and EDK 8.1 (this is info gleaned from S3E Starter webpage at Xilinx). If you ask me the hold up right now is that EDK isn't ready (my belief). They released 8.1 ISE a while ago, and if 8.1 EDK was done, I think they would be shipping the starter kits. (Originally they wanted to ship starter Q4 2005, but neither the ISE or EDK was done, and I dont know how manufacturing was shaping up at that point at the fabs).

Just my opinion as always.

-Joel