xilinx free Sample Pack info now also on Xilinx own webpages

I couldn't see how to "buy" it.

Silica sells this kit for $69:

It's a lot better than the free kit, and not much more expensive.

Leon

"Leon" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...

yes that Avnet is VERY good price for S3e kit, also includes USB chip, etc.

this is the problem with the Xilinx "FREE" sample pack, you can not buy it all, you may get it for free from your distributor, but that doesnt seem to be valid in Europe :(

Nice.... but how to order it?

------------------------------ Jaime Andrés Aranguren Cardona snipped-for-privacy@sanjaac.com SanJaaC Electronics Soluciones en DSP

"Antti Lukats" escribió en el mensaje news:dqiu52$ull$00$ snipped-for-privacy@news.t-online.com...

The Spartan-3E Sample Kit Board is general available at no charge to qualified customers. The boards are avaialable directly from Xilinx sales partners. Information about the board and the accessory pack is available on the Xilinx web site.

Please bear in mind that this is a free introductory board. I affectionately call it the "Blinky Board" because it has somewhat limited capabilities. It makes one heck of an LED blinker. It also demonstrates that a Spartan-3E FPGA can configure from standard commodity parallel NOR Flash. Furthermore, it demonstrates the Spartan-3E FPGA's MutliBoot feature, which allows you to dynamically switch between two different configuration images stored in Flash. However, if you plan on developing anything more complex, I would highly recommend purchasing one of the more advanced development boards.

Direct Links to the Xilinx Sales Partners:

Avnet:

NuHorizons:

Silica in Europe isn't currently showing the boards. I'll find out why.

Frequent comp.arch.fpga contributor Antti Lukats created a free, friendly, easy-to-use programmer for the Spartan-3E Sample Kit board. You can directly program the FPGA or the Intel StrataFlash PROM via a Parallel Cable III or Digilent JTAG3 cable (I haven't tried it with Parallel Cable IV yet). Antti's software also graphically displays the state of the LEDs on the computer display, monitored over the FPGA's JTAG port. Nice work!

--------------------------------- Steven K. Knapp Applications Manager, Xilinx Inc. General Products Division Spartan-3/-3E FPGAs

--------------------------------- The Spartan(tm)-3 Generation: The World's Lowest-Cost FPGAs.

"Steve Knapp (Xilinx Spartan-3 Generation FPGAs)" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

Hi Steve,

thanks for nice words - our software defenetly works with Cable IV (only in Cable III mode) current version may have trouble if Cable IV was opened and closed in Cable IV mode with impact, we know the fix, but the drivers with current release may not have the ability to switch the Parallel port away from high speed mode. So the workaround is to open Cable IV in impact force Cable III mode and close impact.

all our JTAG software is based on our own hardware abstraction API that was developed for PIC programming on DOS 3.22 machines, so we are able to add support for additional cables without the need to change our application software by releasing new drivers.

we are actually also able to support impact CableServer in remote mode so that will bring full support of all Xilinx supported cables instantly. I know how todo it, but its not included yet in our current release.

the 'pin monitoring' uses boundary scan in 'sample' mode so it is fully non-intrusuve monitoring,

also included is frequency measurement of the on-board clock IC, several other tools are planned to be released.

in last (to be uploaded version) support to 'scan' i2c bus is added, I2C may be connected to any pins of the FPGA, the SDA SCL mapping is translated from BSDL file

how

I haven't tried your programming S/W yet, maybe this weekend.

BTW, my hope in ordering that cheap Digilent USB cable was to someday accomplish the following:

NSLU2 ($90 USD) + Digilent USB JTAG ($38 USD) = Network Download Cable

But I haven't looked at the Digilent USB driver situation yet.

Brian

Does the multiboot feature work with serial flash memory, or only with parallel?

I want to have a protected configuration image in case a user-initiated update fails, so the user can switch a jumper to get the write-protected image. For a serial flash, I thought I would have to add a CPLD to modify one bit of the address from the FPGA to the serial flash.

Eric

the multi boot is only for parallel flash

Antti