hello all,
I've built my own Xilinx parallel cable as described here:
My version is here:
Unfortunately, it does not work even after electrical checks. After lauching "cable autodetect" (I've tried 2 ways: programmer connected to a custom minimalist xc9536 board and programmer only connect to power, the cable length should not be important to detect to programmer(?) ):
"Connecting to cable (Parallel Port - LPT1). Checking cable driver. Driver windrvr6.sys version = 6.2.2.2. LPT base address = 0378h. ECP base address = 0778h. Cable connection failed."
Since it does not work in Impact software (available in webpack 7.1i under Win2000) I have a couple of questions to ask:
- should the parallel cable be detected by Impact when it is only connected to power (JTAG pins are left unconnected) or is it absolutely necessary to connect it to a CPLD/FPGA?
- my parallel port settings under BIOS and Win2K are "ECP DMA:3" is this correct (EPP needed?)?
- Impact allows to manually select the cable, is this a parallel cable III or IV?
- in this schematics, could 74HC125 be replaced by 74LS125?
- how is it possible to test the cable without FPGA/CPLD hardware?
Best regards.
PS: I don't want to buy any programmer neither build a programmer with different schematics since it should work, I would like to learn from my hardware building errors.