xilinx or digilent

They're both the same thing. And quite nice to work with!

-- Ed

what i mean is the package. for example, xilinx starter kit includes JTAG cable , power adaptor, etc. are they includede in the digilent board too?

thank you CMOS

It's the exact same thing. Same cable, same software, same power supply... same box. And, they're both the same price.

I bought one from the Xilinx website. It came with the "Digilent" board, "Digilent" Jtag cable and Xilinx Webpack on CD. I went to the Digilent website and to get their USB module and other programming stuff.

-- Ed

yes, if you buy it from xilinx, you will get all of it. but if you buy it from digilent, you will not get the evaluation software. im not sure whether im getting the other parts like JTAG cable and power adaptor if i buy it from digilent. I prefer to buy it from digilent, because i want to have a better device with atleast 400K gates. Im not sure whether the starter kit is available with a better device.

I got my starter kit from Digilent because I wanted one of their other boards too. It came with wall wart and programming cable. I pulled the software of the net and didn't pay any attention to whatever they shipped.

It's a great little board, especially at the price.

One thing to keep in mind. There aren't many ground pins on the expansion connectors. Don't expect them to work if you need to flap lots of pins at high speed.

Earlier you asked aboue the USB card. Usually, Digilent has lots of info for their boards available on their web. Not much available for this one. Or maybe I just didn't look in the right place. I'd call/email before depending on it.

The blurb that is available has the Cypress chip number. Have you looked up the specs on that chip? Can it do what you want? Are you prepared to write code for it and/or will their code do what you need?

I'd guess that the USB chip is programmed and/or wired so that it can download the FPGA over the USB cable if you plug it into the right connector, but it doesn't say that so maybe that's not what they did. (Seems like a neat thing to brag about so I'm assuming they would say so if they had it working.)

Ah.. Here is the info I was expecting:

Yup, says you can download and talk to a PC.

Xilinx are bundling a trial version of EDK - doesn't say anything about software on the Digilent page.

I have one of these USB adapters from Digilent. It is a programmable Cypress USB controller that can be used to configure the FPGA or serial PROM. However, they do not provide the source to the code or binary file required to program this device yourself.... too bad as I would have loved to have incorporated this into my final design.

-- Ed

many thanks for all the ppl.

yes, they dont provide much infomation/documentation on USB 2 module. The more info button brings up a .pdf, which is wrong ( which is a doc file for a USB1.1 device). Digilent confirmed me that it points to a wrong place. but the problem im having is why cant they fix it and give some useful infomation about that board. anyway, since im in the real need for USB2, i bought that board together with the starter board ( 400K, im dissappointed i could not order a 1000K one bcuz it is out of stock for 2-4 weeks). the Cypress controller it has supports high speed data rate. But im not sure what kind of interface from host side and form hardware side is provided with this board. If i have to write a device driver to use it properly OR if i have to read the full documentation of cypress USB controller to use it, it is almost useless for me. i think they should atleast provide VHDL code to controll the cypress controller and some dll to run in windows, which has a simple enough interface for programmers.

Thank you. CMOS

many thanks for all the ppl.

yes, they dont provide much infomation/documentation on USB 2 module. The more info button brings up a .pdf, which is wrong ( which is a doc file for a USB1.1 device). Digilent confirmed me that it points to a wrong place. but the problem im having is why cant they fix it and give some useful infomation about that board. anyway, since im in the real need for USB2, i bought that board together with the starter board ( 400K, im dissappointed i could not order a 1000K one bcuz it is out of stock for 2-4 weeks). the Cypress controller it has supports high speed data rate. But im not sure what kind of interface from host side and form hardware side is provided with this board. If i have to write a device driver to use it properly OR if i have to read the full documentation of cypress USB controller to use it, it is almost useless for me. i think they should atleast provide VHDL code to controll the cypress controller and some dll to run in windows, which has a simple enough interface for programmers.

Thank you. CMOS

If you buy it from Xilinx you get a time-limited EDK trial with it. I bought mine before they started including that. :-(

If you buy it from Digilent, you can pay a little extra to get an XC3S400 or XC3S1000 instead of the XC3S200. (They seem to be out of stock of the XC3S1000 version at the moment.)

Eric