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Nexys 3 Getting Started

timothyheider

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timothyheider Newbie

timothyheider

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I just got a Nexys 3 board and I'm very excited to get started working with it!  Seems like a wonderful device.

 

Sadly I have not gotten off to a good start due to software and documentation problems.

 

I am very familiar with digital logic and electronics and have been a professional software developer for over 20 years.  I have not worked with an FPGA before but I understand what it is.

 

The board powers up and self tests connected to USB on my Windows 7 device.  It's not clear which software I'm supposed to use to configure and test it.  My understanding from reading the docs is that the board is programmed with a demo.bit that can interact with the PC application.

 

When I connect to the Adept 2 software (the latest stable version on the web site) it recognizes the board is connected but says "Unable to get configuration" etc. I was never able to get the tabs to open on the software.  

 

I'm a little stuck.  Any pointers on how I can move forward with working with the device?  Are other people having a different experience?  Took it out of the box and everything worked great?  Is this a Windows issue?

 

What tools are people using to actually download designs to the board?  It seems like you have to get something from Xylinx to do actual circuit design but I'm not clear about that either.

 

Thanks for any help you can provide!

 

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attila Prolific Poster

attila

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I would suggest to install Windows using BootCamp because the USB part of VirtualBox is not too reliable.
 
 
I want first to clarify the Adept structure:
 - Adept Runtime: low level device support package, containing library, firmware and other files
   supported: Windows, Linux i386/amd64, will be published soon: RaspberryPI, OS-X
 - Adept SDK: files needed for creating custom application based on Adept Runtime
 - Adept Utilities: dadutil and djtgcfg
 - Adept Application: GUI application only for Windows
 
To program the FPGA (from Windows or Linux) you can use:
 - iMpact from Xilinx ISE Design Suite which contains and installs Adept Runtime automatically. 
 - djtgcfg from Adept Utilities
 
 
To install Adept Runtime for Linux download the RPM or DEB packages for your architecture X86 or X64
 - choose DEB for: Debian, Ubuntu... RPM for: RedHat, Fedora...
 - to find out the architecture of your Linux use command "uname -m"  
   choose X86 for i386 and X64 for: x86_64, amd64
 
Installation depends on system, click, double click, click right and choose install... or use command line:
 - DEB: sudo dpkg -i digilent.adept.runtime-2.16.1.arch.deb
 - RPM: sudo yum install digilent.adept.runtime-2.16.1.arch.rpm
 
Download, extract and install Adept Utilities with archive manager or with the following command:
tar -zxvf digilent.adept.utilities_2.1.1-arch.tar.gz
cd digilent.adept.utilities_2.1.1-arch

sudo bash install.sh

 

Enumerate the attached devices using:

dadutil enum

djtgcfg enum

 

Initialize the scan chain:

djtgcfg -d Nexys3 init

 

Program the FPGA:

djtgcfg -d Nexys3 -i 0 prog -f myproject.bit

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Commanderfranz Prolific Poster

Commanderfranz

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I would suggest going through the project getting started with FPGA. It outlines all of the software you need to design and program your board as well as the processes involved.

 

It's likely that the bit file that you are using was not configured for the Nexys 3, a step which happens in the Xilinx ISE Design Software. You can get a free version of the Xilinx ISE Webpack here. 

 

Once you've generated the bit file in ISE, then you can program the board with Adept. 

 

I hope this helps!

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timothyheider Newbie

timothyheider

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Thanks for your reply.  I will install Xilinx ISE and generate a BIT file as my next step.  Thanks for the instructional link.

 

I have Adept installed on Ubuntu desktop now but I'm not able to run it so far.

 

When I execute the main file in bin64 it seems to do nothing:

 

theider@theider:~/digilent.adept.runtime_2.16.1-x86_64$ ./bin64/dftdrvdtch 
theider@theider:~/digilent.adept.runtime_2.16.1-x86_64$ 
 
I am running the latest Ubuntu desktop 14.
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timothyheider Newbie

timothyheider

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I wish I'd had your great reply 3 days ago.  That's not to say I'm not having a little fun figuring things out.  :-)  Thanks for taking the time to post it.  

 

Hey Digilent: take the above exactly as it is, print it out and stick it in the box when you send a board to non-academic customers that do not have the benefit of a professor telling them exactly the steps to do something with your board.  The Nexys manual explains the board interfaces well (e.g. three detailed pages on how to make a VGA interface) but nothing that says "hey newbie: here's how you get an LED to light up from an AND gate" step by step regardless of platform.

 

Awesome product but it suffers from too much documentation on the web some of which is outdated and confusing.  I think a quick start sheet and a clear architecture overview (like the above offers) would help get the ball rolling.

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ho0pla Member

ho0pla

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On 12/5/2014 at 1:05 PM, attila said:
I would suggest to install Windows using BootCamp because the USB part of VirtualBox is not too reliable.
 
 
I want first to clarify the Adept structure:
 - Adept Runtime: low level device support package, containing library, firmware and other files
   supported: Windows, Linux i386/amd64, will be published soon: RaspberryPI, OS-X
 - Adept SDK: files needed for creating custom application based on Adept Runtime
 - Adept Utilities: dadutil and djtgcfg
 - Adept Application: GUI application only for Windows
 
To program the FPGA (from Windows or Linux) you can use:
 - iMpact from Xilinx ISE Design Suite which contains and installs Adept Runtime automatically. 
 - djtgcfg from Adept Utilities
 
 
To install Adept Runtime for Linux download the RPM or DEB packages for your architecture X86 or X64
 - choose DEB for: Debian, Ubuntu... RPM for: RedHat, Fedora...
 - to find out the architecture of your Linux use command "uname -m"  
   choose X86 for i386 and X64 for: x86_64, amd64
 
Installation depends on system, click, double click, click right and choose install... or use command line:
 - DEB: sudo dpkg -i digilent.adept.runtime-2.16.1.arch.deb
 - RPM: sudo yum install digilent.adept.runtime-2.16.1.arch.rpm
 
Download, extract and install Adept Utilities with archive manager or with the following command:
tar -zxvf digilent.adept.utilities_2.1.1-arch.tar.gz
cd digilent.adept.utilities_2.1.1-arch

sudo bash install.sh

 

Enumerate the attached devices using:

dadutil enum

djtgcfg enum

 

Initialize the scan chain:

djtgcfg -d Nexys3 init

 

Program the FPGA:

djtgcfg -d Nexys3 -i 0 prog -f myproject.bit

I am having the exact same problem as timothyheider. We have the exact same setup with the ISE Tools running in a Virtual Box.

After having installed the Adept Utilities + Runtime like you said, I try to run "djtgcfg enum" but get "No devices found" back.

I have tried to install the cable drivers using the install_drivers script found within the Xilinx cable driver documentation, but it doesn't seem to have done anything.

Please advise...

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