Forum Glitch-- Vivaddo Support Spartan 3E?

[LariSan]

--- this is a post for @WalkThrough...

 

Hello -

Frustrating.

The Forums portion of the Digilent site allows me to log in... that seems to work. However, I cannot post a note to the FPGA section.

At first I thought this was a "validation" problem... and so selected "send revalidation email".

My email address is "walkingthrough@yahoo.com" . I've kept an eye on the Inbox, watched the Spam folder, and while your Forums software says it has sent validation email, nothing shows up.

Fortunately, it still lets me log in.

================

I have an old Basys board and am taking a grad level course in Verilog/VHDL: University of Massachusetts at Lowell, ECE 16.562. Dr. Kelly is the professor.

The course does not have a lab or hardware component... but I'd like to use the Basys board to tinker. Xilinx currently offers version of their ISE WebPack and I have that loaded for the integrated access to the simulator. Apparently, though, 14.7 won't code for the Spartan 3 FPGA (old chip).

I've downloaded 10.1 (purportedly the last version of ISE that would program this device) and my next step is to either buy or build the programming cable. Probably buy... because doing it through a USB port isn't a casual endeavor.

Pointers would be appreciated. I've wanted to take this Verilog course for years and finally found the time. That there's no hardware involved... well, hopefully your pointers will fix that for me.

[LariSan]

First, we are so sorry you are getting glitches on the forums! These are very new and we are trying to work out all the kinks. Thank you for subscribing and asking! We are tracking the issue down ASAP and making sure that it's fixed.

 

our support team has already answered this:

 

 

--- from our support team---


And there are in fact two issues here:
1. Xilinx ISE looks to support Spartan 3E family, so you can use Xilinx tools latest version to program your board. It is Vivado that is not supporting this family (it is not supporting also the newer Spartan 6 family).

2. In order to to program your Basys board you can use any USB-JTAG programming cable fromhttps://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Catalog.cfm?NavPath=2,395&Cat=5 except JTAG-HS3.
I recommend you to use JTAG-HS2.
https://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,395,1052&Prod=JTAG-HS2

If you will use older version of Xilinx tools it might be needed to install Digilent Plugin for Xilinx Tools https://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,66,768&Prod=DIGILENT-PLUGIN

 

[WalkingThrough]

1. Thank you for enabling me for posts to the Forums.  Tapping the wealth of knowledge out there can only work to the good.

 

2. Spotted the setting for the Spartan 3E series in ISE 14.7 .  Thank you for pointing that out.  So all is (so far) good with the software end of things.

 

3. JTAG-HS2 + Digilent plug-in with ISE 14.7 sounds like a plan to me.

 

I've always wanted to get into this level of electronics.  Looking forward to my fair share of race conditions, figuring out how to get clock closure, and syntax errors.  Am using the Ciletti text in a class; nothing quite like having hardware to go with the software and to go with learning.

 

Fun stuff.

 

Thanks.

[LariSan]

No problem, just wish that you were able to post the first time around with no issue.

We are still working out the bugs on our forum (it's only 3 weeks old), so thank you for posting it to our support team.

 

I'm excited that you are enjoying learning about this!

We have some learn tutorials that may be helpful for a refresher http://learn.digilentinc.com

Please make sure to share what you have done! I personally enjoy getting to see the creativity from new users!

 

-Welcome to our community!