FPGA Boards and New Macs?

[Brent]

For a few semesters we have had our students buy their own BASYS-3 boards so they can do their lab work even if they get quarantined.

This semester, for the first time, we have two students whose BASYS-3 boards don't even light up (as in no power) when plugged into a USB-C port on a new Mac.  It seems to be 2020 Macbooks that have the problem.  Note, other things like thumb drives work just fine when plugged into those same ports.

Looking for ideas.  Have tried resetting SMC as well as PRAM.   One student reported success only when going through a USB hub.  

But, baffled why the port would not supply power to a BASYS-3 board.

Thanks

p.s. Also, we are having success programming Digilent FPGAs from a Mac using a tool called openocd...  So, our Mac students can do their design work using Citrix on our University servers and then are able to download the bitstream into their board at home on their Mac.

[JColvin]

Hi @Brent,

My initial guess (I haven't seen evidence of this, pure conjecture only) would be that the newer Macbooks are expecting some sort start up communication with the device which the Basys 3 is not set up to do.

Alternatively, it could be that these newer Macbooks do not have the D2XX drivers from FTDI and for whatever reason the D3XX drivers (if those are the ones that are installed anyways), so I would probably recommend trying to install those drivers: https://ftdichip.com/drivers/d2xx-drivers/. I do not know if this will solve the problem though since the drivers would presumably only enable communication, not limit current from the host computer.

Beyond that, I would recommend some other basic troubleshooting (which I imagine was already done and just not mentioned) of different cables and if the boards are able to be powered on a different computer/port.

Thanks,
JColvin