Zedboard Revision F

[Kiran Nevaskar]

Hello

Recently I have purchased Zedboard Revision F. I am not able to find schematic or XDC files for this revision on https://reference.digilentinc.com/reference/programmable-logic/zedboard/start

How to get supporting material for Rev F board? Chipscope Pro Voucher is missing as well.

 

Thanks.

Regards,

Kiran

[JColvin]

Hi @Kiran Nevaskar,

The Chipscope Pro voucher is not included with the Zedboard or at least is not listed anywhere on the Digilent store page, https://store.digilentinc.com/zedboard-zynq-7000-arm-fpga-soc-development-board/ or Avnet's product listing page. It looks like this is a holdover from the official hardware user guide from Avnet (which still lists this incorrect detail based on the latest hardware user guide that is now hosted on Element14). My understanding is that there is not any voucher added specifically for the Zedboard as it is able to be used with the free Vivado WebPACK edition.

I asked one of our design engineers about the Rev F and they let me know there should not be any changes that should affect customer development. I posted the schematic to the Zedboard Resource Center which also lists changes that were made. The master .xdc will not have changed for this revision of the board.

Thanks,
JColvin

 

[Kiran Nevaskar]

On 5/4/2021 at 12:18 AM, JColvin said:

Hi @Kiran Nevaskar,

The Chipscope Pro voucher is not included with the Zedboard or at least is not listed anywhere on the Digilent store page, https://store.digilentinc.com/zedboard-zynq-7000-arm-fpga-soc-development-board/ or Avnet's product listing page. It looks like this is a holdover from the official hardware user guide from Avnet (which still lists this incorrect detail based on the latest hardware user guide that is now hosted on Element14). My understanding is that there is not any voucher added specifically for the Zedboard as it is able to be used with the free Vivado WebPACK edition.

I asked one of our design engineers about the Rev F and they let me know there should not be any changes that should affect customer development. I posted the schematic to the Zedboard Resource Center which also lists changes that were made. The master .xdc will not have changed for this revision of the board.

Thanks,
JColvin

 

Thanks JColvin for clarifying and updating page with revised schematic.

I bought board from Element14 Elemen14 Zynq Zedboard Page

They have listed Chipscope Pro voucher so I was confused.

Regards,

Kiran

[zygot]

Chipscope is an ISE tool add-on. Vivado has its own ILA and VIO capabilities built in. For Win10 users I suggest sticking with Vivado. Since the Zedboard is the 'old man' ** among FPGA platforms, the good news is that you can use earlier, and easier to install, versions of Vivado. The latest versions of Vivado probably aren't the best choice for older boards and devices anyway.

** Nothing wrong with being old... if you are good at what you do and this applies to the venerable Zedboard. Just be aware of the board version changes relative to tools and using code examples in the wild.

Edited May 5, 2021 by zygot

[Kiran Nevaskar]

2 hours ago, zygot said:

Chipscope is an ISE tool add-on. Vivado has its own ILA and VIO capabilities built in. For Win10 users I suggest sticking with Vivado. Since the Zedboard is the 'old man' ** among FPGA platforms, the good news is that you can use earlier, and easier to install, versions of Vivado. The latest versions of Vivado probably aren't the best choice for older boards and devices anyway.

** Nothing wrong with being old... if you are good at what you do and this applies to the venerable Zedboard. Just be aware of the board version changes relative to tools and using code examples in the wild.

Thanks for reply. Getting Vivado installed on Windows is one of the changeling task. I was referring to ZynQ Book Tutorials to get started but they were using Vivado 2014. 2014 is too old so decided to install 2016. But installer was stuck with Visual C++ Redistributable.  I tried to repair and many other things but no luck so using 2018. I am little bit old school guy. Used ISE 9, 10 kind of tools then moved to Altera's Advanced FPGA and jumping back to Vivado after long time.

Zedboard has got updated but looks like Master XDC is behind. E.g. LED LD9 for PS on D5 (MIO7) is listed in document and schematic but on github XDC file it is missing or I am referring to wrong page. Zedboard XDC.

Edited May 5, 2021 by Kiran Nevaskar

[zygot]

Vivado 2018 or 2019.1 should be fine. Vivado 2019.2 breaks the SDK and IP format. For a device like the Z7020 Vivado 2018 is great.

The original Zedboard was a collaboration of a number of companies but recently Digilent seems to be making and supporting them. There are a limited set of hardware changes from the current board to the most recent. I suggest tracking them all down and creating a text list available for your development. If you select a board as the target in Vivado it's not always clear what version is being selected.

In general schematics are the 'gold standard' for figuring out pin location assignments. Schematics are usually the only way to determine IO Bank Vccio and possible IOSTANDARD selection. Be careful with published 'master xdc' files, even from the vendors. Digilent has had errors in a few of them for years. When connecting hardware always check the schematic. Make sure that the schematic represents the version of your board and that your constraints pin assignments match the schematic. You only have to do this for projects using pins that are different from tried and true older projects.

Avnet still has a website with old projects, material and user discussions of the Zedboard but you have to be careful of tool version changes.

As one 'old school' guy to another, to the extent that those habits force you to do your due diligence and prep work, that's a good thing.

Edited May 5, 2021 by zygot

[JColvin]

Hello,

For what it's worth, Digilent did not create nor maintains the User Guide or the XDC file for the Zedboard; both were created and maintained by Avnet (the xdc file hosted on Avnet's website doesn't include this either), so I'm not able to comment on why this pin is not included. I'm also not sure where you see the LD-MIO/VMODE0 in the document (presuming you mean User Guide by document) or at least I'm not able to find it there.

As for support or Zedboard, years ago I was told that the support for Zedboard would be done by the community on Zedboard.org. However, that website no longer exists, so I no longer know what the defined support path for Zedboard is. Naturally, Digilent will support the Digilent-made example projects hosted on it's Resource Center, https://reference.digilentinc.com/reference/programmable-logic/zedboard/start#example_projects, and do some hardware debugging, though we do not have any direct experience with using the reference designs created by Avnet (https://www.avnet.com/wps/portal/us/products/avnet-boards/avnet-board-families/zedboard/zedboard-board-family). Following through the Avnet pages, it seems the main Zedbaord Hardware Design Forum is now hosted element14: https://www.element14.com/community/community/designcenter/zedboardcommunity/zedboard-forums/zedboard-hardware-design-forum?ICID=avnet-boards.

I'll reach out to our distributor person at Digilent to see if the element14 Zedboard page you linked can get a request to be updated, though I don't know when that might occur or the steps involved.

Thanks,
JColvin

 

[Engineer_Dude]

On 5/3/2021 at 10:08 AM, Kiran Nevaskar said:

Hello

Recently I have purchased Zedboard Revision F. I am not able to find schematic or XDC files for this revision on https://reference.digilentinc.com/reference/programmable-logic/zedboard/start

How to get supporting material for Rev F board? Chipscope Pro Voucher is missing as well.

 

Thanks.

Regards,

Kiran

Great question!  I'm also looking for the Revision F schematic.  If you find it, could you add where you found it?

[JColvin]

Hi @Engineer_Dude,

The Revision F schematic should be available in its Resource Center under Documentation: https://digilent.com/reference/programmable-logic/zedboard/start#documentation.

Thanks,
JColvin