djiang

[djiang]

I just bought my ZedBoard (REV F). Following ZedBoard Getting Started Guide (Version 7.0), I connected J14 to a Windows 7 64-bit PC with USB cable.  Inspecting the device manager from PC, nothing is added to the COM port.  The device manager is showing Cypress-USB2UART-Ver1.0G as "other element".   I am unable to install Cypress driver to it. What is wrong with me? Need help.

[JColvin]

Hi @djiang,

Normally Avnet (or maybe element14) would be good contacts for troubleshooting their guide materials, though it also doesn't help that the zedboard.org website seems to be down.

I don't have Windows 7 or a Rev F of the Zedboard, but I'm guessing you do not see a line item of "USB to UART Adapter" in the Universal Serial Bus controllers dropdown in the Windows Device Manager? Otherwise what I probably attempt to do would be see if you uninstall or otherwise update the driver that's apparently listed as 'other element' in your system.

Thanks,
JColvin

[djiang]

I bought the ZedBoard from element 14.  In a few days as I was searching for related information, I got to Avnet, then www.zedboard.com, final to Digilent. The four resources make me confused.

By the way another stupid question.  Two USB cables were shipped with the ZedBoard. They are used to connect the ZedBoard to PC.  One of the USB cable is Male Micro-B to Female Standard-A.  The micro_B is to connect J14 or J17, the other end is supposed to connect PC.  All USB jacks on PC are female, I have to find an unusual male-to-male USB cable to make the connection. Is the vender provided a wrong USB cable?

I made the concetion from J14 to an Windows 10 PC and the device manager is shown in the attached Figure. Before connection no port(COM LPT) on the device manager, but the connection triggered the the port.  I am lookig for the Cypress driver for WIN 10, please help to find the right one.

Edited July 29, 2021 by djiang

[JColvin]

Hi @djiang,

I took a look at the Zedboard kit list on the Digilent store and can confirm that this Male Micro-B to Female Standard-A USB adapter is included by default, though I have no idea why it is included because as you mentioned you need a non-typical male type A to male type A USB cable to use this adapter. Maybe it was included so people could more easily use a flash drive with the USB OTG connector.

If the COM port (COM3 as shown in your screenshot) appears after connecting J14 to your host computer, then that's a good sign that the serial communication is working as intended, though here are a number of links I've seen on this same topic: link1, link2, link3, with instructions available here.

To confirm general board functionality, if you load the Out of Box demo (available for download here) and put the contents of within the sd_image folder on a SD card and set the Zedboard to boot from SD, do you not get activity on a serial terminal set to 115200 baud and an image on the on-board OLED (it will take a bit for the Linux image preset on the SD card to fully boot up)?

Thanks,
JColvin

[djiang]

As I connected my ZedBoard (Rev F), my Windows 10 (20H2) PC automatically created a COM3.  The serial communication is working fine without the hassle of driver problem.  I followed up with the Getting Started Guide.pdf (version 1.3).  Linux is booting up OK.  Running all 7 Demo's smoothly.  The Demo 6 requires an USB thumb drive connected to J13.  This is where the Male Micro-B to Female Standard-A cable to be used.

Connection to Windows 7 (sp1) still doesn't working.  Windows 7 has a physical COM1.  I tried to install Cypress driver, expecting to create another virtual com port, so far no success.  I found an answer by Kevin Keryk to Jacob Guttman dated 2015-7-15.  He had downloaded CypressDriverInstaller_0.exe and solved the problem. Now it is 2021, there is no longer CypressDriverInstaller_0.exe on Cypress website.  How can I follow Kevin Keryk’s solution?

Edited August 13, 2021 by djiang

[JColvin]

Hi @djiang,

I don't have much other advice for you; I don't have a copy of this driver and certainly don't have any sway over what Cypress hosts on their website. Windows 7 also had all support ended for it from Microsoft in January 2020 and as per corporate policy from NI, Digilent does not have any Windows 7 machines in use.

If the Zedboard is working as expected and intended on your Windows 10 machine, then we can be reasonably certain that the Zedboard does not have any hardware issues regarding serial communication.

Thanks,
JColvin

[djiang]

For connection of ZedBoard to Windows 7 PC, yesterday I did try to install Cypress driver but didn't see any success.  I submitted a reply and go to bed, today morning I turned on my Windows 7 PC and ZedBoard.  A new COM port showing up on Device Manager to my big surprize (see attached). 

Blank.docx Blank1.docx

Edited August 14, 2021 by djiang

[JColvin]

I'm glad to see that the board is being recognized now, even though I do not know why it is working now but was not working previously.

Thanks,
JColvin