Parallel Cable IV under Ubuntu Linux 10.04

[Tim Wescott]

Is there any way to do this?

Is there any way to do this without standing on my head?

The last time I used ISE this was a Windows box. But I've evolved into
a Higher Life Form*, and now I don't do Windows if I can help it**. I'd
sidestep the whole problem by getting a USB JTAG cable and running
Windows in a VirtualBox -- but Xilinx is out of USB cables right now,
and Avnet is quoting a 6-week lead time.

Xilinx -- perhaps wisely -- doesn't support many versions of Linux.

So unless I can find someone in the Portland, Oregon area that has a USB
JTAG cable for sale, rent, or beg, I need to either make what I have
work under Ubuntu, I need to resurrect my dual-bootishness, or I need to
run a Xilinx-approved Linux flavor. Ick, ick, and ick.

* Or at least a highly irritating Linux Geek

** And I seem to have lost the recipe on my dual-boot system, 'cause
it's been a long long time since I needed to.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

 

[Brian Drummond]

On Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:10:37 -0700, Tim Wescott <tim@seemywebsite.com> wrote:

Is there any way to do this?

Is there any way to do this without standing on my head?

It doesn't quite involve standing on your head (at least in OpenSuse 11, I
haven't tried it in Ubuntu) but it does involve finding a "usb-driver" library
that also supports the parallel port. (The Xilinx-supported "libusb" is a
different beast)

I got it from
http://rmdir.de/~michael/xilinx/

It uses the "ppdev" driver to communicate the parport, and only works at 200kHz
(Par Cable 3 compatibility mode) but once I got ot going I haven't had any
trouble with it.

Better than the official Xilinx approach using Jungo Windriver, which won't even
build on any post-2008 kernel, as far as I can tell...

- Brian

 

[Symon]

On 7/21/2010 11:10 PM, Tim Wescott wrote:

but Xilinx is out of USB cables right now,
and Avnet is quoting a 6-week lead time.


I see several on our favourite tat bazaar.

EBay...

e.g.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Xilinx-Platform-Cable-USB-Programmer-FPGA-JTAG-DHL-/190412257236?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c557477d4

Genuine HK knockoffs.

 

[Tim Wescott]

On 07/21/2010 04:10 PM, Brian Drummond wrote:

On Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:10:37 -0700, Tim Wescott<tim@seemywebsite.com> wrote:

Is there any way to do this?

Is there any way to do this without standing on my head?


It doesn't quite involve standing on your head (at least in OpenSuse 11, I
haven't tried it in Ubuntu) but it does involve finding a "usb-driver" library
that also supports the parallel port. (The Xilinx-supported "libusb" is a
different beast)

I had to tilt it over 45 degrees or so, though. I don't mind building
my own software -- at least I know who to blame when things go bad --
but life can be a pain when the build process goes

* Download from some website
* type "make"
* see a flood of errors...

Fortunately in this case it was "type make, fiddle a very little bit,
see impact work".

I got it from
http://rmdir.de/~michael/xilinx/

It uses the "ppdev" driver to communicate the parport, and only works at 200kHz
(Par Cable 3 compatibility mode) but once I got ot going I haven't had any
trouble with it.

Better than the official Xilinx approach using Jungo Windriver, which won't even
build on any post-2008 kernel, as far as I can tell...

Thank you, thank you for that link. The software limits the speed of
the cable to that of the Parallel Cable III, but I'm just doing a small
corner of a large design* so I'm not going to be impeded much by cable
speed.

And I'm happy that Xilinx made their tools Linux compatible, too. I
know I'm swimming upstream to use Linux, but I just like it better than
Windows for all sorts of reasons.

* My corner is a motion controller to spin a motor synchronously with
some other processes going on in the system. I'm really a control
systems guy who writes decent software, but in a pinch I can write ugly
HDL code that gets the job done. Since my customer is indeed in a
pinch, that's what I'm doing.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

 

[Brian Drummond]

On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:58:35 -0700, Tim Wescott <tim@seemywebsite.com> wrote:

On 07/21/2010 04:10 PM, Brian Drummond wrote:
On Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:10:37 -0700, Tim Wescott<tim@seemywebsite.com> wrote:

Is there any way to do this without standing on my head?

but life can be a pain when the build process goes

* Download from some website
* type "make"
* see a flood of errors...

I hear you...

Fortunately in this case it was "type make, fiddle a very little bit,
see impact work".

Glad to hear it. In my case it was more like "download half a dozen, get
distracted for six months**, build them all, see flood of errors, until I found
the one that worked...

** happens to me a lot, nowadays...

* My corner is a motion controller to spin a motor synchronously with
some other processes going on in the system.

Cool. I may have to quiz you later on synchronous motor controllers. Not for the
day job though...

- Brian

 

[Bob Smith]

Tim Wescott wrote:

Is there any way to do this?
Is there any way to do this without standing on my head?

I wanted to give a tutorial on how to use ISE on Linux
but hah so many problems with JTAG that I gave up. Instead
I designed an FPGA board that doesn't need JTAG for code
download; it needs 'cat'. I eventually did give the tutorial
and it went well.

My board is here: http://www.demandperipherals.com and a
HOWTO on using ISE with Makefiles under Linux is here:
http://www.demandperipherals.com/docs.html#howto

The BaseBoard is far from the only one that uses USB/serial
for download but be careful as some boards use a proprietary
USB driver even though it is just a serial port.

HTH
Bob Smith

 

[Uwe Bonnes]

Tim Wescott <tim@seemywebsite.com> wrote:

Is there any way to do this?

Give the Sourceforge-SVN version of xc3sprog a try.

--
Uwe Bonnes bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik Schlossgartenstrasse 9 64289 Darmstadt
--------- Tel. 06151 162516 -------- Fax. 06151 164321 ----------