problem with impact

Hello friends
I have a fpga spartan-3 development board that only has a parallel port for JTAG.
I used a parallel to usb cable and connected it to my laptop. When i connect the board to laptop, Windows says the drivers are installed successfully BUT when i lunch IMPACT and try 'initial chain' does not show my board.
Is this because of parallel to usb cable?
any help is appreciated

 

[rickman]

On 11/26/2015 2:09 AM, s.mohsen.shahabi@gmail.com wrote:

Hello friends
I have a fpga spartan-3 development board that only has a parallel port for JTAG.
I used a parallel to usb cable and connected it to my laptop. When i connect the board to laptop, Windows says the drivers are installed successfully BUT when i lunch IMPACT and try 'initial chain' does not show my board.
Is this because of parallel to usb cable?
any help is appreciated

I don't have any first hand experience with these cables, but I have
read often that they don't work very well with software that bit bangs
the parallel port for JTAG support. Seems the virtual drivers get in
the way and make it nearly impossible to control timing of the pins.

USB to serial cables work a lot better. There are a number of low cost
JTAG cables out there based on the FTDI serial port USB devices I
believe. I see them on eBay, but have not tried any.

--

Rick