Re: newbie seeking help to use xilinx spart-3a starter kit
- From: Frank Buss <fb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 22:29:34 +0100
Fei Liu wrote:
Ok here comes my question: how do I interact with the board? I'd imagine
I could use minicom with a null serial connection with the board. But in
the case of usb connection, what softwares should I use to see the boot
up and menu of the board?
Maybe that's different with your Spartan 3A starter kit, but with my
Spartan 3E starter kit, there was only one USB connector, which is
connected to a CPLD, which just converts the USB data to JTAG for
programming the FPGA and the flash. There is no boot up menu (but there is
a FPGA configuration flashed for board demo), it's all hardware and you
have to write your own. You write VHDL code, which then controls the board,
same as if you would use lots of logic gates.
The hardware configuration (synthezied VHDL programs) is programmed via the
USB interface and then you can use minicom to connect to your hardware, if
you have written some VHDL program for the serial port, like this one:
http://www.frank-buss.de/vhdl/spartan3e.html
(note: this is old code, the serial port program is a bit unsafe, at least
it didn't work stable for a Cyclone, unless I added a latch for the RX
input and today I would write it less complicated, Whishbone doesn't make
sense for such simple and synchronous designs with one clock).
I've seen some hacks for the CPLD to use the USB port on the board for
other things, but Xilinx didn't described the internals, like many other
informations are not published by FPGA vendors, maybe because of trade
rivalry, which is really cumbersome for developers like me, who wants to
understand and use it down to the lowest level, if necessary and maybe for
other tasks than the vendors have thougt for which it can be used and with
other tools than the vendor synthesize tools.
--
Frank Buss, fb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de
.
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