A Xilinx Spartan 3A chip can be programmed by using UrJTAG's pld command by fixing some issues related to old instructions. In this example, a Prometheus FPGA board is used. It is composed of a XC3S50A chip which can be configured by using FT-232H circuit's MPSSE mode. To start with, …
Tag Archives: UrJTAG
Using UrJTAG and OpenOCD to Write to a BSCAN Primitive on Xilinx Spatan 3 FPGAs
There are no tutorials explaining the use of BSCAN_SPARTAN3 primitive on Xilinx FPGAs. It's a very useful feature, which allows to literally establish a PC-to-FPGA link over a JTAG adapter. This primitive is already used in projects such as xc3sprog and Papilio-Loader to program SPI flash memory over JTAG.
BSCAN_SPARTAN3 …
Reading Device DNA on Spartan 3A chip
Among Spartan-3 generation of FPGAs only families 3A and 3AN have unique device identifier (device DNAs). DNA is a factory programmed unique 57-bit long number, whose the most significant bit is "1" and the second most significant bit is "0":
The Spartan 3A chip (xc3s50a) should be unconfigured (not loaded …
USERCODE Register in Xilinx Spartan 3E
The following setup was used for Basys2 board with an external FTDI-based JTAG adapter. Read the previous posts to get familiar with setup.
Specifying USERCODE
User code register provides bit stream identification and a type of version control. To write a user code into a bit stream in Xilinx ISE, …
Boundary Scan Operations with UrJTAG on Basys2 Development Board
UrJTAG is a good low-level tool to learn boundary scan operations and play with EXTEST, INTEST instructions. Assuming that the Basys2 board is connected to a UM232H-based JTAG adapter as described in the previous article, we can test EXTEST and INTEST instructions. Note that depending on package (VQ100, CP132, …
Connecting External FTDI-Based JTAG Adapter to Basys2 FPGA Board
I had a task to check whether OpenOCD can program a Spartan 3 series FPGA by means of FTDI-MPSSE-based JTAG adapter. There wasn't any chip available in my hands, so I had to experiment with existing hardware. I decided to solder the FTDI-based adapter to a Basys2 development board. The …