Does Adept work with the Spartan-3E Starter Board?

[xerics]

Just getting into FPGA, total newbie to all of this.  I installed Adept but it's not seeing my Spartan-3E Starter Board.  I also have ISE 14.7 installed.  Running Windows 7 64bit.  This is what I see in the status window.

===== Digilent Adept  =====
  Adept System  Rev 2.7
  Adept Runtime Rev 2.19
  Adept Application Rev 2.4.2
Copyright © 2010

I'm wanting to be able to run Adept because I'd like to be able to re-install the startup program that the board comes with (that has the "spartan 3 starter kit" message on the display, and you can use the rotary knob or buttons to turn on LED's).  I have the .bit file for it and I'm thinking that Adept is the simplest way I can send it to the board again? 

I don't think I can run Impact because the starter kit files don't have any project file with them and I don't know how to get ISE to see just the .bit file. 

Thanks for any help.

[jpeyron]

Hi @xerics,

The chip on this board does not contain the Digilent programming circuit that Adept uses, so you will only be able to program the board using the Xilinx tools, specifically iMPACT within ISE. Here is a forum thread that discusses this.  Here and here are some documentation that should help you with iMPACT.

thank you,

Jon

[xerics]

OK, I'll check those out.

Another newbie question, I've been looking at the jumpers some more, for the mode pins M0:M1:M2, if I just jumper M1 for JTAG, does that mean that I can program the FPGA directly from ISE and it won't overwrite the Platform Flash PROM that has the starter program in it?  As I noticed when I removed M0 and M2 that the board didn't run the starter program so I'm guessing that's the case.  I just want to start experimenting with small programs and don't care if I lose them as I can always send them over again, but don't want to lose that starter program for now.

Thanks

Eric

[jpeyron]

Hi @xerics,

On page 27 of the reference manual here. It shows how to configure the mode jumper. You should have it set to JTAG.

thank you,

Jon