Best JTAG solution for Spartan 6?

[Tretee]

Hi,

Long time ago I did any FPGA work and would need some advice on how to proceed.

(I do have an Arty 7 board as well but that one does not have the IO required to do the project I have in mind) 

I got a spartan 6 board (this one)

https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/QMTECH-Xilinx-FPGA-Spartan6-Spartan-6-Core-Board-XC6SLX16-DDR3-256MB/4486047_1000006703110.html?spm=2114.12010608.0.0.b5363599vk8t2e

and a debug "cable" from Digilent (jtag-smt2) 

Installed most recent ISE 14.7 for win10 on my main PC. Failed because the Virtualbox did not recognize the USB cable) same PC with Digilent Adept will find the cable.

Installed ISE 14.7 on a Linux Ubuntu 16.04 LTS laptop. After having Googled the topic of Impact jtag detection problems and trying all that was proposed I gave up. Linux detects the cable but Impact refuses to. 

Installed most recent ISE 14.7 for win10 on my work Dell precision Laptop. Jtag cable detection works great. Jtag-smt2 was detected by impact automatically and Virtualbox detects the cable and auto mounts it. 

Here is where the new problem starts. QMtech provides a few project with dirts simple LED toggling. So I used those to test FPGA and SPI FLASH programing. After a lot of testing back and forth where pretty much everything failed. I finally managed to load the bit file after lowering the jtag clock to 1MHz. The code started and  I could observed the faster LED toggling speed that I just changed in the RTL code. With the lower jtag speed I can program the FPGA sometimes. Success is very sporadic but mostly it will fail by either Impact reporting a failed programing or it reports success but no code is running on the FPGA.

Test 2. Install Adept on the laptop but in Windows. 

Load the same bit file that sometimes work when loaded with Impact e.g. the bit file functionality has been verified.

this is what I get 

Initializing Scan Chain...
Found device ID: 44002093
Initialization Complete.
   Device 1: XC6SLX16
Set Config file for XC6SLX16:  "C:\Users\nxa14670\Desktop\Test01-led\led_top.bit"
Preparing to program XC6SLX16...
Programming...
Verifying programming of device...
Programming Successful.  

But the code on the FPGA never starts. (or more accurately the LED's are off and the expected LED toggling never starts.)

What would you recommend?

Buy another Digilent cable? I have seen the JTAG-HS1 and JTAG-USB for reasonable money.

 

BR

Davor

 

[xc6lx45]

Hi,

the cheapest option is probably to buy a generic JTAG capable FTDI board such as this one (example for the "official" board, there are cheaper ones). However, this will not be supported by Xilinx tools and you need a 3rd party utility such as xc3sprog.

For integration into Vivado, check the Digilent JTAG modules.

A word of warning, I've had issues with cheap boards that were most likely PCB defects. Getting a new interface may not solve the issue for you.

 

[Tretee]

Thanks,

I guess it makes sense to also try a different board and not blame the jtag probe by default.