About Arty S7-50 board

[mopplayer]

Hi,

I have two Arty S7-50 REV.B boards from my lab's ancient instrument box.
It seems not to work properly when flushing bitstream, one of them the FPGA chip is hot.

ERROR: [Labtools 27-3165] End of startup status: LOW
ERROR: [Common 17-39] 'program_hw_devices' failed due to earlier errors.

Might be a power circuit issue?
My question is, can I check the S/N number to check there is a warranty?

If not, I could drop or scrap it.

Edited April 8, 2022 by mopplayer

[JColvin]

Hi @mopplayer,

The serial number won't be of too much help since (as far as I understand) that would let us know when the board was manufactured but not when it was sold and I do not know of any known issues with the Arty S7 in general. 

Are both boards providing the two errors, or just the one where the FPGA chip is hot? The chip being hot in general is concerning since that would indicate a power problem; the FPGAs (nor power regulators for that matter) should not be hot to the touch while the board is not configured or otherwise idle. Even once the board is configured, unless you are running a complex program that actively uses most of the FPGA, it should still not be distinctly hot to the touch. 

What do you mean by flushing the bitstream? Are you configuring the board from Vivado? Also, does setting the jumper JP1 "on" show the board operating from a program stored in its flash memory?  

I can walk you through checking the capacitors around the power regulator to help determine the root issue, though if the FPGA is getting hot from just being connected, it would be unwise to be subjecting it to further potential damage. Are you able to see any visible damage on the ICs? 

For reference, Digilent's warrant is limited to one year from date of purchase, https://digilent.com/shop/shipping-returns/#warranty. If the boards came from the described "ancient instrument box" they may be out of warranty since Rev E versions of the board seemed to be released sometime in 2017, but I don't have insight as to when the Rev B boards stopped shipping.  

Thanks,
JColvin

[mopplayer]

Hi, JColvin

Sorry for late reporting.

 

Please check this thread:

https://support.xilinx.com/s/question/0D52E000076thTfSAI/arty-s750-boards

Update stituations:

Hot one: When I reconnect by USB or DC plug today, there is no longer showing POWER GOOD LED. I only tested 1.0V across capacitors, the others are all ~ 0V.

Not hot one:  
1) When connected to JP1, DONE/POWER GOOD LED/LD0/LD1 still blink.
2) When not connected to JP1, POWER GOOD illuminates. But during the programing process, the DONE/POWER GOOD LED will blink one time, and then get disconnected and reconnected JTAG-USB. On the other hand, there are some cracks on top of IC14, which the IC is broken. But this should not affect FPGA about stanger behavior.

So I conclude the FPGA is damaged.
Could I need to do other testing?

Edited April 20, 2022 by mopplayer

[mopplayer]

On 4/12/2022 at 8:32 AM, JColvin said:

Hi @mopplayer,

The serial number won't be of too much help since (as far as I understand) that would let us know when the board was manufactured but not when it was sold and I do not know of any known issues with the Arty S7 in general. 

Are both boards providing the two errors, or just the one where the FPGA chip is hot? The chip being hot in general is concerning since that would indicate a power problem; the FPGAs (nor power regulators for that matter) should not be hot to the touch while the board is not configured or otherwise idle. Even once the board is configured, unless you are running a complex program that actively uses most of the FPGA, it should still not be distinctly hot to the touch. 

What do you mean by flushing the bitstream? Are you configuring the board from Vivado? Also, does setting the jumper JP1 "on" show the board operating from a program stored in its flash memory?  

I can walk you through checking the capacitors around the power regulator to help determine the root issue, though if the FPGA is getting hot from just being connected, it would be unwise to be subjecting it to further potential damage. Are you able to see any visible damage on the ICs? 

For reference, Digilent's warrant is limited to one year from date of purchase, https://digilent.com/shop/shipping-returns/#warranty. If the boards came from the described "ancient instrument box" they may be out of warranty since Rev E versions of the board seemed to be released sometime in 2017, but I don't have insight as to when the Rev B boards stopped shipping.  

Thanks,
JColvin

Hi, JColvin

Sorry for late reporting.

 

Please check this thread:

https://support.xilinx.com/s/question/0D52E000076thTfSAI/arty-s750-boards

Update stituations:

Hot one: When I reconnect by USB or DC plug today, there is no longer showing POWER GOOD LED. I only tested 1.0V across capacitors, the others are all ~ 0V.

Not hot one:  
1) When connected to JP1, DONE/POWER GOOD LED/LD0/LD1 still blink.
2) When not connected to JP1, POWER GOOD illuminates. But during the programing process, the DONE/POWER GOOD LED will blink one time, and then get disconnected and reconnected JTAG-USB. On the other hand, there are some cracks on top of IC14, which the IC is broken. But this should not affect FPGA about stanger behavior.

So I conclude the FPGA is damaged.
Could I need to do other testing?

Edited April 20, 2022 by mopplayer

[mopplayer]

On 4/12/2022 at 8:32 AM, JColvin said:

Hi @mopplayer,

The serial number won't be of too much help since (as far as I understand) that would let us know when the board was manufactured but not when it was sold and I do not know of any known issues with the Arty S7 in general. 

Are both boards providing the two errors, or just the one where the FPGA chip is hot? The chip being hot in general is concerning since that would indicate a power problem; the FPGAs (nor power regulators for that matter) should not be hot to the touch while the board is not configured or otherwise idle. Even once the board is configured, unless you are running a complex program that actively uses most of the FPGA, it should still not be distinctly hot to the touch. 

What do you mean by flushing the bitstream? Are you configuring the board from Vivado? Also, does setting the jumper JP1 "on" show the board operating from a program stored in its flash memory?  

I can walk you through checking the capacitors around the power regulator to help determine the root issue, though if the FPGA is getting hot from just being connected, it would be unwise to be subjecting it to further potential damage. Are you able to see any visible damage on the ICs? 

For reference, Digilent's warrant is limited to one year from date of purchase, https://digilent.com/shop/shipping-returns/#warranty. If the boards came from the described "ancient instrument box" they may be out of warranty since Rev E versions of the board seemed to be released sometime in 2017, but I don't have insight as to when the Rev B boards stopped shipping.  

Thanks,
JColvin

Hi,

Is there any further process?

[JColvin]

Hi @mopplayer,

I apologize, I thought I had replied earlier (and had a number of things written up), evidently this was not the case.

For the hot board, there is almost certainly something damaged, likely the power regulator, which you can safely request an RMA for.

For the cold/not hot board, if the LEDs and buttons application is booting up, then the FPGA is working correctly because it is getting configured with the bitstream that is stored on flash memory. I do agree that IC14 having some sort of damage is not relevant to FPGA functionality, though there is some intended markings on that particular IC, that should say something to the effect of (vertical pipe and underlines included):
 

Quote

|R30A

My guess would be that there is a connectivity issue of some kind. Is your OS able to detect the board? I'm guessing so since Vivado is successfully reporting the end of startup status low.

As a sanity check, I've attached the bitstream for the GPIO demo for the Arty S7-50 (with the RGB LED lights running, the regular green LEDs being controlled by the switches, and data being sent out to a connected serial terminal (like Tera Term) when one of the 4 black buttons are pressed. Can you see if you can successfully program your device with it (either with the Vivado Hardware Manager or some other tool that can connect and load bitstreams like Digilent's Adept, https://digilent.com/reference/software/adept/start) and that data is successfully sent out over the serial terminal?

Thanks,
JColvin

GPIO_demo.bit