[Fpga-synth] ISE 9.2i

[Scott Gravenhorst]

"The making of synthesizers in FPGAs." wrote:
>
>On Aug 11, 2007, at 5:57 PM, Scott Gravenhorst wrote:
>
>> I got it, installed it and now when I compile a small project, the 
>> boundary
>> scan chain won't identify the components in the chain causing the 
>> download
>> to the FPGA to fail.
>>
>> Another larger project crashes ISE...
>>
>> Any clues?
>>
>
>Not enumerating the JTAG chain sounds like a serious issue. Are all 
>your BSD files in the right place?

Yes, in fact, the output from Impact says that it can't find one of the BSD files. 
Yet, when I look with Explorer, it is there.

>Hopefully you didn't blow away your previous install. Does Impact from 
>that version still work?

Yes.  And in fact, I thought that the way I did the install was a problem.  When 9.2i
started installing it said there was a previous older version (8.2i).  It wanted to
uninstall it.  I told it to use a different directory (8.2i is in c:\xilinx, I used
c:\xilinx_92i for 9.2i).  So 8.2i still works thankfully.  The problems occur when
impact starts to run under 9.2i.  As far as the BSD files go, the file it claims it
cannot find is in the correct place relative to the application's root when compared
to the 8.2i installation.

>FWIW, I installed the Linux version of 9.2 and it seems fine. I don't 
>use the downloader on Linux though (notoriously bad USB drivers) - 
>instead I send the bitstream over to my WinXP box and use Impact and/or 
>Chipscope there. Still on 8.2 under Windows though, so that's no help.

Argh, that's really not a road down which I wish to go.  Things were actually OK with
8.2i, the ONLY reason I tried the upgrade was because of the latest weirdness with
the waveguide project thinking that the newer version might work.  Apparently, I'm
going to have to approach troubleshooting this yet another way.  You wouldn't believe
(or maybe you would) some of the things I've tried to ferret out the problem.  Yes,
an oscope test point...

>Overall it sounds like a bad install. I thought zipfiles had checksums 
>in them to bail on corrupt files though, so I'm curious how that's 
>possible.

I was never able to get the entire 1.7 G zip file.  Instead, I did the webinstall
(which took most of the day yesterday).

I have another disk drive, I may throw that drive into this box, reinstall win2K on
it and try a fresh 9.2i installation and see what happens.  That's also something I
really don't care to spend two days on, but I'm running out of choices.


-- ScottG

-------------------------------------------------------------

-- Scott Gravenhorst
-- GateMan I - Xilinx Spartan-3E Based MIDI Synthesizer
-- FatMan: home1.gte.net/res0658s/fatman/
-- NonFatMan: home1.gte.net/res0658s/electronics/
-- When the going gets tough, the tough use the command line.