[Fpga-synth] Growing pains

[Byron G. Jacquot]

Howdy again everyone...

...I guess I'm picking up where I was a couple weeks back.

I've got the s3e devkit here.  I downloaded Webpack 10.1.  I've been reading like a madman...the Verilog text I've been reading is making sense, and I'd like to get into working through some of the problems and examples in the book.

I'm starting to feel a little overwhelmed with the Xilinx offerings, and trying to find the exact things (mainly documentation) I need from them is a little hit or miss.

The FPGA synth webpage has been very helpful, but the links back to Xilinx are out of date...

The kit came with EDK 9.2i, but I downloaded 10.1 instead, and have run it through the package upgrade tool to verify that I've got all the latest pieces.  But it looks like the documentation I've got with it matches 9.2i, not 10.1.  Is there a "quick start" guide for the s3e kit under 10.1?  If so, I'm having trouble finding it.  

Are there other s3e tutorials I should work through?  I see the ones in the Wiki, and as soon as I'm a little more stable, I'll work through them.

I've got a quick start guide that's part of the help system in 10.1, but it runs me through a tutorial for the xc3s200 part.  On my Win XP desktop, when I run the simulation step, it throws an error that it "can't compile generated C code."  Xilinx have a support item regarding this, recommending that some registry keys get deleted so that cmd.exe will start up with the correct path.  I clobbered the keys, but still have the problem.  Has anyone else seen this?  Any pointers?

So I've hijacked the girlfriend's Vista laptop and installed Webpack there too, also running through the upgrade process.  The tutorial runs, but of cource it won't program my board because the devices don't match.  I'm wary to hack my way through the mismatch because I don't want to mess up the pin configuration steps.

I get the feeling that all of the info I'm looking for is probably in one single place, but I'm having tracking it down.

Byron Jacquot