From: MotM on
Is there a way to access the platform cable USB from a user program
(i.e., from outside the Xilinx toolchain) ? What I'd like to do is
access a BSCAN module inside my design from a custom win32
application.
Many thanks,
Guy.

From: Andreas Ehliar on
On 2007-02-26, MotM <Guy.Eschemann(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there a way to access the platform cable USB from a user program
> (i.e., from outside the Xilinx toolchain) ? What I'd like to do is
> access a BSCAN module inside my design from a custom win32
> application.

Take a look at the following URLs:
http://www.xilinx.com/publications/xcellonline/xcell_53/xc_jtag53.htm
and http://www.s3group.com/system_ic/gnat/

/Andreas
From: Eric Smith on
MotM wrote:
> Is there a way to access the platform cable USB from a user program
> (i.e., from outside the Xilinx toolchain) ? What I'd like to do is
> access a BSCAN module inside my design from a custom win32
> application.

Andreas Ehliar wrote:
> Take a look at the following URLs:
> http://www.xilinx.com/publications/xcellonline/xcell_53/xc_jtag53.htm
> and http://www.s3group.com/system_ic/gnat/

Those articles show how to acess the JTAG interface from logic inside
the FPGA. What MotM wants is to access the JTAG chain from the PC.

Unfortunately Xilinx does not provide any API to do this, and believes
that the interface to their PC4 and Platform USB cables is some kind
of super-valuable trade secret, so the answer is that you can't do
it with the Xilinx cable. You have to use a third party JTAG interface,
and swap JTAG cables back and forth. :-(

There *must* be some kind of API that Xilinx uses in their own software
to do this. C'mon, guys, open it up for customer use!

Eric

From: cs_posting on
On Feb 27, 11:38 pm, Eric Smith <e...(a)brouhaha.com> wrote:

> Unfortunately Xilinx does not provide any API to do this, and believes
> that the interface to their PC4 and Platform USB cables is some kind
> of super-valuable trade secret, so the answer is that you can't do
> it with the Xilinx cable. You have to use a third party JTAG interface,
> and swap JTAG cables back and forth. :-(

I believe that one option is to use the Xilinx cable, but download
your own firmware to it rather than the firmware the Xilinx tools
download. Since the firmware defines the interface, you can then use
it anyway you like...

It is a Cypress fx2, isn't it? Or is is that only true of the
Digilent cables? It is one of the FTD chips?



From: Eric Smith on
cs_posting(a)hotmail.com writes:
> I believe that one option is to use the Xilinx cable, but download
> your own firmware to it rather than the firmware the Xilinx tools
> download. Since the firmware defines the interface, you can then use
> it anyway you like...

Yes, you can do that. You have to download your own CPLD
configuration too, unless someone reverse-engineers the one
that Xilinx uses. So every time you switch between using the
cable for Xilinx software vs. for your own software, you have
to wait while the CPLD is reprogrammed.

Sigh.
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