Xilinx Spartan3E Sample Pack: Real fun for all Ages!

"Peter Alfke" <alfke@sbcglobal.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag 
news:1136474338.741535.310520@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Ralph,
> Xilinx has a Marketing and a Sales organization whose job it is to
> distribute and sell our products.
> I have neither the inclination nor the authority to create a parallel
> bootleg operation.
> I do occasionally help a personal friend, especially when I know that
> he will use it immediately and intensely.
> Very intensely.
> Have a happy and prosperous New Year !
> Peter
>
Thank You Peter!

you really appreciate the _intense_ work with the leading edge technologies 
(Xilinx FPGAs)
And I have rendered some real intense work from the very moment I got the 
sample pack !

gosh, I wanted very badly to announce today that I have on my desk and FPGA 
that can configure itself from removable media card (without external 
circuits) but unfortunatly I failed - it is not working yet, but in order to 
test it I did:

make proto PCB with Laser Printer toner technology (6 mil traces!!!) for 
XC3S250e-VQ100 (I will put the pictures online soon..)
XXXX, done here

http://xilant.com/content/view/35/2/

that board did work immediatly, then I added MMC Card socket to the CCLK and 
config pins and tried to talk to the Atmel DataFlash card inserted into MMC 
socket, unfortunatly with no response, it is very likely that my DataFlash 
card is non functional as I have not tested it ever, (not before today)

I can read write standard SPI flash connected as S3e config memory over JTAG 
no problems with that.

As of today: I have tested and used for testing EVERY single Spartan3e 
silicon device I have in my hands (1 each of the 3 smallest members), 
actually I did test Impact against Spartan3e JTAG before I got any S3e (by 
using S3e JTAG /BSCAN emulation IP cores) - as confirmed by that testing and 
testing today with Impact 7.1SP4 Spartan3e-250 programming is not supported, 
ChipScope 7.1 does however configure all my tested Spartan3e devices (I 
suppose it will also program 1200 and 1600 but I have not verified that).

-- 
Antti Lukats
http://www.xilant.com 

well, by 'you' I meant the organisation not the individual; I think this forum is a great place for vendors to get some feedback...

Now, I stop it: I'll just pick my VISA and buy one of the usual dev kits... it's not a matter of free stuff or not: Tiny is beautiful, and I'm sure that the sample pack can give a lot of ideas to embed FPGAs everywhere.

Cheers, Ralph.