I’ve ordered the Spartan-3E dev board, and was wondering what I’m going to need for a JTAG programmer.
I didn’t order the one from SFE, but I was wondering if there was a digi-key part which would work? if not digi-key, mouser or jameco would be OK.
Thanks
Any Xilinx jtag programmer should work as long as you connect the pins correctly.
On the fpga board the jtag pins go directly to the fpga so there isn’t anything specific to this board going on.
Digilent has a low-cost one that they supply with their FPGA boards. It interfaces to the printer port, unlike the current Xilinx one which has a USB interface, and is much more expensive.
Leon
The digilent one is semi-equivalent to the sparkfun one. There is a correctly pinned socket on the SFE board where a header can be added for the digilent header. The larger connector for the SFE programmer can also be used, but its not pin compatible; you would need to make an adapter. The SFE jtag connector pinout has a signal-ground-signal-ground order to enhance signal integrity with fast edge rates.
Cheers,
–David Carne
Ok thanks everyone, I decided to go with the digilent one for cost.