Re: Carte Blanche arrives!

[Steve <srkh28@gmail.com>]

On Oct 1, 10:17 pm, Steven Hirsch <snhir...@gmail.com> wrote:
> mdj wrote:
> >> It may *look* that way but there is a caveat: it is 2 mm pitch rather
> >> than the more standard 0.1".
>
> >> In order to connect to the CB I use a "flyleads"  cable. You can get a
> >> genuine Xilinx one but it is expensive for no good reason - $25
>
> > I thought the flylead cable that ships with the CB could be used to
> > interface to the Xilinx dongle, or is the pin pitch too tight ?
>
> Apparently not.  As Steve pointed out (and I verified by reading the Xilinx
> cable docs), the USB platform cable has a smaller 2mm pitch header.  I broke
> down and ordered the flylead adapter and a female-to-female 2mm cable (for my
> Spartan 3 board) from Digikey.  Given the low price of the eBay platform
> cable, I'm not too worried about the extra expense.  But, that does beg the
> question:  What is the supplied jumper intended for?
>
> > I'd rather pay them $100 bucks or so for a WebPack license and not
> > have to worry about these unnecessarily proprietary tools. Those eBay
> > auctions were timely though - hope everyone has one now!
>
> Are you saying that the free WebPack can be licensed up to an unlimited
> version for $100??  I thought they wanted the big bucks (> $1000) for that.
> Can you elaborate?  I was never able to find any pricing information on
> Xilinx's web site and that usually turns out to mean "If you have to ask, you
> can't afford it".
>
> I hate to seem unappreciative of Steve's documentation efforts, but I
> seriously doubt that any Apple 2 hobbyists are planning to buy an Altium
> Designer license :-)  In my opinion, this effort would be better spent showing
> off the use of WebPack.
>
> Steve

ISE is great value (well, being free is hard to beat) Hopefully Alex
will knock up a set of ISE templates. I hope to do a few ISE designs
myself as examples and put them up. AD isnt too bad.  For $400 bux you
get the FPGA dev side and a board. The only problem is the license is
timed. But ISE is a sure fire solution that you can download now. I
dont mind either.

http://www.newark.com/altium/12-400-nb3000xn-01/nanoboard-3000xn-xilinx-spartan/dp/10R0248

Steve