FPGA Board CCA 193426B-01L

[CSpeck]

Trying to find a complete User Confirguration File (UCF) or a schematic showing the mapping of the Spartan chip pin outs for the FPGA board devices and I/O.

Several years ago, at least 5, the Philadelphia School District purchased the NI FPGA Boards that actually went unused until recently and are now being integrated into a Digital Electronics (DE) Course that will include the FPGA Board in various DE projects.  To fully utilize the I/O and devices on the board itself we require User Configuration File data and/or a circuit schematic that will identify pin out connectivity from the embedded Xilinx FPGA to the various devices on the board (example Rotary Switch).  Some of the data is included in information we were able to find or already had (e.g. http://www.ni.com/pdf/products/us/cat_defpga.pdf,http://www.ni.com/pdf/manuals/372809b.pdf, http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/user_guides/ug385.pdf), but our information is incomplete.  A complete UCF or a schematic showing the mapping of the Spartan chip pin outs to usable devices on the board and its I/O pins/ports would greatly facilitate use of the board in our classroom projects.

I may be contacted directly via the email above or, you may reach the school and ask for me or Mr. Scott Koehler, Engineering Technology teacher, please see the attached link for the school: http://carver.phila.k12.pa.us/

We currently have ten (10) of the NI FPGA boards, which may at this point be dated, but still quite usable for school purposes.  We would like to integrate these boards to introduce students to FPGA technology, and will expand the equipment base and course breadth as we get the course content established.

Chip: Xilinx Spartan XC3S500E

Board: CCA 193426B-01L

[Fernando_D]

Hi there,

Are you planning to use Multisim to program the NI Digital Electronics FPGA Board? The PLD Schematic in Multisim supports this board.

Here is a tutorial on how to program this board with Multisim:

Export Digital Logic to Xilinx FPGAs With NI Multisim

Hope this helps, let us know if you have further questions.

[CSpeck]

Fernando,

Greatly appreciate your responsiveness.

We will be using Multisim, and have it installed, as part of the DE Course, but we also want to teach students using C-Language/Verilog/VHDL a variety of tools, and the JTAG programming port directly, and want to be able to direct I/O from the Spartan FPGA to a variety of devices on the CCA or connected externally.  So, I guess we want to get under the hood a bit, teach the tools comparatively, and complement Multisim usage, which is a great tool.

This board is a few years old, I am not sure if it is the current version or still in production.  Is there a complete UCF or a schematic that will identify Spartan pinouts to CCA devices and I/O?  What we are doing is updating, expanding the course and integrating the FPGA (that has gone unused until now) and other devices.

We have ten of the FPGA boards now. 

Chris Speck, PE (Retired)

Science, Math, & Engineering Technology Teacher (PA)

[Tien_P]

Hi Chris,

Look under the "UFC File Contraints" section from chapter 4, it has the pin information you are looking for.

http://www.ni.com/pdf/manuals/372809b.pdf

[CSpeck]

Tien P,

Thanks for noting that, although we had seen it, and it is a partial.  The GPIO, PMod Ports, Rotary Switch, DAC, ADC, are some of the UCF data we did not find.

So, we were looking for more complete data beyond what we found in the manual--i,e, a complete UCF or, perhaps, a schematic.

We think we have most of the UCF now from various sources and can probably test to figure out the rest.

Chris Speck

[Tien_P]

Hi Chris,

I think the attached file is what you are looking for.  The ROT1 is used to control the clock frequency so it's B8.  

[CSpeck]

Well, that's a help...thank you!

Not sure why, but unless I missed it, the B8 "ROT  1" you mentioned is not listed in the text of the attached file, but only one rotary switch on the board, so I guess that is it....what is the range of clock frequency adjustment? Is that described somewhere?  Performance tradeoffs in tweaking that?  That sounds like a good lesson in itself.

Will save the file...

[Tien_P]

Around the ROT1 there are three LEDs, low, mid and high and you can switch between the modes by pressing the ROT1 knob, the frequency ranges are: 

Low - 1 Hz-100 Hz

Mid 100 HZ-100 Khz

High 100 Khz -500 Mhz

[CSpeck · Accepted solution]

Tien,

Now that is COOL BEANS...news we can use....

Do apprecaite the useful detail and we will work that in going forward.  Acually, was doing a part inventory today in connection with the course preparations with a student helping and he found a couple tubes of the old 555 timer chips, asked what they were for and we had a good dialog on the function and importance of clock timing in computers, and how waveforms get developed and such.

So, I can see adjusting clock timing as a real insight into digital electronic operations, especially in being able to slow things down enough to catch the action and study it better.

Very nice.

Chris Speck