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Digital Electronics FPGA Board Hardware Driver for Windows 10

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Hi Brian,

 

Thanks for that. I've confirmed that I can install that package here at work on my Win7 machine and although I don't have one of the DE FPGA boards here I can bring one in tomorrow. I do have a stable ISE 14.7 installation here and can build Xilinx Spartan bit files in my sleep so I'll give it a try. Hopefully we can get some kind of baseline from that. I'll post how that goes.

 

Regards,

Tom

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Hi Dave,

Thanks! Now I'm not positive, as I don't have the FPGA board here at work to try, but your link looks like a driver for the Xilinx Platform Cable USB which is a USB-to-JTAG programmer for FPGAs. Brian's link seems promising. I'll let you know.

Best,

Tom

 

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Hi Both,

OK, I'm going to explain how far I've got now and my situation.  

Firstly I found a better link for win10 drivers, and really only needed to reassure myself the drivers were installed.  The link was 

http://www.xilinx.com/support/answers/54381.html 

This probably just backs up what Brian said about istalling ISE 14.7 which I already had on my own laptop.  I can now reach the board via iMPACT so will try and follow the example on the NI site regarding programming with Xilinx software.  Thank you Brian.  I am looking to relearn how to use VHDL or Verilog. 

Tom, do you any suggestions as to any good resources for me to use to learn one or the other VHDL or Verilog  especially with regards to Xilinx devices?

 

I also need to set the boards up to work with Multism 12 on a windows 7 based system.  Am I to presume that Multisim will not recognise the forced in Xilinx driver?  I would have sworn that I have tried the 2015 Labview install and it baulked as Labview is too old.  the windows 7 systems have Multisim 12 Education edition on which I believe installed a trial of Labview from roughly the same year, maybe the yaer before.  Sorry if this is confusing.

Regards

Dave

 

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Hi Dave,

 

I haven't tried Multisim 12 with Xilinx ISE 14.7, I've only tried Multisim 14. Try to follow along to these instructions:

http://www.ni.com/tutorial/10289/en/

 

Really what Multisim is doing is pinging the Xilinx compiler so the information that is sent from Multisim to Xilinx should be the same no matter the version of Multisim. My only concern would be the compatibility of the .ucf file. My gut is telling me it will work. Please update us once you've tried it.

 

Thanks,

Brian H. -- Electronics & Measurements Product Marketing Manager
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Hi Dave -

 

I'm very intrigued that you can reach the board from Impact and that would make sense if the board uses something more generic, like Jungo for example, as the driver. ISE 14.7 alone doesn't do it...I installed that first before I tried enumerating the hardware. So there are a few variables here to sort it out but your success inspires me! Obviously i stand corrected about the driver you referenced. (Yay for scientific method!)

 

As far as language, this is just opinion of course but I think Verilog is much easier to learn and code. ISE has a feature on its menu called Language Templates. You can browse through the templates to view and copy code snippets for creating instances of different constructs. Now being an old-timer I learned the basics out of an actual book (so long ago I don't remember its name) but there are lots and lots of tutorials online.

 

I believe that ISE still lets you work in a symbol/schematic-based graphical mode, and I used that at first even doing some advanced things with custom symbols and such. Then my company paid for a verilog class and I found that for me personally it was way easier even than doing it with "pictures". Whatever approach you take, best of luck to you.

 

Tom

 

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Hi Brian.

The mutlsim 12 to ise seems to work ok, but I can't connect to the board.  I'll give it another go tomorrow and let you know how I get on.

Regards

Dave

 

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Hi Tom,

The iMPACT software seems to be working ok, but I am having issues in general with ISE 14.7 crashing when I try to rename projects and all sorts of bizzarre things.  Might try a reinstall and see if that helps.  

The scientific method did get me through again, although the laptop through the window method was about to take over at times.

Thanks for the tips regarding learning FPGA programming.  I did a fair bit at UNIversity back in the 90's but since then have only had a few dealings so I'm hoping to expand a little.  

I've taught myself a few other languages over the years I suppose so a new one should be ok 😉

Cheers

Dave

 

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Little late to the party but im happy to see so many ideas to get these FPGA Boards rolling in my school. Dave, I was having a similar problem with ISE Impact where i couldnt open any projects or browse any past projects. I followed the steps in this video and it fixed my issues. Hope it does the same for you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY2b3nyv6e4

-Ian

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IGREGOR, don't worry its always party time!  I'll try that fix when I get home Cheers.

OK, I've managed to push the Xilinx driver into the college PC with win7 and multisim 12 and I have managed to use multisim to send a bit file to the xilinx, I can now switch two LEDS on and off via an AND gate and an OR gate.  I feel like Marconi when he sent radio waves across the sea.

Thanks everyone for your help.  Now I have a proven worker I can get our IT to implement and have a LAB full.  That is brilliant thanks very much.

Cheers

Dave

 

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Brian - Thanks for the detailed response.

 

All - I'm accepting this answer based on success on a Windows 7 PC. I am encouraged that the 2016 driver version will "probably" work on Windows10, but so far have only run it on Win7. I will update this post when I do that.

 

The recipe for Win7 is that I installed the version titled "LabView2015" and then excluded the LabView portion (I believe it's that way by default) inside the installer.

 

I am now communicating with the NI Digital Electronics FPGA Board using Xilinx ISE 14.7 and Impact. I have created a new "Hello World" project for it called blink00 that is a VERY basic intro to Verilog and also has a test bench set up for ISim. 

 

I have created a GitHub repo for this and the project can be downloaded from https://github.com/tntgregor/ni_defb_blink00 (although at this moment GitHub is downstream from a massive ddos attack affecting DNS provider Dyn and is not currently reachable so I am attaching a zip).

 

 

 

 

 

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