[new 6 December 2006]

The Virtex-4 Logic Tile (LT) user guide states that the progcards utility for Multi-ICE is not supported.  What this means in practical terms is that Multi-ICE cannot auto-detect the ICs on this development board, and that manual configuration files are no longer provided for Multi-ICE as it is approaching end-of-life status.

The PB926EJ-S Platform Baseboard and the Emulation Baseboard (EB) both have built-in USB hardware so that our progcards_usb utility can be used.  To use this, you will need a USB cable and a PC (there is no UNIX progcards ), Windows USB drivers are supplied on the Versatile CD.  In most cases this will remove the need to configure the system using Multi-ICE.

However, Multi-ICE can be used to program  the LT-XC4V cards.

The progcards download contains a version of progcards_multiice that does support programming the Virtex-4 FPGAs.  In order to use the progcards .brd files supplied in application notes etc, you will need to follow the instructions below to use progcards with Multi-ICE.

Step 1

You will need to manually edit the file irlength.arm, which is located in the directory that the Multi-ICE server software was installed to.  The default location is C:\Program Files\ARM\Multi-ICE

Add the following lines at the end of the file, then save it.

XC4VLX160=10
XC4VLX200=10
XC2C384=8

Step 2

You will now need to create or obtain a manual configuration file for Multi-ICE (.cfg).  There are two recommended ways of doing this:

Option 1

If you have or can find (for example on a Versatile CD installation or boardfile download) a .cfg file for the equivalent Virtex II Logic Tile in the combination of boards that you have, you could simply modify this to work with the Virtex-4 Logic Tile.  Example (just showing a partial section of a .cfg file):

Option 2

There is an Excel based utility (multi-ice_config_file_creator.xls) supplied on the Versatile 3.1.1 CD that can be used to create manual configuration files.  This is located in the \multi-ice sub-directory of each of the \boardfiles directories.  Instructions are provided within the utility.

Step 3

You can now load the .cfg file into the Multi-ICE Server using File -> Load Configuration... , then run progcards_multiice in the directory containing your .brd files.