Friday, January 20, 2012

Installing Digilent Adept 2 on Linux Workstations

So in my previous post I walk through the somewhat long, boring, but important steps, for installing the Xilinx ISE WebPack software. This is the software used for creating hardware designs, compiling them, optimizing them, routing them, and eventually it spits out a '.bit' file.


So in theory, once you've compiled a design, or have a .bit file for your particular Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) or Complex Programmable Logic Device (CPLD), you'll be ready to load it onto your device of choice! To do these we use Digilent Adept 2.


Digilent Adept 2: The Adept Runtime & Utilities consists of the shared libraries, firmware images, and configuration files necessary to communicate with Digilent's devices.
  1. Goto: http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=ADEPT2 and download the Run time software for your Linux architecture (32 or 64 bit)
  2. Decompress the downloaded file, this requires gzip
    1. eg. “gzip -d digilent.adept.runtime_2.8.2-i686.tar.gz”
  3. Untar the the decompressed file, this requires tar
    1. eg. “tar -xvf digilent.adept.runtime_2.8.2-i686.tar”
  4. Enter the directory which contains the run time installer
  5. *Execute the install.sh script, this will require superuser privileges (speak with your system administrator)
    1. eg. “sudo ./install.sh”
    2. Press [enter], press [Enter]
*As of this writing the Digilent Adept 2 runtime install.sh encounters an error on 3.x.x kernels that use udev. It should be fixed soon.

  1. Goto: http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=ADEPT2 and downlaod the Utilities software for your Linux architecture(32 or 64 bit)
  2. Decompress the downloaded file, this requires gzip
    1. eg. “gzip -d digilent.adept.utilities_2.1.1-i686.tar.gz”
  3. Untar the decompressed file, this requires tar
    1. eg. “tar -xvf digilent.adept.utilities_2.1.1-i686.tar”
  4. Enter the directory which contains the utilities installer
  5. Execute the install.sh script, this will require superuser privileges (speak with your system administrator)
    1. eg. “sudo ./install.sh”
    2. Press [enter], press [Enter]
I use a Digilent Basys 2 Development Board because it's cheap enough for me to afford, I also have a C-MOD which I have not used yet but will likely utilize at sometime this year. If you've done both the ISE WebPack install and the Adept 2 installation you should now have the necessary software to load new designs to devices of your choice!

10 comments:

  1. Hi, tanks for tuto,
    but how to launch Adept via terminal or somethings else.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, sorry. I thought I had an article on that written - but apparently not (or I deleted it accidentally)...

      You can start with using:
      djtgcfg (installed with adept 2)

      A use case may go like:
      djtgcfg enum
      djtcgcfg init -d Basys2
      djtgcfg prog -d Basys2 -i 0 -f Basys2UserDemo.bit

      This is the final step in:
      http://sadgeeksinsnow.blogspot.com/2012/01/using-xilinx-ise-webpack-ide.html

      The "enum" command enumerates the devices (-d) to show you what is available. The "init" command initializes the device for use, and should show you the various possible programmable interfaces (-i) - typically RAM or EEPROM.

      So the "prog" command programs an interface (-i) on a device (-d) with the .bit file (-f) if you have one.

      I hope this helps answer your questions, and if you have more *please* do not hesitate to ask. In the mean time I will create a more comprehensive tutorial on using Adept 2 from the command line, but those are the basics. Also remember you have "djtgcfg --help" for information on commandline usage as well.

      Cheers

      Delete
  2. Hi Ken
    Tanks for your quick response !!!
    I will try your solution and feed back...
    For your informations, I have:
    1-Ubuntu 12.04, 64b bits
    2-Yes, I have ISE design and I have compiled a .bit programme with ISE
    3-I have FPGA in Basys2

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sure thing, I try my best to help when I can! Please do report your solutions, they can be of great help to others.

      Delete
  3. I still have problem to to run the application after installing it Successfully
    Can you help me please ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am willing to do what I can. But I require more information, what is the problem you're having?

      Delete
  4. This helped a lot! U da bomb diggity!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Always glad I can help! Hope you're makin' something awesome :-)

      Delete
  5. how to install digilent adept debian packages

    ReplyDelete