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Howto program the Avnet / Xilinx Spartan-3A Evaluation Kit from Ubuntu 9.10

The Avnet / Xilinx Spartan-3A Evaluation Kit is a $49 FPGA kit from Avnet, with a XC3S400A Spartan-3A FPGA, and a number of simple peripherals:

• Xilinx XC3S400A-4FTG256C Spartan-3A FPGA
• Four LEDs
• Four CapSense™ switches
• I2C temperature sensor
• Two 6-pin expansion headers
• 20 x 2, 0.1-inch user I/O header
• 32 Mb Spansion® MirrorBit® NOR GL Parallel Flash
• 128 Mb Spansion MirrorBit SPI FL Serial Flash
• USB-UART bridge
• I2C port
• SPI and BPI configuration
• Xilinx JTAG interface
• FPGA configuration via PSoC®

The flash is not updated through a JTAG, but through the USB interface. On Windows the AVprog is used, which can run in Wine and therefore usable on Linux. It is however easier to use the tool called ASTriAEKiPro 1.2.1.

Download a newest .deb file from http://sourceforge.net/projects/fpgalibre/files/ASTriAEKiPro/ and install it with:
sudo dpkg -i astriaekipro_1.2.1-2_i386.deb

Using ASTriAEKiPro
Get a bit file for the kit, either from the CD in the package or from the Avnet Design Resource Center, go to the Avnet Spartan-3A page and click on "Support files and downloads", login and get the "Default Serial Flash Factory Image" file.

To write to the SPI flash use:
astriaekipro -w Spartan3AEval_FPGA_Firmware_V10.bit

To verify:
astriaekipro -y Spartan3AEval_FPGA_Firmware_V10.bit

ASTriAEKiPro can furthermore be used as a terminal, which makes it possible to use the USB as serial interface for a MicroBlace etc.:
astriaekipro -t

Which will give you something like:

*******************************************************************
*                    _____                                        *
*                   /     \                                       *
*                  /____   \____                                  *
*                 / \===\   \==/                                  *
*                /___\===\___\/  AVNET                            *
*                     \======/   ENGINEERING                      *
*                      \====/    SERVICES                         *
*                                                                 *
*******************************************************************
*              Spartan 3A Eval Demo V1.0 5/2008                   *
*******************************************************************
* Current Device Status:                                          *
*                                                                 *
*   EF1:  DEACTIVATED                                             *
*   EF2:  DEACTIVATED                                             *
*   EF3:  DEACTIVATED                                             *
*   EF4:  Connected To FPGA System Reset                          *
*   TMP:   29.1250 C                                              *
*   U22:  S29GL032N DETECTED                                      *
*******************************************************************
Type  for command options. 

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