April 23, 2022

FPGA - Xybo board - "getting started"

My board arrived 2 hours ago. How do I power it up?

Powering the board

You can either give it 5 volts via a barrel connector, or let it be powered via USB using the micro USB connector next to the power switch. You need to move a jumper to select which source is actually powering the board. (A third option is powering the board from a battery).

They offer a 5 volt 2.5 amp wall wart for it, but state this it will draw only 0.2 amps idling and will work fine from a 0.5 amp limited USB 2.0 cable. It is not clear yet to me when it would pull more than 0.5 amps of current, but apparently it can.

Fire it up

I find a cable and plug it in. There are no signs of life, but that is because the power switch is in the off position. As soon as I turn it on I see a red led come on (labeled "pgood" i.e. power good?) and the following in my linux system log:

Apr 23 20:10:18 trona kernel: usb 3-2.2: new high-speed USB device number 36 using xhci_hcd
Apr 23 20:10:18 trona kernel: usb 3-2.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0403, idProduct=6010, bcdDevice= 7.00
Apr 23 20:10:18 trona kernel: usb 3-2.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Apr 23 20:10:18 trona kernel: usb 3-2.2: Product: Digilent Adept USB Device
Apr 23 20:10:18 trona kernel: usb 3-2.2: Manufacturer: Digilent
Apr 23 20:10:18 trona kernel: ftdi_sio 3-2.2:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected
Apr 23 20:10:18 trona kernel: usb 3-2.2: Detected FT2232H
Apr 23 20:10:18 trona kernel: usb 3-2.2: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB1
Apr 23 20:10:18 trona kernel: ftdi_sio 3-2.2:1.1: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected
Apr 23 20:10:18 trona kernel: usb 3-2.2: Detected FT2232H
Apr 23 20:10:18 trona kernel: usb 3-2.2: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB2
Interestingly it sets itself up as a pair of USB serial devices. Apparently the FT2232H chip handles two serial ports via a single USB connection which is kind of nice. I believe one is for JTAG and the other is for a console terminal. Oddly enough the schematic omits details about how this is connected.
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Tom's Computer Info / tom@mmto.org