Friday, November 4, 2022

Xilinx FTDI without a Digilent license

Xilinx FTDI without a Digilent license. Starting from 2022.2 (or earlier?) Vivado distribution includes an FTDI programming utility that makes the FTx232 devices visible in the Vivado hardware manager. So no need anymore for the secret and invisible Digilent license string! UPDATE the invisible license is still needed, it is silently written...

https://docs.xilinx.com/r/en-US/ug908-vivado-programming-debugging/Programming-FTDI-Devices-for-Vivado-Hardware-Manager-Support 

This is nice that we do no longer need to use the licensed FTDI tool to write into the hidden User EEPROM for Xilinx tools to recognize the programmer dongle. Well, the hidden EEPROM is still used and needed, so if we use FT_PROG to write the FT2232 EEPROM, the hidden license will disappear and the programmer will not be recognized anymore.

Interestingly the provided schematic does not provide support for the Zynq SRST pin :(

Interestingly this Xilinx forum post seems to describe some more used pins: